The presentation today was excellent and I now think a pretty good life goal to have is to finish my degree, take the bar, obtain dual citizenship, apply to the ALS, and shape my career that way.

It means everything will happen about three years into the future, possibly four, and this means I’ll have 1 qualifying degree, 1 bar qualification, 1 dual citizenship, a hell of a lot more life experience, a far better grasp of my condition and how to healthily manage it (hopefully), and the ‘time between’ can be spent re-training my knee and shoulder like I should have done when they were injured.

It looks and sounds doable on paper and I’m going to work towards that. If nothing else, when I’m done I’ll feel better and even if my application isn’t approved I’ll still have everything I worked for and I can establish a new goal from that point.

No one’s saying I can’t change my mind about this stuff, I wouldn’t be eligible to apply until after I’m done with my degree anyway and the citizenship thing’s passed. I can change my mind whenever I like if something else crops up that I like the look of more, this is just so like what I originally wanted and thought I couldn’t have that I think it’d be a shame to completely discount it and not try ‘again’.

The woman who gave the presentation was a little confused when I originally asked about my options because I explained about what I’d already done and when and she sort of looked at me and said, ‘But you can’t possibly have had time to do all that!’ but as soon as I laid my age on the table and explained how I’d gone about it she understood. She was still rather surprised, but apparently that had more to do with the fact that she couldn’t see why I didn’t get in at home when I applied because she would have pegged me for a promising candidate. Nice to know.

There was this one girl who attended the presentation who asked questions afterwards as well - rude as hell, just cut in front of a lad who was already speaking and started rambling about how she was Greek and spoke six languages (English sure as shit shouldn’t have counted as one of them, I could barely understand what she was saying and it looked like I wasn’t the only one) and then looked around like she couldn’t understand why no one was applauding her before going on to say how she’d been studying Criminology with Applied something-or-other and wanted to do Forensic Pathology when she was done with that and whether she could apply.

I really had to rein in a few choice comments at that, because the woman who did the presentation had been exceedingly clear that one has to have lived five years in the UK, have British citizenship or dual British/whatever, and have a qualifying law degree to be considered. The woman was quite kind about telling the little bint all of this in the nicest possible way, but the girl still managed to get huffy as though it was everyone else’s fault she hadn’t been listening properly.

Then there was a chap who wanted to know whether he could apply when he’s got his degree even though he estimated he’ll be 36 when that happens - again, the woman was very clear in the presentation that the cut-off point for signing a contract is 32 years of age - and again she had to be very kind about just giving him the information again. How she didn’t lose all patience is beyond me.

It’s little wonder she looked almost relieved once it was my turn and I just laid the facts on the table and asked three very clear-cut questions - well, once we got over the initial ‘when did you have time for all that, are you having me on’ because apparently no one in the world believes I’ve been a legal adult for longer than five seconds *grumbles*.

So yes, all in all, everything went better than expected, I has potential new life goal, and I am now feeling less utterly fed up with everything. I know I have no real right to feel that way, it’s just a combination of homesickness, a general sense of total isolation and otherness that feels like swimming through shit to get to the gutter so I can catch my breath, and a sort of disappointment that things seem so badly organised and structured (I am looking at you, ridiculously disorganised, untrustworthy timetable, and also partially you, European Law class!) that’s tiring me emotionally and making me feel sick of myself and everything else.

Fucking depression.

So yes, going to try and focus on the potential for a really cool future and put new effort into what I’m doing here across the board.