Dammit...it's spring!

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous this week. And it's pissing me off, because I feel trapped indoors, studying for exams! Today was the deadline for all written coursework to be submitted to the university...essays/papers. I finished off all my papers a couple of weeks ago and turned them into the department earlier this week. But there was an alarming number of students who had left things to the last minute. Most of my friends were working like dogs the past few days (and nights) to get theirs done to meet the 4pm deadline today. I just can't understand that. We've known about the May 5 coursework deadline since the start of the year! Some departments have their own fixed deadlines throughout the year, and if you miss those deadlines you lose 2% per day until you submit your work - but the university deadline was today, after which no work will be accepted for evaluation. The history department does not have fixed deadlines and basically all work had to be submitted by the university deadline (i.e. today). I turned in my first round of papers in December/January, and my second round this week. But the majority of students were cramming in their second round of work this week. I could never work like that - under a 72, 48, or even 24 hour truncated deadline. It's insane! I guess that's one of the advantages of taking time off between undergrad and postgrad - you get out of that undergrad "all-nighter" mind-set and budget your time more realistically. The only students I know who planned their time properly have been the "older" students.

And now exams are upon us, and it's so frustrating because, finally, after a long cold winter, spring has finally hit! The sun is out in all its shining glory, and all you feel like doing is sitting in the grass in a tanktop and soaking it in...but then you have to go back into the library after a half-hour study break on the lawn. But this is it...two more weeks. I have never looked forward to anything as much as I am looking forward to May 22. This spring feeling makes me feel happy and giddy. Knowing that in two more weeks I can thoroughly enjoy it is enough motivation to get me through it all.

Off topic, my university has a public art gallery in one of its buildings, and this month there is an exhibition of photographs of Kuwait by Kuwaiti photographers (none that have anything to do with my school). I went to check it out today. It was strange...being in my university, in the middle of my life in London, looking at photos of Kuwait. Artistically, they were OK...as a once-photographer myself (life has sucked all the time I could invest into that part of myself away), they didn't really blow me away. There were one or two that were quite good, but the majority were more or less snapshots with good lighting. Anyway, for me though, they were cool because they momentarily let me escape from my hectic life here and go back home. You had the usual stuff - the Kuwait Towers, dhows, old Kuwaiti houses, etc. But there were also a couple of "modern" Kuwait - which unfortunately were just pictures of shopping malls. But the one that I loved seeing, up there on the wall in my uni, was one of the marina at Souq Sharq, because it showed the yacht that I rented out last year for a surprise party for P's birthday. We cruised up and down the coast for six hours at night, and it was such an amazing time - and everyone who was there, many of whom might be reading this now, agreed that it was one of the best nights they'd ever had in Kuwait. So, for a momentary escape down memory lane, I zoomed into the photo and took a picture of the yacht with my Sony Ericsson so that I could post it for you all here.


(It's not the best quality, since I took it with my phone, but oh well...it did the trick!)