Thursday, May 04, 2006

Finished at last!

Yay! This morning I completed the last assignment for the last paper for the post grad diploma I've been working towards for the last far-too-many years. I'm really really grateful to my tutor, who has allowed me quite a lot of flexibility to get this last research project completed. But now it's done, and I'm glad. I could have given up, many times, but when it got to being just one paper to go, I was too stubborn to let go. I had no real choices in the end. I've actually been enrolled for this paper three times, paid twice (got it deferred once, and then failed to complete). It was getting towards the point where there would be no more flexibility at all, and I totally didn't want to pay another $600 to repeat it. (I already have a significant fine from the library, as my enrolment lapsed in April and I wouldn't be able to renew my books) This is the last year the course will be offered, and so if I didn't complete it, I was nearly out of time. I'm just SO pleased.
I sat, with the assessment schedule in one hand and the keyboard in the other, checking all the way that I'd done "just" enough to pass. My standards, once again, are just too high. I got an A. Yay for that too.
Happy happy happy.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Away again..


...This time with 42 students, visiting the big pulp (quote: "the bleached wood pulp is 99% water before it's dried and packed")and paper mill (supplies all of NZ's newsprint and 80% of Aussie's), and a geothermal reserve, where we were able to do lots of exciting chemistry thingy things. It was still the holidays, and I'm just impressed that so many students were keen to come. It rained, pretty solidly, in the morning of the day at the reserve, but cleared up fab later on. Sadly, other people in the region had worse days than us, and floods struck yet again. Speaking of struck. There was some thunder and lightning while we had the umbrellas up, and my colleague got a tiny shock.
Most of my photos were duds, at the reserve, because the camera focussed on the steam rather than the people. And there was a lot of steam!