Difficult Decisions - people often talk about having to make difficult decisions. Should I leave the security of this job for something more satisfying, should leave an unsatisfying relationships.
However when you start to think about it, in technical terms these decisions are generally not actually that difficult. The information is probably more qualitative than quantitative, but it is well established, you generally have time to gather more information if it would be helpful. Generally it is a case of deciding between a very small number options, options which are disimilar enough to make it difficult to make meaningful comparisons.
However we make these sorts of decisions all the time, every day. Often what characterises Difficult Decisions is that they seem to be optional decisions, there is the default option to continue as you are, and the decision to do something different. Accordingly the decision is not a fork in the road, it is a choice of carrying on along the well established motorway that you are on, or to consider the little known and poorly signposted alternative route, that sounds like it may be appealing, but you cannot see far down that road, it twists and turns, and although it sounds appealing, you really have no way of knowing where it will lead.
What makes these decisions difficult is not that they are technically difficult. They are not actually that technically complicated.
They are assymetrical - you understand one option far better than you understand the other.
They are not time pressured - you can continue as you are, in effect make no decision.
They involve you in doing things you are uncomfortable with.
That is at the root of the issue, when we are talking about Difficult Decisions we are instead talking about unpalatable choices. There is always the default, the do nothing option.
But we are decision making creatures. When we are too lazy, or scared, or complacent to make decisions then, in a way we cease to be. We become part of the generalised mass, neither good nor bad, just drifting along.
Life is too short to drift by failing to make any decisions. There are worse things than failing, there is failing to try.
Part of what I like about investing in shares is that it forces you to make decisions, it keeps you in the habit of making decisions. You have to decide on a strategy, to refine and review your strategy, every month I decide on what to invest my money in. Investing in shares you just have to accept that you cannot have perfect knowledge. You are balancing risk and reward, the greater the uncertainty the higher the potential reward, you can consider other's expertise, but in the end you have to follow you own judgement. You need to accept that you will never make the optimal decisions all the time. Share investing just does not work like that. If you had perfect knowledge then you would just invest all your money in the most profitable share for the next year, and sell it all when it reached its peak. No one does that, no one can. Almost by definition every investing decision is less than optimal. You are accepting failing, accepting that you will lose money, others will have done better than you. I suspect that Game Theory has something sage to say on this sort of thing.
It is good for the soul engaging in the challenge of investing, teaching yourself through your results, the expertise of others, introspection. What has gone well, what has gone badly, what should I do more of, what should I do less of.
We are born to learn, to try and fail, pick ourselves up again. That is to be alive.
Saturday 30 May 2009
Friday 29 May 2009
Wireless Router
My broadband connection has been upgraded at ADSL 2, no I don't know what that means either, but my broadband supplier (Demon) offered me an upto date router which was ADSL 2 friendly. They rather generously offered a wireless option, so I have bitten the bullet and gone wireless.
I seem to remember when I first signed up for broadband, I had to pay for the router, and it was around fifty pounds. My Broadband provider encouraged people to buy one of a small number of routers, no doubt on the grounds that anything that makes technical support a little less painful must be a good thing. The wireless one cost a bit more, and I did not see the need at the time.
However over the years I have taken to using my laptop a lot more, and my wife borrows a laptop from college for coursework, so, having the shift the dog off the sofa, and plug in an ethernet cable for accessing the internet was getting to be a bit of a pain. And lets face it, these days, if you cannot access the internet, your computer is about as much use as a brick. (slight exaggeration)
So, it all arrived earlier this week, the router had been pre-configured, but running a macintosh I'm always a little sceptical of such things. I had a bit of free time yesterday, so I shouted at the rest of the family to shut up, read through, and set the whole thing up. It really was just a case of plugging it in, except for setting up the wireless, which was slightly more involved, but only because I had mistyped my password first time round.
And now - I so love having wireless broadband. It works throughout the house. I can dip into the internet from wherever I am sitting with my laptop. The connection does seem quicker, though it can drop now and again.
Best of all, I was making a case for going wireless and buying an airport extreme, at over £100, and through doing nothing a wireless router has in effect fallen into my lap!
Result !!
