It's my last "Friday of Week 1 of Michaelmas Term" because I'm in final year now, although I guess there's a distinct possibility I'll be staying for my Master's so I suppose I can't be too sure about this being my last Friday of Week 1 of Michaelmas Term. I was going to make this post on Tumblr talking about my day yesterday but I figured i could do it here instead since it's been a while and I feel quite a lot better than I did last time, thank you antidepressants and third year for helping me to truly, truly stop worrying and love the bomb.
I haven't got an essay due until next week so I've been focusing on grad school applications this week. Yesterday morning I had yogurt, granola, and strawberries for breakfast and headed to the SSL café with my Keepcup. I had a latte and soon my friend Eleni dropped by on her way to a tutorial and we chatted - she always has so many things to say, when we talk (which so far hasn't been that often, I don't know her very well yet) I always feel like my brain is going 100km per hour to keep up with her. Rachel dropped in as well. I edited some pieces for Sine Theta and generally checked things off the to-do list I'd scribbled onto a post-it and taped to my laptop keyboard.
Lunch was a simple soba with pok choy and chicken (paprika, garlic, cumin, mirin) - sweet and good, but it was one of those moments where I took a really long time to eat it and it got cold and an hour passed and I just didn't feel like it anymore, so I did end up throwing a bit of it away at the end. I packed up to go back to the café and do more work, but then remembered that my tutor Julia had said I could call her to discuss US grad schoolk so I sat down to do that - she was so, so, so kind and encouraging and actually insisted on reading my (very bad) first draft for Yale so that was awesome. After talking with her I felt really excited and inspired to write my next draft which is what I did for the whole afternoon until it was time for my evening activities.
I first went with Rachel to the Queer Studies Network mixer, which was a networking thing for academics. I had a lot of wine (a cup each of white and red) which on an empty stomach meant I was soon slurring my speech. After slightly embarrassing myself for an hour or so I had to go meet with Sophie to attend the Industry magazine launch, which we promptly left after arrival once we had run into Dan (whom I had finally met last week for the first time when we were teaching Fiction and Non-Fic editing at the Isis masterclass and really hit it off because we both just decided to act like we already knew each other and skip the introductions and awkward small talk) and Kwan Ann, whom I was finally now meeting for the first time after being mutuals on Twitter for a while. She made an uncomfortable joke about Sine Theta rejecting her twice, which was awkward but what can I do, it's nothing personal. We tried to check out a "jazz night" advertised at a townie pub (there was no music), then went to another pub on Cornmarket where we got a fancy bottle of wine to share. We picked the wine with the coolest name, which was La Forge. After polishing that one off, we headed off to Spoons and got some pitchers of a blue cocktail that tasted a bit like childhood cough medicine as well as some chips. Gabriel sent me a Pimm's which was adorable and very much appreciated. We talked for a really long time and eventually split up at midnight. It started raining soon after we went outside, and after we all split up I took out my umbrella and just listened to the patter of rain coming down heavy. I had a hole in the heel of my Converse that I had unsuccessfully tried to remedy with duct tape last week, and my shoes started filling up with water. I squelched back to my room and it was so quiet on St Cross Road that I could cross the street whenever I wanted. I had some hot water and went to bed.
