schneefink

Yesterday I found out that I passed the exam I wrote last week :D That was an important and difficult one, and also the last written exam I needed for this degree. Now there's only one more oral exam, and then...!! All fingers crossed I might be done in two weeks, aah my nerves.

Lucky I'd already made plans to meet up with friends that evening so I could celebrate during karaoke evening. I didn't even know you could book Japanese-style karaoke rooms in Vienna. The song choices were eclectic, but we had a lot of fun. It's been a while since I got tipsy/almost-drunk with friends but it's nice sometimes.

Today I went running again! I originally wanted to go tomorrow but it's sunny today and the weather report predicted less sun for tomorrow. I even went early enough to catch quite a bit of sunlight, which was nice. I felt distinctly more noodly than last time, but I still feel accomplished that I went. I got a chocolate muffin as a reward and DD will make cookies (not as a bribe but as a pre-Christmas test batch.)

Time for another random poll:

As a reward for passing my last exam I have the next, even bigger one in less than two weeks. I'm anxious as usual. Fortunately my bosses agreed to let me take a week of vacation to study for it, unfortunately that means this week is even more stressful than usual at the office. At least "I need to do some practice questions before I'm allowed to play more Minecraft" is currently a surprisingly effective motivator to study in the evenings.

( I have been playing quite a bit of Minecraft )

I passed both my exams this semester! One of them I expected, but the other, more important one not at all because I knew it would at best be close and I didn't want to get my hopes up, so I'm surprised and delighted and had ice cream and cookies to celebrate. Now there's only one major exam remaining! (And a few smaller ones.) I might be able to finish in only two more semesters after all? I so look forward to being done - classes are interesting, but coming home from the office and not having to do any studying (like right now because of the summer holidays) is so much more relaxing.

I currently work 30 hours/week: 6 hours each on five days (plus overtime.) On the one hand I'd planned to do more overtime than usual over the summer, so I can hopefully do fewer hours when classes start again; on the other hand I'm tempted to try out only going to the office for four days and having a three-day-weekend. I'd have to get used to longer work days and it'd be harder to do overtime, but a longer weekend would be nice...

In medical news, I've often had low iron in the past, but turns out that now I'm actually anemic (and even lower on vitamin D than usual.) Which, weirdly, kinda feels like good news, because this was a routine test and I thought my energy level were at my normal, so this should mean that once those things are fixed I should feel even better, right? I look forward to it. And in the meantime, taking iron supplements is a great reason to drink orange juice every morning. (My physician also told me to go to bed earlier, let's see how long the resolution lasts this time.)

I have a word document where I store notes for posts to make and then never get around to making them. I delete most, but I did want to note that after years of discussing ever December that actually we could make cookies in other months too (apart from chocolate chip cookies, they're different), this year for mother's day we finally did that and made unicorn-shaped lemon balm cookies and dragon-shaped lemon&lavender cookies. Well, when I say "we", I mean DD made those two and I made chocolate chip cookies. All were great and we should do that more often.

This week I'm back to working at the office and it's such a relief. More work, but it's much easier to do, and I can go home afterwards and mostly shut my brain off. Fortunately public transport is still half empty. It does mean I have to start ironing my clothes again, which is annoying. I also decided to change my nail polish from Christmas-glittery to normal dark blue glittery because I never wore nail polish at the office before, but I forgot that every other woman at the office is wearing much fancier nail polish, so I look forward to trying out more options in the future.

I decided not to do a big exam in June but instead in October, because it's one I want to study properly for and I have very little confidence in my ability to do that right now, but October looks to be very busy at work… I'll just have to take care to study during the summer as well.

There was more but I'm busy listening to more "Skyjacks" episodes, I'm having such a good time. I'm at episode 18 right now and I enjoy the entire crew a lot, and Gable is the best.

I'm finally using my new laptop! …that I got in January. Uhm. In my defense, I got an error message when I started it, and then I showed it to a friend who's quite good with computers and he looked at it for half an hour without figuring it out, and then I planned to do some further googling and maybe bring it back to the store but somehow never got around to it because after all the old one was still working, kind of… And then last week my mom put her foot down and said we'd go to the store together. Before that, DD took a look at it, and suddenly there was no error message anymore and everything worked! My favorite kind of mysterious computer happening.
Since I started switching to my new laptop the old one has already crashed twice, like a sign that it really was time. I can start and shut off my new laptop in seconds, instead of ten minutes! Programs just open, instead of freezing everything for minutes! It's so nice. I can use Bluetooth headphones now, luxury. I have most of what I need on the new laptop now (I almost bought Office before LB reminded me that I can get it for free via my university, convenient), and it's so much lighter than the old one that I can easily take it with me to study in the library etc. Always nice to get something done I've been procrastinating on for many months :)
Next step: researching anti-virus programs, and password managers, and plug-ins, etc. etc. … Also, thinking about what to do with the 100+ open browser tabs I had. Maybe I can talk myself into just closing most of them, that would be convenient.
(Also, my phone and my ebook-reader are both acting up, but the core functions still work and I just fixed one thing and I don't wanna.)