I seem to remember when I first signed up for broadband, I had to pay for the router, and it was around fifty pounds. My Broadband provider encouraged people to buy one of a small number of routers, no doubt on the grounds that anything that makes technical support a little less painful must be a good thing. The wireless one cost a bit more, and I did not see the need at the time.
However over the years I have taken to using my laptop a lot more, and my wife borrows a laptop from college for coursework, so, having the shift the dog off the sofa, and plug in an ethernet cable for accessing the internet was getting to be a bit of a pain. And lets face it, these days, if you cannot access the internet, your computer is about as much use as a brick. (slight exaggeration)
So, it all arrived earlier this week, the router had been pre-configured, but running a macintosh I'm always a little sceptical of such things. I had a bit of free time yesterday, so I shouted at the rest of the family to shut up, read through, and set the whole thing up. It really was just a case of plugging it in, except for setting up the wireless, which was slightly more involved, but only because I had mistyped my password first time round.
And now - I so love having wireless broadband. It works throughout the house. I can dip into the internet from wherever I am sitting with my laptop. The connection does seem quicker, though it can drop now and again.
Best of all, I was making a case for going wireless and buying an airport extreme, at over £100, and through doing nothing a wireless router has in effect fallen into my lap!
Result !!
Lunch-time seminar update
Further to my earlier blog posting on this session for training staff on meeting skills,
you won't remember, so click on the link to find out what I'm talking about, it won't hurt, honest.
After a long delay, I finally managed to run this session.
The idea was actually the easiest part of the whole process, it took maybe an hour to work up, then I had to convince a colleague that it was a good idea to run, then it was cancelled, so I had to push for another date, then no one was signing up for it, so I had to advertise it again, then there were still too few people attending, so I had to wander round the office bullying people into attending.
But in the end, I did get half a dozen people to attend. We just handed out the name plates and agreed amongst ourselves who would be who, which worked pretty well as an ice breaker. People stuck with the agenda, and were starting to get engaged, when I introduced the whole Alien scenario. It worked exactly as anticipated, it was just so daft, and off the wall that everyone could contribute, and no one could take it too seriously. The discussion did start to wind up quite naturally after about 30/40 minutes, and I just moved into an informal washup. Everyone enjoyed the session and felt it was worthwhile, that they had contributed effectively and been well chaired. Our chair was a new member of staff, totally new to chairing meetings. I gave out a few silly alien themed gifts to everyone, and it was all done inside one hour. You can always tell after these things if they have worked, people talk excitedly and have smiles on their faces, on that metric it was a success. I also got a couple of emails later in they day from folk saying how much they had enjoyed it.
Take away lessons - it is virtually impossible to market the event, it relies on surprise, so as much as I promise people that it will be fun, they quite sensibly are difficult to convince. It might be appropriate to go via line managers, or have the event incorporated into a training series. One hour is plenty for the event, but give yourself ten/fifteen minutes for the washup, as much of the learning can be reinforced then. Simply praising the positive behaviour is worthwhile if you are dealing with people who are less confident in meetings.
Would I run it again ? - definitely, next series of events across our organisation I'll offer to run a couple more, though I might need to change the scenario just to keep people on their toes.
Final point - original insight/idea took an hour, making it happen probably took a day, all told. Creative ideas don't just happen because you have great ideas, they happen because you really work to make them happen.
you won't remember, so click on the link to find out what I'm talking about, it won't hurt, honest.
After a long delay, I finally managed to run this session.
The idea was actually the easiest part of the whole process, it took maybe an hour to work up, then I had to convince a colleague that it was a good idea to run, then it was cancelled, so I had to push for another date, then no one was signing up for it, so I had to advertise it again, then there were still too few people attending, so I had to wander round the office bullying people into attending.
But in the end, I did get half a dozen people to attend. We just handed out the name plates and agreed amongst ourselves who would be who, which worked pretty well as an ice breaker. People stuck with the agenda, and were starting to get engaged, when I introduced the whole Alien scenario. It worked exactly as anticipated, it was just so daft, and off the wall that everyone could contribute, and no one could take it too seriously. The discussion did start to wind up quite naturally after about 30/40 minutes, and I just moved into an informal washup. Everyone enjoyed the session and felt it was worthwhile, that they had contributed effectively and been well chaired. Our chair was a new member of staff, totally new to chairing meetings. I gave out a few silly alien themed gifts to everyone, and it was all done inside one hour. You can always tell after these things if they have worked, people talk excitedly and have smiles on their faces, on that metric it was a success. I also got a couple of emails later in they day from folk saying how much they had enjoyed it.
