This week
Continuing with theme of posting random crap somewhere.
This week I had my birthday, and continued to keep everything ticking along. I got confirmation that my order of swords that I have been waiting for a response on since January has been accepted and will be delivered in July (which is when I have to come up with the cash). Amusingly I had given up on the order ever being responded to and ordered more swords from other suppliers. There will hopefully be no more interruptions in the supply of swords to Melbourne.
This week is the end of week 11 of the university semester and I have only two weeks to go until all of the assessment is done, next week is the last week of classes. Full time study, is not for me. The combination of one thing that should have your full attention (uni) and another that should have your full attention (martial arts school) with two more things that should have some attention (social life, and caring duties) does not work. I expect myself to have a tidy home too ;)
I have been studying Italian, the history of US foreign policy in the 20th C, and Shakespeare. History and Italian have been very interesting and I can see the value in studying them. Literature has been much more of a struggle, the material is interesting but I haven't been able to figure out exactly what the lecturer wants from me or what purpose university level literature study has. The disorganisation of the subject has definitely not helped.
I was using duolingo to study Italian before commencing university study. I thought it would give me a significant advantage, but I was wrong. Mostly it gave me the confidence to make attempts at the language and get it wrong, a lot. What has been helpful has been using Anki and trying to upload the content of every lesson as flashcards to study on the tram to and from uni. Even if I get bored of the cards, the act of entering the data seems to be helpful in remembering it.
One of the benefits of going to uni again is practicing writing under time pressure. I was able to write this post in about 10 minutes. It probably shows.