Specifically, the concept of not interrupting someone every 20 minutes when they’re working on a comparison of the influence of religion as a cause of the English Civil Wars during the 1600s and the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the late 20th Century.
I suspect it might actually take me going and staying in a hotel until Monday for my mum to get it. The other option is locking myself in my room, but… I don’t have a desk and it hurts to work in pretty much any position I end up in on the bed/floor. Might just stock up on the painkillers tomorrow and see how it goes.
Even worse she keeps asking about term dates and I don’t really have a clue. Post-grad term dates don’t get put on the website. I have a best guess which I’ve given her and even now she’s saying WELL you only have lectures on Mondays so we could go on Tuesday and I’m like… “Coursework? Essays? Presentations? I have to do them too right.” And she laughs and say oh you can do it all eaaarrrrly. Um. No. It’s bad enough that we’d be going on holiday with a family friend, which means that it’s not actually a holiday for me since if I do what I like to do on holiday (that is, not speak for a week) then this family friend is all “Rachel, what’s wrong? Are you mad at someone or something?”
Earlier there was “Are you going shopping tomorrow?” To which I can only answer. “No. Because I’m still working and I’m waiting for the plumber, who you wanted to look at the boiler, to come round.”
“But I thought you liked to go shopping.”
“Essay. Plumber. No.”
“But you went out yesterday.”
“We had no food in the house.”
Lamesaaaaaauce, guys. Lamesauce. I realised a few weeks ago that the reason I managed to get so much work done while I was at university the first time round was that I could just go in my room, close the door and not speak to anyone for days at a time. I suspect my mum doesn’t understand because her last experience of studying like this was when she was about 16 and doing her O-Levels. She used to have to get up early and buy food and cook for the family, go to school, come back and clean and cook and then do her hours studying around that. Which is really hard work, fair enough.
In contrast, for my GCSEs, I did no revision at home at all. Nothing. Not one iota. I went to school, paid attention during lessons with no interruptions for random stuff like doing the grocery shopping and then that was it. A-Levels were the same. In fact, my degree was…pretty much the same. Go to lectures, pay attention, do the coursework, sit the exam, finito. I do not learn by doing a million different things all at the same time. That’s not how I work. Now go away.