Problems, choices

The weekend was fabulous, terrific, I was over the moon and dancing in the street. Today, not so much. I was getting round to a happy post, with metaphorical balloons, flowers and kittens, all about dad's 75th birthday celebration (Chinese food at Lola II's followed by very flaky recorder trios) and the reunion of class 1-6 from 1975 (Chinese food in South Woodford accompanied by prolonged repetitive squealing). Except that Mr A just came downstairs from the office to tell me that one of his most valuable employees is resigning, just as they start working on the biggest contract they have ever won. So I don't much feel like talking about the happy stuff.

There's a bit left over from the end of term to write about that better suits the mood: I managed to choose my optional modules after far too much dithering. In previous years, Dietetics students haven't had any choice, and that's how we thought our course would be run. But things change, and we were given the opportunity to select one module for Autumn and one for Spring from anything that the university offers. It was made clear that it would be simpler for all concerned if we chose a Biosciences module, and easiest of all if we chose the recommended one. I considered the Psychology of Addiction, Arabic for beginners, and Health, Policy and Society from various remote schools before settling on either 'Molecular Pharming: assessing the impact of genetically modified organisms' or 'Food Preservation.' After further discussion with tutors I went with the GMO one. It would have been much simpler to pick the one that was recommended for us, but I know I would hate doing 'Management Science: Food' where the module description was like something from Dragon's Den or The Apprentice.

A few of us decided to go out for lunch after the final lecture of the term last week. It turned out to be just me and three people, but they were among the nicest so that was good. I was even able to provide some gossip, which is very unusual, as I am normally oblivious to stuff that's going on around me ("What, you didn't notice that X isn't speaking to Y and Z has a black eye???")

Anyway, I'd found this out by poking about on Facebook, which doesn't involve looking at or interacting with people: one of the other 'mature' students is pregnant! She already has one child, and lives even further from the campus than I do, so she has at least an hour and a half commute each way plus she has to drop off and collect her son from the nursery. The baby is due at the start of next term, and she was even hoping to miss just one semester and do two semester's work in the spring of 2009, but the authorities have turned that down and she has to take a year off. She must REALLY like working so hard that her head falls off.

I'm now getting the right sort of terrified feeling to get me concentrating on revision, so I'd better get back to that now. Yesterday was eight hours of Nutrition: vitamins, minerals, ways of measuring energy content of food, and how to calculate daily energy requirements. Today I have eight hours of the Food and Catering module ahead of me, which should be much easier on the brain. Gluten in flour used for bread, pastry and sauce, ethnic diets, government policy, 'healthier' eating and food labelling.

I'll end with a lovely spring photo that I took on the river walk when I wandered into town some time last week.