My exam for the psychology course I'm doing at the moment is one week from tomorrow - Monday 13th October! *bites nails* I have conflicting feelings about it because I'm dreading it, but at the same time, I can't wait to get it over and done with! I've been revising hard the last couple of weeks and I think it's going fairly well, but I am also rather worried. I don't think the exam's going to be easy. At all. I'm just going to get as much revision done as I can this week, try and encode the information into my memory somehow and cross my fingers!

Oh yes, I got my new car about three weeks ago and it's great. :D I love it! Here's a photo:



It's a wonderful little car... feels like complete luxury compared to my old one. I'm still sometimes forgetting that I have central locking and have been looking for the keyhole in the door! The air con is great too, now it's getting colder. I adore the colour - definitely think I made the right choice. :D It's quite nippy at getting away and speeding up as well. Brilliant car. :)

Ok, guess I should be getting on with some revision...

Well, I had an absolutely wonderful time at summer school at the University of Sussex from July 26 - August 1. The summer school is part of the part-time psychology course I'm doing at the moment. Basically, I had to come up with an experiment as an assignment back in May and then the idea is to carry out the experiment at the summer school, either alone or with up to 3 people who are doing a similar thing. I ended up working with a woman originally from Poland and a woman originally from Serbia, so it was a very interesting group. They both live fairly close by though, so we will be able to meet up easily. They were absolutely brilliant to work with and have become friends for life. :) Our experiment couldn't have gone any smoother either - we had sorted everything out and were ready to collect data a day early and finished collecting data in 2 hours flat. We had all our statistics done in the space of another 2 or so hours. As a result, we spent a large amount of time just talking and enjoying the good weather (there were only a couple of dodgy days during the week). The social events that were organised were pretty good too - pub quiz on the Sunday, folk dancing on the Monday (so much fun, you would not believe it) and a disco on the Thursday. I went to a summer school at the same place last year, for the course I was doing then and came across a couple of people I met then this year too, which was pretty cool. I managed to spend a little time with them. All in all, it was a great week and was basically like a holiday, except even better. I talked with so many different people, I couldn't begin to count them and it was a real boost to my motivation since I have been finding this course so dull. It's a study-at-home course, so it was great to have the opportunity to talk to others doing the course.

Another place where things are starting to look up is at work. Things have (finally) quieted down and so I am actually able to manage my workload now. I cannot begin to explain how much of a relief it is not to have a million and one urgent things to do each and every day. I went to the summer school while things were still manic at work and came back to it being so much more relaxed. So I got my "holiday" at the perfect time really. A massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders because work had really been getting me down until I went away. I have pretty much caught up with my studying since coming back from the summer school, I have been devoting myself to playing saxophone again, have been getting back on track with my web stuff and my mood has improved ten-fold. Life is good. :)

I'm buying a new car - a Smart car! There's quite a long waiting list because they're in high demand at the moment, but I should get mine early September. I'm very excited about it. :D I've been thinking about getting a new car for a while now and after a lot of extensive research into just about every small car you can imagine, I thought the Smart sounded best suited to my needs. I enjoyed the test drive, so decided to go with it. I only really use my car for driving to and from work and for errands, so I don't really need more than two seats. Plus, the Smart is very economical and is in the lowest tax band, so I will save a lot of money. With a tank of petrol now costing me £50 (I only have a 40 litre tank), I need to think carefully about the cost there. Plus, I'm all for helping the environment in any way I can. I also want to "update" my car because my current car doesn't have very many features... not even a CD player or remote locking.

I've decided to go with the Passion model, so that I can have the air con and nicer interior cloth, among other things. I'm getting it in yellow to really stand out. :D In the meantime, I'm preparing my current car for sale, making sure it is as good as possible. I'll be getting it serviced soon and have already touched up a few chips in the paintwork, put on new wheel trims, vacuumed and generally cleaned up the interior and cleared out the boot (trunk). I washed it at the weekend and have taken photos ready for the ad. I don't want to advertise it too soon though or I'll end up without a car for a few weeks. I just hope it goes for a decent price!

I should really be working on my project proposal right now, but I'm feeling really demotivated. It's for the part-time psychology course I'm doing at the moment and it will count towards my overall grade. Trouble is, this proposal will form the basis for the work I will be doing at summer school for a week at the end of July and that will form the basis for assignment number 5, which will also count towards my end grade. I have to submit my project proposal by Tuesday 3 June and I only have a very basic idea of the area I want to do my project in. I haven't really thought much about the design or anything else at all and I haven't started filling in the proposal form yet. I'm really feeling the heat now. I filled in this survey to further put off actually doing any work.

( Seven Deadly Sins )

And now I'm going to bed because I'm really tired. At least it's a bank holiday tomorrow so no work (yay!). I'll work on my project proposal then (no, really).

I managed to finish my assignment and it has been sent, so it's a great relief, even if I'm not that confident about it. The extra work it took means I'm two days behind schedule with my studying now, but I'm going to spend my lunch breaks at work on it and hopefully that'll allow me to catch up. I've also got to finish my upcoming Law & Order: Special Victims Unit fanlisting, which I want to be perfect. It means so much to me, so I have a few things still to do, but it should be ok.