Third year coursework

I have three lots of pressing coursework at the moment, and being the third year, it is all rather difficult. They are all due to be handed in during the first two weeks of November, which doesn't seem that far away when I consider all that must be done by then if I am to achieve decent marks.

The first one involves a case history: Mrs Elsie Sparrow, frail old lady, she's been in hospital and has also lost a lot of weight. We have to fill in a hospital record card for her and... actually, I have to admit that I haven't really started working on this one yet.

I've done much more about the second piece of coursework, part of Health Promotion. It's the sort of assignment where we're given a brief, and we have to go and research it and then produce an original leaflet. It needs to be aimed at health professionals, and provide information about how to promote healthy eating to one sector of the community.

I do find this type of assignment very difficult. I get very involved in the research, and go off at a tangent, and then forget what I've read in which document, which is very bad because it all has to be very tightly referenced. But writing everything down as I read it, which would help with the referencing, doesn't work because at the point when I read something I don't know if I will need it for the final document.

The third bit of coursework is a doozy. I have to say that the lecturers have come up with a great formula: in a group of five we are asked to imagine that we are all speaking at a conference. We are assigned a broad subject, but we have to decide the theme of the conference, and each choose topics that we might present. We don't actually have to create or deliver a presentation, but instead we have to write the abstract as if we were. The assignment that goes in for marking is in the form of 'Proceedings', containing an introduction, contents page, each of our abstracts, and some sort of index.

It combines the same type of research above that I'm bad at, together with the necessity to work in a group. Luckily, the group I have ended up with looks as though it will work well, with people who, like me, don't leave things to the last minute. The subject is a corker: Gene polymorphisms in lipoprotein metabolism. No, we didn't understand it either. I am to write about Apolipoprotein B, and I hope that today I will find out why. Yes, I haven't really started this one either.