Mission: Cramming

I think they (ambiguous, perhaps referring to the government or medical authority or anyone who is ever in contact with young people of the right status and age) should announce a valid medical condition called University Syndrome. The symptoms of this terrible illness include sleeplessness, excessive caffeine consumption, general bleariness, bloodshot eyes, gradual lightening of skin pigment (provided this is applicable), tension headaches due to soreness in the back, shoulders and neck, an apparent inability to focus and so on and so forth. It also includes social behaviour such as only coming out during the night (also applicable for vampires, for which a myriad of the other also apply; take care to watch for fangs), only being able to talk about studying or the things you were doing while you were supposed to be studying, a habit of locking oneself into a room with a pile of books, and a diet steadily declining in healthiness, though it never was very good to begin with.

The time has come for the end of semester, and shortly, the exam period will commence. Before that, I'll still somehow have to manage to cram a semester's worth of study into a week -- for each of my units respectively (in that, I'm lucky: some people have to cram ALL their units into one week). In all fairness, I don't exactly hate doing it -- I'm nerdy enough and like what I'm learning enough to like having the closure of running through everything I've learnt at the end of semester and bringing it all together to form one big picture. At the same time, I'd much rather be playing videogames, watching movies and tv-series, continuing on my Epic Reading Quest and planning my novel.

Yes, the new novel that I'm planning for NaNoWriMo this year. I mentioned it a few posts or so back, and the progress I've had on it since I mentioned it has been exactly zero. Well, technically, if you count the amount of brainstorming I've done on public transport to and from university (excluding the times I've been reading The Wise Man's Fear) and the amount of ideas I've stored at the back of my brain, the progress I've made on it on a scale of a hundred is maybe one. I had really been hoping to get a full outline down for this one before beginning it, but it doesn't appear likely that I'll be able to do it. Still, I'm not too worried -- I'm excited about my idea, and that means more than any detailed outlines I could ever produce. I'll tell you more about my novel at a slightly later date, when I'm not completely bleary and confused by study, and actually have something more tangible than just the bare bones of it down. My characters have personalities, but not even names, yet!

Here concludes my shabby, brief update on what I've been doing in the past week or so. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but if you follow me on Goodreads (I think there's a link somewhere on the sidelines), you'll know I finished The Name of the Wind some time ago. I'm now rapidly pawing my way through The Wise Man's Fear -- in fact, it's so damn addictive it is actually one of the principle reasons I haven't been sleeping well at all for the past few weeks. Here's to hoping that I finish it soon so that I can get a good night's sleep for once. Also, when I do finish it, I plan on posting a little review-type thing on the two parts of the trilogy that have currently been published, so you've got that to look forward to, alongside the details about my novel. There are also some other marvelously geeky plans I have for this summer, but they might fall through, so I'm not going to talk about them before I'm 100% sure it's going to happen; but if it does, I promise that the first thing I do is to come online and talk about all of that.

So, providing that my books don't somehow swallow me whole (a real, tangible threat when you've got this many books lying around), you should look forward to hearing of me very, very soon!