One of the weirdest parts of my recent essay writing was the prevalent fear of plagiarism. There was this constant guilt that I was writing something that I hadn't come up with but when I read over things again I had given everyone the credit they deserved and the only times I hadn't was when it was a 'commonly known fact'. I found that phrase before I properly started writing to make sure that I was footnoting everything and everyone that I should, while also being very wary of avoiding footnoting everything. 'OH! I've used a full-stop, who was the first person to ever use a full stop?' - you get the picture. Oddly enough, this post is not even about plagiarism but the fact that I used a Rolling Stones lyric as my title got me thinking about it. So I'm going to give them the credit they deserve by putting the song below. It also means that you can listen to it as you read the rest of this ramble!
So what is this post really about then if not about my pre-intro splurge? It's primarily about university work but I guess it more tells you something about me than anything else. First of all I would like to say that on Saturday when I submitted my essays that I did not get a nice feeling of having them done or being able to enjoy myself for a few days. The first thing that I started to think about was what results I might get for them, then I realised that I've got 3 classes to prepare for (back to the day job, so to speak) and a whole host of other things that have been left in the back of my mind for the last couple of months. In short, I'm a chronic worrier and always have been - it's like I can't relax.
So I tried to do just that - relax that is - and to a certain extent it worked. For the first time in ages I've been able to watch a film and play Football Manager Handheld with as little guilt as 3rd year has afforded me. Of course this was all going on at the same time as the aforementioned worrying, or at least the thinking ahead, that I was doing after submitting my essays. So Monday and yesterday were days off for me basically: Monday for drinking and yesterday for recovering from said drinking. Then this morning I realised it was Wednesday (you can't kid a kidder with these things) and that I've got a very short amount of time to properly prepare for classes next week. That's when I realised that, for some reason, Monday and Tuesday didn't satisfy me as much as I thought they would - hence the title!
I came off the back of my essays pining for a day in the pub and some lounging around the house, not being at my laptop or even looking at anything law related - and I got both of those things as well. Then this morning I started to prepare one of my seminars and realised that I've not done this for a good 2 or 3 months now - at least not properly. Essay writing is nothing like class preparation, drinking doesn't fill me with much else other than beer and lounging around, well that just doesn't get anything done. I've now been working for about 2 hours this morning and I finally feel satisfied again - it appears that uni is the only thing that really turns my cogs.
I knew all of this before I must add. In fact, I've probably mentioned it in numerous ROATSomething posts in the past but it just came as a bit of a shock when I really wasn't relishing the thought of going back to uni next week. Those essays really took something out of me but I feel like it's all starting to build back up again with a little bit work for classes. Maybe it's because I was only writing about 3 things over that period and now I'm doing something completely unrelated and (relatively) new. All I know is that I'm now relishing going back to uni next week.
I'm sure not a lot of my peers will agree with the sentiment of this post but some will and have spent their whole time reading this nodding. That might be down to the music though - guess I'll never know.
Thanks for reading!
Martin
