mixed bag

[grace_and_june]

The good things: 

• I'm done with all assignments and papers for this semester! 
• Just one more semester to go before I graduate and get my degree! 
• I am double-vacc'd! 
• The sun's finally making an appearance around these parts! Love bright evenings. 
•  I've been experimenting with cooking and recipes again! 
• Christmas is back at the supermarket! 

The bad things: 

I'm pretty sure I've picked up some extra new trauma (retraumatisation?) from one of my subjects: badly structured, badly run and organised, unsaid expectations, vague guidance and critique, groupwork nonsense and groupmates pushing things to the last minute. I'm trying to poke around it to process and deal with it but all I am is numb in those areas--it hasn't really sunk in that I've turned in my final assignments for this one particular subject. It's pretty bad. 

Nevertheless, we push on. 

---

It has occurred to me that if I didn't love my major so much (or the 80% of the time where I interact with sane and emotionally healthy people during the course of my taking it), I would've stopped giving a crap about how my performance on this one subject ends up being. This subject has been erratic--a kinder person would say that it has stretched them and widened their capacity to work on future projects, but after a great first semester this year I was hoping that this subject would follow in being useful, well-run and relevant to my future employment.

For this subject we were given a real-life case study to work on and that alone was pretty exciting! But the lack of clarity with regards to the skillset required of us and poorly structured weekly schedule meant that a lot of time was spent bridging the gap between where us students were skills-wise and where the tutors expected us to be. I also wish that the tutors had been more focused on the substantive parts of our projects, rather than harp on the aesthetics of our reports. I agree that students should learn the skills to accommodate both the visual and the substantive, but during class it always felt like if I didn't hand in a beautiful report, my content wouldn't be taken seriously.

I mean--I'm grateful for the new skills I have picked up from being thrown into the deep end of the pool, but surely there must be a better way to impart these skills?