No rest for the weary

The past week was test/assignment/revision week.  Technically next week is too.  I just have to get to tomorrow (Mon the 18th) at 16:00, then I can pass out.  I'm on the home stretch and things look good for the completion of the last assignment and making it over the finish line in time. 

So let me explain. When arriving back from holiday, I had 5 assignments (most of my grade for my classes) Due within  2  to 2 1/2 weeks. I had 4 major assignments that were due by this past Thursday, and one more that is due tomorrow. So that gave me about 3 - 4 days per assignment.  The thing that makes it hard is that the topics were only briefly discussed in class, or mentioned in passing.... So it requires finding resources, read/scan through them for content before I can start writing.  Then while writing referencing and referring back to those plus in the processes finding more. Each essay requiring 15 - 20 different references. (so three essays is 45-60 total different sources needed, and referred to in the writing....)  

So my days look something like this: I get up about 5:00 am. By 7:00 I'm at my computer. Around 1:00 my stomach is yelling loud enough to make itself known, so I wander to the kitchen and forage for something fast and head back to my room with it to continue working.  About 19:00 I find that I am starving again, so I stop long enough to find something eatable and then work until about midnight. At that point I crash into bed and start the process again the next morning. This is called how to learn a semester's amount of information, synthesize it and explain it in 2500- 4000 words in about 3 days.  I hadn't seen one of my flatmates since Monday morning and when I wandered into the kitchen sometime on Thursday she says "Vicki! you're alive!" I'm thinking if you mean still breathing, then yes. Mentally I'll get back to you on that. 

Things I have learned this week:
1. Anything can be made into a sandwich.  My new favorite is toasted fried egg with cheese and Mayo. 
2. When you are short no chair is comfortable after several hours no matter how many ways you tuck your legs under you. 
3. Taking out the trash can be seen as a reward and a good reason to leave the 12 x 12 cubical I call home. 
4. Microsoft updates are installed at the worst timing possible.
5. Anything tastes good when you're starving.

I hit a new record low for steps in a day this week.  Friday I had 711 steps. (for optimal health it is suggested you walk about 10,000) But I had 163 min of heart rate in the fat burn zone.... so who says mental activity isn't physically draining? 

Word for the week: Invigilator.  (in honor of my flatmates who had actual exams. It is why I learned the word...) 

Academic things I have learned this week:

1. How the concepts of face, politeness, and social deixis relate and how they affect our everyday lives.

2. The contribution of L2 interaction to L2 acquisition with reference to Vygotskian sociocultural theory. 

3. How to use the British National Corpus to find the paradigmatic and syntagmatic semantic relations for the words finish and complete. Their syntactic behavior and their collocations. Then using this information to identify in what ways finish and complete are and are not synonymous. 

All in all it has been a rather productive week.  One more day and then my assignments will be complete and I will be finished. Then maybe I can rest.