Blimey its been a long time..... (sorry).

Hello there, i am still here - sorry for the distinct failure to blog lately. Its been a little crazy at my end.

I started my MSc in september and that has been keeping me busy even though my course is only one day a week the sheer volume of work from one day of solid lectures is crazy. I am at this level expected to do an additional 20 hours of reading around the subject via journal articles etc every week-this hasn't happened on a lot of weeks unfortunatly due to one thing or another.

So the course, i love it its a fab masters course and exactly what i needed in terms of keeping my brain ticking along rather than being fed up and stressed that i wasn't doing much with my days etc. The lecturers and support staff have been fabulous i cant fault them at all. I have been given so much support that its enabled me to get to where i am now - only a few days till my finals for the first semester modules - eek!

So. I ended up in hospital twice during semester one and the first admission was for 17 days meaning i missed two of my uni days and about 8 hours of lectures. I was lucky that the support team when i called to explain the situation sent a notetaker to the lectures for me to take notes on my behalf. I was back for a week and then ended up back in. Unfortunatly the second admission's discharge was hampered due to the unprecedented snow fall at the end of november/beginning of december! I finally got home after another 14 day admission. Again a notetaker took notes for me in my absence. The notetaker is now a regular thing for me if im there or not they will take notes for me which is great and much less pressure for me as i am still not 100%.

I had a mini module taught over 3 full days which im glad came just before the christmas holidays as it totally wiped me out. My group got the best porter prize which was fab as it was thrown together by the 4 of us in one day instead of several weeks mostly due to my being poorly in hospital :(

So the mini module went well, its still ongoing tho the teaching is finished there are a few bits of coursework we have to do some on our own others in our groups etc but this module is fairly straight forwards and has no exam - yippee!

I spoke to the course leader about my absence and catching up and asked to move a module to next year which was agreed as its just too much to catch up on-id missed the coursework deadline hadn't been to the lectures explaining the coursework and also had around 12 hours of lectures to catch up on and a big exam to revise for this module and also had coursework for the other module (not due in till end of jan) and the same catching up and revision for that module. It was not really possible to do it all.

The course leader is lovely and taught me during my first degree so she knows me fairly well. She moved the core module to next year. I had only a few options with what i could move to next year as my course as it is now wont be running next year due to nhs cut backs and the increase in tuition fees staff from nhs hospitals are just not being sent on the course as its too expensive for the nhs budget- the lack of applicant has meant i had to move the core module which will be running in some form next year as its a core module for several different MSc degrees.

Anyway after that ramble, i am currently revising for the one exam i have which is this coming monday. I haven't managed to get my dragon software accurate enough to use in my exam so i cant use the laptop during the exam unfortunatly. My only other option is to use a scribe so i have a session later today to meet her and to be taught what to instruct her to do how to use her etc. I also have a meeting with one of my lecturers to go through a lecture i missed whilst in hospital as its too complicated to fumble my way through-he's going through the 2-3 hour lecture in 30 mins lol!

I have been concentrating on trying to understand the lectures i missed first and getting my head around those before revising all the other ones. Thankfully the support team put a piece of software called read and write on their laptop for me to use whilst i am still waiting for my DSA funding. Most things i already have in some way as they have leant me dictaphone and laptop with various support packages on so its been fine so far. Next semester i will have a mentor aswell so that should be good too.
My support worker has been great to as i haven't been very well she has been fab as self propelling my wheelchair up some of the hills here between campus lectures would have been incredibly difficult without her assistance.
So thats whats been happening here really. Loving my course though i am a little snowed under at the minute. Exam is monday morning bright and early, i have rest breaks extra time and a scribe for that and will be in a room of my own so thats quite a lot less stressful for me. :-)

Once the exam is done i have two pieces of coursework to complete- one for the module i have the exam for and the other for the mini module-which is a rather difficult statistical analysis problem.

Will update again once this exam and coursework is out of the way and will try harder to keep my blog up to date. Im really sorry its been so long it has just been a little crazy here and time has literally flown by at incredibly fast pace!

Hope your all ok. Take care, chat soon
Lv rattles Xx