Suddenly I’m not feeling so good. OK, symptoms? Three essays in the crisis queue. Bank
balance numbers increasing with every withdrawal. Laundry so filthy it’s crawling towards
the door even as I try to pin it down with a baked bean-encrusted fork. What’s brought this
on? Four weeks spent at the least funconducive learning establishment on the planet have
cumulated in the realization that your essays will never be good enough and that your effort
and time spent in producing these substandard pieces of work excludes any possibility of
having a social life worth mentioning. Yeah, I’m starting to wish I had gone to Brookes. I still
could have said I went to university in Oxford. But, hey, at least I’ll get a good degree and a
well-paid fulfilling job at the end of this. That may have been so once upon a time. But today
that david Beckham Studies gradate from Thames Valley University will find that his street-
wise skills are better suited to the business environment. and your plumber will be better
paid than you. But you can console yourself in the knowledge that writing 6,000 word essays on ‘nothing’;
that is, the significance of the word in King Lear, was of intrinsic value. Or so they kept
telling you. So, fifth week blues – is it terminal? No, that’s why it’s called fifth week blues. It
may not be terminal, But it is chronic and doomed to repeat itself with tedious regularity until
the end of eternity. Sounds nastier than the Freshers’ flu I caught off the fit rugby captain in
the loos at Jamal’s. Oh, stop talking about that. But it just gets worse, because now you’ve
started on the chocolate cake, doughnuts and the cookies, and soon no one but the
tiddlywinks captain will be showing interest. That virus-transmitting kiss will become a
distant and cherished memory. In no time at all you’ll be reduced to chatting up
unsuspecting strangers in the rad Cam. And what’s the cure? Is there one? Try anything
alcoholic, illegal or immoral (while simultaneously avoiding rustication). OK, I tried alcohol
but now I just feel sick as a dog, have a pounding headache and a horrible feeling about my
lack of memories from the previous twelve hours. Plus I have just thrown up all over my
newly cleaned laundry and my stack of overdue library books. I am in the winter of my
discontent and now I want to cry. Well, they say time is a healer. Maybe. If only because you
can’t have fifth week blues in sixthARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005
Passe Notes
