In some ways today, not the still to come graduation, was the culmination of my four years playing the student game. Today I found out my degree classification, although strangely enough no hint at all of my actual exam results.

Considering the problems I've had to deal with a 2.1 is a pretty respectable achievement, fourth year saw me come somewhat off the rails and there were points where just jacking it all in and going away somewhere-anywhere-was a very, very attractive prospect! Chief among these was dissatisfaction with my degree but also the relationship I was in going to ratshit early in the year. Of the two I reckon it was the latter that had the most devastating effect, even though I tried to follow the usual advice about just getting on with things it's rather easier said than done. Given my previous string of relationship disasters this one should have been no different, the solution usually being to get drunk and forget. Unfortunately it wasn't, apart from the relationship Pearl Harbour aspect of its ending this one seemed to actually be working out. Made a nice change while it lasted.

Anyway, that's not really the story. I've finally emerged with my degree, I'm five years behind my contemporaries from the good old days and I need to find my feet again in some semblance of what the real world is. I've dragged myself up from one of the worst lows in my life and the only way is up because I really don't want to back down there again! 

Time to file Uni and the student game appropriately, figure out what I want to do next and damn well do it!

As it says above, somehow I've ended up with 100% profile completion. Should I feel like I've achieved something or just wonder what better things I coud have been doing with my time? Right now I'm going with the former, at least it's something that  isn't Uni work at the moment.

Anyway, OKC says I should now meet more people, sadly I start work early on a Saturday morning so something else needs done. Sleep.

So I'm back in Dundee now after the best part of a month away workin' like a dog and ready to resume playing the student game, kind of wondering where the hell the first half of third year went actually...... Anyway, life now has meaning again (of some sort) and I'm all set to try to remember how to think!

Realy miss this place when I'm away as well, funny when you consider the slagging the place gets! :D

And I'm just one month away from my joyous return to Dundee and resumption of the student game, hurrah! God I've missed it....

In other news, I'm still slogging away on my insane combination of dayshifts, nightshifts and three hours of sleep a day if I'm lucky! I'm not particularly sure what my name is anymore, much less anything else. Gottalove summer!

So here I am at 0117 on a Saturday morning, I start work at 0800 and I'm both knackered and keyed up.

Why? You ask. Well I've been working nights this week, finished work at 0700 yesterday morning and promptly went to bed, clever me! Brilliantly I didn't wake up until 1700 so there's no effin way I'm actually going to get my head down. Best resign myself to being tired and grumpy at work tomorrow. 

 Well it's almost midway through my outrageously long summer vacation, in a couple of months I'll be packing my kit ready to move into another student flat to kick off another year of playing the student game. Joy!

 Lucky me, I've been kept pretty busy since my exams finished; although I'm not quite sure if working to the near exclusion of a real life of some sort is really so great. Keeps the boredom and general skintness at bay though.

 There has been one troubling development though; all this working in the great outdoors (even if it's only Tesco's car park) has left me with lovely sunbleached arm hair and an increasing number of grey hairs on my head. Is this connected? I'm not sure if it's a bad thing though; my boss seems to think grey hair makes me look distinguished although I'm not too sure I want to be the most distinguished 25 year old tramping around tht particular supermarket!

So April's almost over and I'm halfway through my Uni exams for this semester, they'll all be done by mid May. Then things get a bit crap.

I may just be the only student in the world that doesn't like having the best part of four months off from University in one go, I don't mind a few weeks off but four months is just excessive! Even last year when I managed to get a decent summer job the boredom was severe; this year I doubt I'll manage to get anything beyond my contracted one day a week at Tesco, damn this recession!

So what the hell am I meant to do with all this time off?

...all over campus today, it's quite odd. If I collect them all together will I end p with 99?

Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

"It was compromised when Ferdinand of Styria decided to act as king of Bohemia, even though Matthias was still alive."

Taken from a textbook on the Thirty Years War.

Would it be a good idea to pass a law requiring people to take a course and pass a test before being allowed to have a child?

• Yes.
• No.

This is a first for me: blogging on a question. A few months ago my answer would have been an emphatic 'yes' most likely using my brother as a prime example; he's more or less the anti-me. He's not stupid by any stretch of the imagination but he's lazy, rather more selfish than most, has a wandering eye etc. (Even though we don't get along very well it still doesn't feel right writing that.)
Since the birth of my nephew, however, the change has been unbelievable; my ne'er do well brother has transformed almost overnight into a truly fantastic father, probably with some prodding from his now wife (a wonderful woman btw). True, not everyone will change in such a way but if someone I suspected would make a dreadful father can manage that it makes me question whether or not such a law would have prevented two people from bringing a child into the world. Reality has shown them to be eminently suitable parents, I don't know if a test ever could.