Giving up is starting to look like the best option...

I am trying to write a report for university on the challenges and solutions of a Literacy Subject Leader. My focus is the underachievement of boys in writing. A really interesting subject but it is just not flowing.

Which means I feel like this....


And the more I try to force the flow the more I start to feel like this...


Whilst the deadline isn't until 24th April I don't want this hanging over me, all too often on this course I've handed work in with the ink virtually still wet.

And the more I think that and the more this essay won't flow to me the more I am starting to feel like this....

The closer that deadline looms the more I am starting to look like this picture too!

Snot-o-gram!

I am stunned.  I really can't believe it. 

I didn't believe it until I heard the woman's voice at the other end of the phone confirm it for me and after which I was so infuriated and shocked I hung up before I could really let rip and lose my temper.

Utterly ridiculous.  And archaic. And belittling.  And a pointless waste of time.

I have been paying off a loan for my studies since I finished by Bachelors degree.  I have either sent large cheques off every few months or more recently, in more than the last two years to be precise, have paid £125 by direct debit.  Great.  Fantastic.  No problems or dramas there.  No letters, no emails, no phone calls etc to mention this, or confirm this or even acknowledge this.

Then today I get a letter from them saying their records show that I am currently unemployed and they would like to see proof/evidence of how I financially support myself....er WTF!  What business is it of theirs how I financially support myself so long as they are paid?

Wanting to make sure I had got my facts straight, because well you know pretty much everything today is automated so it could have been a default letter that their system generates and someone, whoever, could have forgot to suppress it on the system (just to speak office, call centre speak and to give them the benefit of the doubt) I called them.

Yeah no.  I had it right.  They wanted to see proof of how I was financially supporting myself and managing to pay off my loan.  Of course they would its was never an interest free loan, so it really would be better for them if I didn't pay it off.

Confused I asked why difference how I was paying it off made so long as it was being paid off and why were they only now, some 18+ months later, asking for this proof.  Obviously she read from a script, which did nothing to appease me feeling affronted, and basically she couldn't answer me.  She couldn't give me a reason.  She just kept reading the same responses from her script.

Eventually fed up of talking in circles and getting nowhere I told her my husband financially supports me and her answer was ... I had to get my husband to write a letter confirming he financially supports me.

Apparently despite it being 2011 and me being 33 years old I have no voice.  I am unable to speak for myself or my own financial circumstances.

What were we thinking the suffragettes and feminism had changed?  And more to the point how stupid am I for thinking things HAD changed.

So I wrote them an incredibly sarcastic snot-o-gram from L on my own behalf confirming I am being looked after. 

I could not make this kind of crap up even with my fantastic imagination.