I'm not really keeping up to date with livejournal at the moment. I'm skimming the default view of my Friends page once or twice a day, looking out especially for news from the various friends who are Having A Hard Time at the moment, but not interacting too much beyond that. This is because I might have started work on my PhD (!). The reason I'm not sure if I've started work or not is that I'm not sure whether what I've been doing counts as preliminary background reading or as actual work. You see, I gave up biology when I was 16 (which is scarily half my life ago), but I need to know about certain aspects of cell biology in depth in order to understand protein synthesis. Does getting myself up to speed with topics that another student with a different background would already "just know" count as PhD work? I'm not sure. Being in the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, I permanently feel stupid because of my lack of biological "basic" knowledge. I need to remember that no student would ever be 100% familiar with all aspects of the subject before they start their project. Someone with more biology would almost certainly need help with the chemistry or physics.

What else? Uh... if you look at the big list from hell of things I still needed to do as of 11th February, I've had the DSA Assessment of Needs, have heard from UCL Disability Office (but am still waiting for UCL Estates division to sort themselves out), and I have a desk in the Postgraduate Students' Office but no "special" chair as of yet. Rather urgently need to talk to Birkbeck Disability Office about the broken chair in room 630, again, and about the compulsory Symposium and my access requirements therein. (Thereof? Therewith? I'm too tired to do grammar). Was supposed to have done that last Friday but was Ill with Pain.

Still have Pain but am dragging myself into college via taxis. It is period pain from hell in my uterus, and severe heaviness/achiness in my legs, and weakness of my left knee/ankle, and general evil back pain in my lower back - and to top things off I somehow wrenched my neck so it hurts as well. I've been taking paracetamol, Buscopan and dihydrocodeine all together (spaced carefully for maximum coverage), but none of those touch the neck pain. I know from when I've had this sort of injury before that ibuprofen works wonders on neck strains, but I now have violent allergic reactions to it so can't take it anymore. Bah. I will have to continue being sore until it magically heals itself.

Tags: college, disability, icky girlstuff, moaning, my weird medical stuff, pain
Current Mood: okay