Before that: more studying. I was quite nervous before and especially after the written civil law exam in June (there was a big question about international family law of all things), but then it turned out that I passed (and with a pretty good grade even), so now I'm even more nervous about the oral exam because now I want a good grade on that too. Stupid sudden ambition.

I had a class on doing research and how to properly cite sources in my first bachelor's program, for social science and business etc. So when I had to take the same class again for my degree in law I thought I would learn how to do research related to court cases etc, but that the citation norms would be pretty much the same.
Instead, they're completely different. For example, unlike social scientists, jurists (in Austria, idk how international the standards are) don't care about who published a book or where, and they don't usually use first names, only initials.

Also, "Festschrift" (apparently also the English term) are very popular. If jurists really like and admire someone, they get together and write articles that will then be published as a book for their anniversary/birthday etc. On the one hand, annoying, because articles in those are harder to find online than those published in journals; on the other hand, very understandable for people with an ego because you definitely remember someone's name if you keep having to cite the book named after them.

...I'm procrastinating on writing my paper for the research and citation class *sigh*

It took a while, but eventually via waiting lists and just showing up I got into all the uni classes I wanted :) Well, almost, but tbh it's probably better to be cautious with how many I take anyway. So that's a double portion of tax law this semester… at least then that's over with. And tax law can be interesting too, it's just been really annoying to study so far, although that might change now that we're past the basics (in theory) and mostly looking at case studies. And in addition to that I take criminal law, I look forward to that.

Exam on Friday, and I'm nervous about it to constantly varying degrees, so I took Thursday off from work. I'm pretty sure that how well I do depends almost entirely on how much time we have. DD has been helping me study by being very strict: I finally ordered the TAZ "Here There Be Gerblins" comic and she told me I could only read one chapter after each studying sessions, so I only finished it tonight. It's a great adaption of the podcast, the art is amazing, especially the facial expressions, and I really like the character designs too. I'm not completely sure how I feel about the inclusion of Griffin-the-DM but it doesn't bother me either.
Idk how well it works for people not familiar with TAZ. Some scenes, like Magic Brian's death, where just not as funny not in audio format, but on the other hand there are a lot of great details and faces etc. that are not in the podcast and I think it would work on its own as well. Though best is both together.
I look forward to the next books.

I did my taxes, whoo! Like an actual adult person. It wasn't even that difficult, and I got a surprising amount of money back :) (I'm missing two bills but I looked up what the things cost and whatever, nobody will check.)

I also wrote my labour law exam today and even though I made some stupid mistakes (like overlooking an entire question -.- ) I think I should pass. I was feeling very positive about that and other stuff we got done and then I realized that I put my therapy appointment tomorrow during the tax law lecture *sigh* Great job me. Fortunately lecture attendance is not mandatory, but it doesn't help my doubts over whether to even seriously attempt to pass the tax law exam, or wait and do it in October. Pro doing it in October: more time to study, a lot less stress with moving now. Con: …feels kinda embarrassing, because it would have been totally doable, especially if I'd been just a little better about studying regularly.


I found out DD had never seen Pacific Rim, so we watched the movie. I liked the characters less than I remembered, but I still really enjoyed the "giant robots vs. giant monsters" part of it :)

Then we watched Pacific Rim: Uprising. It had parts that were a lot of fun, especially the action sequences, but also many facepalm-worthy things. ( GLOVES )

After we watched the movies DD listened to Thaumatrope and she stayed up an hour later than usual, which means it was a great success, and then we talked about all the angst, because both fandom and friendship thrive on shared suffering and it is wonderful.

Conclusion: I'm still not very good at studying. I get distracted too easily, I did almost nothing yesterday (in my defense there were extenuating circumstances, like being almost nauseous from hunger because I forgot to eat breakfast before going to the dentist - okay, still my fault), today I also reread long fics instead of studying... but at least I did study for four hours, that's something. But not much. (I bet LB I could do six, hmpf.) I'll do a bit more, and it'll be fine. The exam is tomorrow at noon. Terrible timing, because this is the one time I would have wanted to watch a Critical Role episode live. (I'm so nervous!) Ah well. Better luck next time. At least what I'm studying is interesting (more details some other time) and no matter how well I'll do - I'm very curious because I feel like I really can't say - I'm glad I'm learning again.

Today I officially got my degree! \o/
Bachelor of Science, sounds good. (LB said economics isn't science, but in the same conversation he complained that other people were doing boring math, I told him I'd get him a shirt saying "math snob.") Unlike the old Austrian titles, like Magister/Magistra, it's usually not used as an address, which is a pity but otoh, whatever.
I'm finally done. It feels amazing.

There will be some kind of celebration, but I've been really tired the past few days for some reason so I'm not in the mood to organize anything. Probably just something low-key.
And then next week I'll start looking for a job, exciting.