Just Getting on With It

Every now and again, I have a down day/ weekend/ week. I think everyone does.
My sister had it recently, when she had a bad meeting for her dissertation. Her tutor decided to tell her that she hadn't done nearly enough work in a pretty bad fashion. My sister was rather upset about it all.

But you know what? After a good, long talk about the matter, we decided that I would be her new tutor. What Stacey needed was a little bit of helpful guidance and some weekly targets to help her along. She needed a pep talk from her boyfriend (which she got) and she needed someone to turn around a tell her that she was doing well, instead of telling her something bad.

As a result of these pep talks, she picked herself up, dusted herself off and wrote a week-by-week plan of what she was going to do for her dissertation. Now she has aims, she has already completed nearly 8000 words of her 10,000 word dissertation. Considering she was on about 3500 two weeks ago, I would say that's a pretty sizable chunk done. I am proud.

So now it's my turn for the down-ness as I find myself slowly drowning in a torrent of work, with six pressing issues and six more that will be pressing soon. I've made myself a schedule, but it seems a little impossible to me. And just when I begin to get really bad, I remember that actually it's not the end of the world.

I am using my sister as an example, and she reminds me that you can do something that seems impossible if you work hard enough.

Maybe by next week all those pressing issues will be gone.

At least, that's the hope.

When forms are formidable

Recently, it seems to me like everything has to be done on the Internet. The world is no longer old fashioned. We can't simply do some paperwork and send it off in the post, crossing our fingers that there won't be a postal strike.

No sir, everything has gone to the Internet. As if being human wasn't taxing enough, now we have to do our taxes on it, our banking on it... some time soon we will probably have to sit on it all day to do anything.

The Internet is a beautiful thing, don't get me wrong, but after completing my student finance on it I felt like smashing my computer into hundreds of tiny pieces. Not only was it inexplicably hard to follow, but it ended up being filled out wrong and I had to reset the entire account.

In fact, any kind of form on it has me in hysterics. There is nothing easy or quick about a form you do on the Internet, no matter how much they tell you there is.

Today, I had to get a Visa Waiver. That is the last time I EVER try to get one of those. I had already lost it because I was a day late in making sure it was free, so I knew I would have to pay. From the start of the entire process, it felt like I was in a race to the finish line.

I went back to my days of never ending tension when I filled in the form for my driving license, hoping it wouldn't time me out before my instructor got back to me. At least at that point I would have someone to blame.

This time, it was me against the machine. Of course, being me, I didn't think to gather anything I may possibly need beforehand. So I was rushing frantically backwards and forwards to get my passport and a credit card. I must have looked somewhat like a headless chicken.

So yes, whilst they are very good at being to hand when you need them, and kind of quick if you can keep up with the timer so you don't need to start typing in your details for the 45th time, they are entirely impractical if you are slow at typing or a hopeless headcase like me.

Paperwork, however boring it may sound, is much better than a technological form. At least you can take your own sweet time doing it.