Essays and Exam Time

I’m not sure whether to celebrate that it’s only been two months since my last entry or to slap myself on the wrist again. There have certainly been much longer breaks between entries, and one of the reasons this one was so delayed was general laziness on my part. I was having issues with some WordPress plugins (which have hopefully now been fixed *crosses fingers*) and frustration won out.

Now with just under two weeks until my first exam, I figured it was time to blog again. Compared to my December exams, the dates have worked out much better. There is also no Saturday exam (hooray!). My essays went as well as I expected; a B1 for my comparative Lit essay, which I knew was the strongest of the two. English Literature was disappointing with a C1, but it was to be expected considering how ill I had been, and I had to get an extension for it. It means I really need to push for a B or higher in my exam to gain access to honours, although it does say that you can substitute another literature subject grade. So if I get a low grade for English Lit but a B or higher for Comparative Lit, I may still be able to get into honours. I can always resit exams, but after last summer, I am really looking forward to a stress-free summer where I can concentrate on other things.

I have one essay grade still to get; English Language. It was only 10% though, and I only need to pass this course to get into honours. The exam is 50% and at first, it seemed pretty scary, but once I started revision I realised it wasn’t that bad. The good grade for Comparative Lit means I can focus more on English Lit. As if the exam wasn’t scary enough, our course leader has chosen to change the exam this year. Previously we had Section A and Section B and this year he’s removed Section B, which in my opinion was much easier. Especially when you look at the past exam papers and most of section A is riddled with random quotations (not from the set texts) and then one line “discuss with reference to two texts”. Great.

I’ve sent in my application for honours and along with it an application for Creative Writing. There are only 18 places for this course, and we had to send in a portfolio for it. The portfolio was only 1000 words, but it was incredibly difficult to just choose 1000 words from my novel. I got opinions from several people, including my dad who isn’t a fan of that genre, and I got very positive feedback from all of them. It was a nice confidence boost. I only have to wait until the end of the month to hear back, but the wait is stressing me more than my exams!

Chris and I spent a week down in London with my mum, and it was a mixed experience. It was great to relax, spend time with family and friends and finally get to visit Kew Gardens. But it was marred by the passing of one of my cats, Ginger. Ginger was 16, he was one of a litter of four kittens that my first cat, Tammie had. She died when they were 3 and a 1/2 weeks old due to a heart defect. We had to hand-rear them, I was 11 at the time and so excited that we finally had a ginger cat. He was the runt of the litter, but you’d never believe it. You could understand why his mum took so long to give birth to him; he was so much bigger than the others. He was always a stupid ginger tom, with a big nose and big ears when he was a kitten. He always got into fights, coming home with his battle wounds, which left you wondering what had happened to the other cat.

As you can imagine it wasn’t a pleasant experience and I guess I was lucky to be able to spend his last days with him as he lived in London with my parents, whereas I’m in Glasgow. He was my companion from childhood to adulthood, always came when I called, and I just can’t believe he is gone.

Image Credits: Photo from Unsplash.