The End is Nigh

In less than 24 hours I will be a 'proper' student again. My course starts in earnest at noon tomorrow. After 21 years out of full time education I will have to throw myself back into the world of timetables/lectures/seminars/tutorials/satchels and pencil cases.

Question: Do students still have pencil cases?

I have not researched this fully and I feel that I could be letting the side down. When I sat my first OU exam I went out and bought myself a light blue, fluffy one. Mostly because I had always wanted one at school (and never got one) but also because, as a grown-up, I could.

But what now? Would this be considered as out of date as flares? By the way, are flares out of date? I have absolutely no idea. Another worry surfaces. For clothing I've decided on plain white shirt (over coloured T-shirt) and plain black trousers-with my one indulgence regarding clothing, a new pair of trainers. I've got a new rucksack to put my books and bits in-but I am singularly lacking in knowledge about pencil cases...

This is typical me. If I can stress about anything I do. I can even get into a cold sweat about buying something in a supermarket. I had a haircut on Friday and actually prepared what I was going to say to the hairdresser. At this stage I do have to ask myself a relevant question.

"What the hell am I doing by trying to retrain to a career that deals with stress on a daily basis?"

A couple of days ago I came to the end of my 'revision' period. In 4 weeks I just about covered the 4 academic years of my OU course. It was hard going and at times I was at my most lazy.

The good news was that the vast majority of the case-law did ring bells (even the stuff done 4 years ago) and it made some good connections (but in a very broad sense). The bad news was that I didn't really have the time to look up all the statute and refresh my knowledge of that. My view is that if I was confronted with statutory knowledge I could always look it up. Equally depressing was that areas where I knew that I would be weak such as misrepresentation, leases or mortgages) I glossed over at high speed.

Which brings me to ELITE-the College of Laws refresher program. It's easy to use and (fortunately) mostly multiple choice. I started using it thinking that I would do 'alright' but have had my eyes cruelly opened.
I consistently scored 33-50% (which is a shade above blind guessing) and even on my 'speciality' subject of criminal law was only hitting the 50% mark. I'll have another crack tomorrow morning (before going to College) but the only ones that I have left are my real weak spots (trusts/land law/EU law) but since I'll be guessing mostly my average may go up...

This week I spent rather a lot of cash on textbooks. We have been told that all the books that we need will be supplied by the College (and are written by tutors from the various Colleges) but I was told the same thing on the OU courses and I ended up buying nearly a hundred. (These were usually second hand off eBay so not too expensive-or too relevant!)

With hand on heart I do have to say that these books were actually very helpful. In fact I could say that they did make a major contribution to my overall grade. With this in mind it was almost inevitable that I would buy books to give me a boost in the LPC. The only problem is that eBay has precious few books that could aid an LPC-so with shopping list in hand I went off to Waterstones and Ottakers. Now I have a nice little pile of A4 sized books. They do look lovely sitting on my shelves.

I can't understand a blind word of them though...

I wonder if I'll be able to sleep tonight? One of the joys about being me was that I developed anxiety attacks about 10 years ago-so simple things like getting rest before things that either
a) excite me
b) frighten me
is an near-impossibility. In past years I've tried to stun myself with medication or relax myself with self-hypnosis or meditation.

Tonight I have a new plan-I'll read some land law, that'll put me out...