The end of an era...

Thank Fuck.

Ding Dong, Moray House is dead! I've finally finished the course after a mind-bogglingly awful 9 months, and I am most, most pleased. (I passed, by the way)

My final placement went very well, thank you, the school was lovely, the kids were lovely, the teacher was.....very helpful... and the management were friendly, competent and approachable- what more can you ask? Obviously, what with the fight training and the ridiculous work-load for uni, and teaching full time as well I was mostly made out of stress, and it's nothing short of a miracle that I still have a husband in tow (bless his little, antibacterial cotton socks which my Gran gave him for Christmas. Two years in a row. Insulting, much?).

I developed a habit of crying at entirely random moments in the evening, throwing childish tantrums about ridiculous things, like having to go to the shop to buy dinner because Paul had forgotten ("It's just not bloody fair - why is life so shite?!"), and becoming hysterical at movies which should technically be, if not funny, not actually psychologically scarring...

We watched "Click", that Adam Sandler movie about a guy that gets a Universal Remote and, guess what, it remote controls....THE UNIVERSE! Surely a recipe for comedy japes and misunderstandings, but in a calm, controlled, non-perilous way. And it was, unless you're quite nicely teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, in which case the whole moral of the story about a guy who wishes his life away a died, alone, unfulfilled and regretful (and fat) in the rain is just a bit....too close to the bone. So I had a proper, wailing, uncontrolled crying fit for about half an hour, emitting strange snorts, squeaks and mangles "I don't want to die!"s so that in the end I was laughing as much as crying and laughing at the crying and crying at the laughing in a horrible, snotty cycle of stupidness. Paul, however, thought it was hilarious, which is pretty handy.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the placement went as well as could be expected, my final presentation went quite a bit less well than could be expected, (doing me out of an Distinction which I wasn't really bothered about but felt like I ought to try for) and the fight didn't happen at all.

Which I was naturally not too pleased about, in light of the whole working-myself-into-the-ground thing I mentioned above, but sadly that's just the way it goes sometimes. Remember I said there were many reasons not to get overexcited about a fight, because at any moment it just might not happen... well the most common reason happened, and she pulled out at the last minute. But, thankfully, she pulled out for a reason which at least makes people go ".....huh?!" when I tell them. She became "unfocussed" (just all of a sudden, apparently...) and decided to elope to the States with her girlfriend. Plausible *and* fun! I acted like a mardy cow for the day, had a shitty time and, showing my stylish nature, encouraged everyone to join me in my lovely pit of self-pity - nice.

However, there will (presumably) be other fights, and I will certainly get pulled out on again many more times, and I'll just have to get better at dealing with it, because that's the way it works sometimes. With a bit of luck I might get my first fight in Thailand, which will certainly be an experience (don't, for God's sake, tell my travel insurance people...)

So that's the next big thing - one week from today I will be merrily winging my way to Thailand, and by "merrily winging my way" I do of course mean that I will be terrified, self-doubting, and constantly checking that I have my passport, I'm on the right flight, and I am actually who I think I am - I usually am, but it's prudent to check from time to time.

One week and counting guys - yipes!