Take away lessons - it is virtually impossible to market the event, it relies on surprise, so as much as I promise people that it will be fun, they quite sensibly are difficult to convince. It might be appropriate to go via line managers, or have the event incorporated into a training series. One hour is plenty for the event, but give yourself ten/fifteen minutes for the washup, as much of the learning can be reinforced then. Simply praising the positive behaviour is worthwhile if you are dealing with people who are less confident in meetings.
Would I run it again ? - definitely, next series of events across our organisation I'll offer to run a couple more, though I might need to change the scenario just to keep people on their toes.
Final point - original insight/idea took an hour, making it happen probably took a day, all told. Creative ideas don't just happen because you have great ideas, they happen because you really work to make them happen.
Sunday 24 May 2009
Creative Assignment #2
Design modular furniture.
When we were young, we all loved lego and mecanno, and used to build endless toys and fantasy contructions from it.
Wouldn't it be great to have modular furniture, you buy a small variety of standard components and you assemble them together to build pretty much any item of furniture you could want. As with my proposal for stencils, the art in the design would be to come up with the minimum number of pieces, that can offer sufficient functionality.
I did tinker with this idea a while ago myself, and the Shigura Ban 10 unit system does something along the same lines, if you prefer a podcast to a web page, it is about 1.50 in to the attached Monocle podcast, but it is worth watching the whole thing.
It really is not a desperately new idea, so the interesting question is probably why it has never really been implemented. It is probably because it is design athema. Once you get your lego bricks, there is no further design input. While this might be bad for designers, it is great for empowering users. With the growing culture of IKEA hacks, it might be a good fit for IKEA, who to my mind are actually a really innovative and progressive company when it comes to design. Although somewhere like HABITAT is renowned for its design, I would actually rate IKEA as the more innovative.
http://www.monocle.com/sections/design/Web-Articles/Milan-2009/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/6065/shigeru-ban-10-unit-system-for-artek.html
UPDATE
nice little video podcast on Shigeru Ban - does not say anything about modular furniture, but might be of interest, from the ever excellent Gestalten
http://www.gestalten.com/news/detail?id=2754
When we were young, we all loved lego and mecanno, and used to build endless toys and fantasy contructions from it.
Wouldn't it be great to have modular furniture, you buy a small variety of standard components and you assemble them together to build pretty much any item of furniture you could want. As with my proposal for stencils, the art in the design would be to come up with the minimum number of pieces, that can offer sufficient functionality.
I did tinker with this idea a while ago myself, and the Shigura Ban 10 unit system does something along the same lines, if you prefer a podcast to a web page, it is about 1.50 in to the attached Monocle podcast, but it is worth watching the whole thing.
It really is not a desperately new idea, so the interesting question is probably why it has never really been implemented. It is probably because it is design athema. Once you get your lego bricks, there is no further design input. While this might be bad for designers, it is great for empowering users. With the growing culture of IKEA hacks, it might be a good fit for IKEA, who to my mind are actually a really innovative and progressive company when it comes to design. Although somewhere like HABITAT is renowned for its design, I would actually rate IKEA as the more innovative.
http://www.monocle.com/sections/design/Web-Articles/Milan-2009/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/6065/shigeru-ban-10-unit-system-for-artek.html
UPDATE
nice little video podcast on Shigeru Ban - does not say anything about modular furniture, but might be of interest, from the ever excellent Gestalten
http://www.gestalten.com/news/detail?id=2754
Saturday 23 May 2009
Creative Assignment #1
Design an economy stencil font. That is, a set of stencils that depict the letters of the alphabet, but design them such that although they are clearly legible, they can be rotated such that an individual stencil might serve as more than one letter. The stencils are therefore likely to be square [but other shapes might be possible].
Probably best that stencils use rotational symetry but not to be flipped over, so both sides of the stencil do not get sticky with paint.
