Within four days I will have started my new job, within six days I will know what my degree classification will be, and within three weeks I will have graduated. Until then, however, I’m in a state of transition, and I hate it! Whilst I can be quite patient and wait for things to happen, I find it difficult to do so when the deadlines are some pre-determined fixed point. It’s those states of transition when you’re neither fully in one place or in another, whether that’s waiting for a degree classification and not quite being a student but not quite being a graduate, or in the process of moving house with some of your things in one location and some in another, or apprehensively awaiting the start of your new job.

As I write this, I am spending the first night in my new flat. Whilst some things have been assembled here, the majority of my things are either boxed, piled or still at the old house and as such are no use to me. In the case of my bed and wardrobe, they have still to be bought.

I said to myself this morning that there was nothing more deeply unnerving than an empty home, but I may have been wrong - what’s even more unnerving is having two partially inhabitable abodes. You could say that both places are in a state of transition - moving from inhabited to uninhabited, or vice versa.

Whilst I have plenty of reading to be catching up on (the number of manuals that come with this place is impressive, although as usual the one I really want isn’t provided) I find myself thinking `Oh, so-and-so would be on telly about now` or `I’ll just see if so-and-so is online or what they’re up to` or `I’ll just relax for a bit and read so-and-so` and can’t because I don’t have all of my things over here! Some of them are, in fact, 90 miles away.

I appreciate that it could be far worse and I could be doing all this moving while I was working - a prospect some of my friends are facing - but that isnt helping a great deal! Although I don’t regret the decision to get a place of my own, given that several of my friends will be living nearby, they won’t be moving for about a week so on a night like this where all I have is my dvd collection and radio for company, it has felt quite lonely at some points. Listen to me, I sound like I’ve been encased in this building for weeks!

And the moving of friends raises another point - some of them I may not see again for a very long time, if at all. What a disturbing thought! After three years endlessly harassing them, they get away scot free! We can’t be having this! It is a pleasing thought, though, that some of them are remaining in Leeds and that we’ll be able to keep in touch. Well… I’ll keep in touch and they’ll sob uncontrollably, thinking they’d escaped me. Bwahahaha, and all that.

One thing I’m glad I’ve done, despite the inevitable damage to my back, is to spend this night at the flat to get used to the building, the sounds of a 13-storey building and its inner workings (the designer of the constantly-running ventilation system in my flat has an entirely different definition of the word `quiet` to the one I have, and as such it’s been switched off!) and to get over the initial disorientation of being in a new place. The alternative was to wait until the bed was in, which would most likely have been Saturday or Sunday, thus leaving me little time to acclimatise. I’d rather be cranky around my friends thanto turn up for my first day of work on Monday complaining of lack of sleep - it wouldn’t have made a good first impression! Unfortunately, I don’t have a working fridge at present, so no cereal or toast in the morning… I know, I know, I’m deprived. Wait, wrong vowel!

Whilst the view out of my balcony is less than impressive at the moment, due to the construction going on next door and further up the hill, it is beautiful at night when the lights of the flats opposite come on and light up the building! I’ve even bought myself a deck chair so that when I’m more settled in I can sit outside and enjoy the lights… and ignore the evening traffic. Hopefully I’ll still enjoy it as much in the morning when construction resumes at some unspeakably early hour! When I start work on Monday this won’t be a problem, of course, as I’d be expected to be up at that time anyway!

As this post is going up the morning after the fact, I hope you have all had a pleasant night’s sleep! Despite an hour of restlessness, I eventually nodded off and, as predicted, woke to the sound of construction next door. Oh well, at least it will wake me on a morning when it’s time to go to work!

It’s difficult to feel elated about anything when you’re one step away from being violently sick. That sentence pretty much describes yesterday. On a day that should have been quite exciting, containing a job interview and getting my project mark back, all I could think from the moment I woke up was “please get through this without throwing up”!

And so, having got very little sleep last night, and generally feeling sore, I approach the weekend with less enthusiasm than I should have. Tomorrow I head home for a week (thus making my access to the Internet intermittent) which will be nice. Free food, free TV and all the family members I can harass! Still, it will be nice to see them…. even if it’s not nice for them to see me. Bwahahah.

On the plus side, my project mark looked good, and the comments given are things that I’ve heard before. My supervisor and assessor said the work was there, and it was a technically good project, but that I didn’t sell myself well. I guess that’s always been my problem - knowing I can do something but not having the courage to put myself forward and say I can do it or that I have done it.

It feels weird - the project mark was the last thing I had to do, with the exception of some lovely forms, and now the only thing left to do is graduate. Some of the people I saw yesterday collecting their marks I may never see again. It’s a very odd feeling! Each of us moving off along our own paths.

And the project is in, done, gone, never to harass me again… well, until I get someone pounding on my door with plagiarism letters!

As part of it, we were asked to do a reflections section, summing up the project experience as a whole. I guess this post is going to be the stuff that I didn’t put in there.

It’s amazing how stress can wake up the little voices of doubt in your head. You get stuck on a method, something doesn’t compile, you don’t get the response you expect, and suddenly everything starts up again. The feelings just range from complete numbness to an unshakable suspicion that everyone around you hates you, thinks you’re an incompetent fool and would prefer that you weren’t there at all. Unfortunately, those feelings tended to be at their worst when meeting with my supervisor or my assessor - a constant paranoia that behind your back they’re laughing at you, that they think you’re not worth their time, and that they regret ever taking you on as a student. It makes you think that you don’t belong at University, that nobody wants you there, and that everybody would be far happier if you didn’t turn up any more. And the problem with this is that when you start getting these feelings, they just make you feel more drained and fed up, which just fuel them further.

The run up to the project demonstration and the report hand-in were the worst, except they usually take a difference pattern. I start off perfectly happy, content that things are going well, and then it can suddenly flip to a paranoid self-loathing. It gets worse in lectures, when I’m lying in bed, or when I’m sat waiting for something - anywhere that I have time to sit and think and let my mind wander (I appreciate that in lectures I should be extremely attentive at all times but… well… yeah right!) I just start thinking about other things, and that can be it - I just feel miserable again and then a few minutes later I’m back out of it.

These mood swings are still happening, with today’s lectures proving that something innocuous as a passing conversation can wake up in my mind and I can pull it apart.

Hopefully getting some decent sleep over the weekend will restore to what passes for normality in my life!