Friday, September 26, 2008

How does three weeks pass in the blink of an eye?

I could have sworn I last posted about a week ago. Oh, my ageing brain.


Blame it the sudden chill in the air ~ I'm going into hibernation mode....



Still plugging away at the writing stuff ~ novel is a wee bit on the back burner, as a couple of other projects have jumped up out of nowhere and bitten me on the arse, so I'm giving those the attention they're demanding (in between sleeping, which is all I want to do at the minute.)

Still, I'm fearful that I've taken on a bit too much recently~ I'm taking evening classes in Counselling Skills, which I need to do in order to progress to the Counselling Psychology Msc I want to do ~ I hoped a psychology degree would be qualification enough, but noooooooooooooo, I have to take a sub-GCSE level course (their description, not me being elitist!) full of stuff that I already covered in my degree just to get a certificate that confirms that I already know this stuff. And I can't just miss the classes and sit the exam (which I could pass if I took it now ~ I got hold of a sample exam paper and mark scheme, and there was nothing on there that foxed me) because you need 80% attendance record to pass the course. So Thursdays are currently a 13 hour day for me :-(.
Hey, I may well sound like a snobby academic know-it-all, but it's so frustrating (not to mention boring) to sit through three hours of stuff you already know, whilst pretending that you don't already know it so as not to look like a show-off in front of the rest of class, and trying to resist the urge to correct the tutor's atrocious spelling on the board. Still, the other group members are mostly lovely, and it's very interesting to see what happens when you get such a varied mix of people with differing aspirations into a confined space, and one which seems to prompt an awful lot of emotional revelation.

In fact (magpie writer confession!) the group has given me an idea for a fiction project about a collection of people who come together under similar circumstances, and what happens to them as the course progresss. So I do spend a lot of time surreptiously storing lovely shiny nuggets of character detail and dialogue in my notebook. When Confessions from a Counselling Class rockets up the best-seller list you can all remind me that it wasn't a total waste of time :-)

3 comments:

Zinnia Cyclamen said...

I can well imagine how annoying that is. In fact I think it's ridiculous - why can't they use that, er, exact term escapes me but pre-wossname learning accreditation thingy? Good scheme, though, as you seem to be stuck with it, to make use of the time for writerly research.

B said...

D'you know, I read this the other day and thought 'I thought she was doing A363?' and discounted it because that would be insane, doing all that at the same time.

Kate, I salute you. And I think you are a little bit mental. In the nicest possible way.

Butch Boo said...

As I get older time goes quicker...why is that? I don't understand!