It would not be necessary to have upper and lower case, or much in the way of punctation.
Because these are stencils, they need to operate as distinct shapes, with the minimum of complications.
The design challenge is to design something that would be a robust and usable stencil, so simplicity is key, it needs to be highly legible, and it needs to use the minimum number of stencil pieces. I've not done any work on this, but it should be easy to get down to 20 pieces, but going well below that is certainly not implausible.
In practical terms, it might be better to create a set with commonly used letters duplicated, so that words could be stencil sprayed in a single pass, rather than having a couple of attempts to spray the single stencil.
Probably best that stencils use rotational symetry but not to be flipped over, so both sides of the stencil do not get sticky with paint.
It would not be necessary to have upper and lower case, or much in the way of punctation.
Because these are stencils, they need to operate as distinct shapes, with the minimum of complications.
The design challenge is to design something that would be a robust and usable stencil, so simplicity is key, it needs to be highly legible, and it needs to use the minimum number of stencil pieces. I've not done any work on this, but it should be easy to get down to 20 pieces, but going well below that is certainly not implausible.
In practical terms, it might be better to create a set with commonly used letters duplicated, so that words could be stencil sprayed in a single pass, rather than having a couple of attempts to spray the single stencil.
Friday 22 May 2009
How do you define what you are doing ?
How do you define what you are doing ?
is it in terms of inputs, outputs or outcomes ?
When you are doing some paid work, or working for yourself on something, do you say -
I will work on this for two hours, then that will be two hours work, for which I will be paid.
or
I will work on this specific task until it is finished, and then it will be done.
or
I will direct my efforts towards this high level objective, for example, I will create the most attractive garden in my street.
We probably need to adopt a little of each of these approaches, it would be madness not to. But if you are forever simply allocating chunks of time, with no thought of when a task will finish, or whether it actually contributes to any overarching purpose, then you are thinking like a lowly paid employee with no stake in the business.
If you are focussed on the specific task, then you will work harder and longer on that task, and provided it is worthwhile, and done to an appropriate standard, you will have no problem getting tasks completed, but the task might not be that worthwhile, and it might not contribute that much to what you are trying to do.
If you are focussed on a very high level goal, then you have no real way of measuring what you are doing. These goals tend to be so high level as to be virtually impossible to break down into smaller components that are meaningful. Applying yourself to a high level goal, is akin to religous faith. You just have to believe that you are doing the right thing, and keep going.
To be honest these are all just different hats that we all need to wear from time to time. The real problem is where you never wear a specific hat, and never think in those terms.
is it in terms of inputs, outputs or outcomes ?
When you are doing some paid work, or working for yourself on something, do you say -
I will work on this for two hours, then that will be two hours work, for which I will be paid.
or
I will work on this specific task until it is finished, and then it will be done.
or
I will direct my efforts towards this high level objective, for example, I will create the most attractive garden in my street.
We probably need to adopt a little of each of these approaches, it would be madness not to. But if you are forever simply allocating chunks of time, with no thought of when a task will finish, or whether it actually contributes to any overarching purpose, then you are thinking like a lowly paid employee with no stake in the business.
If you are focussed on the specific task, then you will work harder and longer on that task, and provided it is worthwhile, and done to an appropriate standard, you will have no problem getting tasks completed, but the task might not be that worthwhile, and it might not contribute that much to what you are trying to do.
If you are focussed on a very high level goal, then you have no real way of measuring what you are doing. These goals tend to be so high level as to be virtually impossible to break down into smaller components that are meaningful. Applying yourself to a high level goal, is akin to religous faith. You just have to believe that you are doing the right thing, and keep going.
To be honest these are all just different hats that we all need to wear from time to time. The real problem is where you never wear a specific hat, and never think in those terms.
what studying has taught me
After months of study, I took my exam in criminal paralegal studies earlier this week. It will be a couple of weeks before I know my result. The exam date, 20 May, has been effectively tatooed on my brain, one of those dates after which everything could be safely postponed, and before which my panic would rise like a tide. Truly, my thoughts about an impending exam are akin to those of Edgar Allan Poe, on premature burial, except maybe more mournful and morbid.
It has been a long time since I have done any proper studying, the sort of studying that is examined afterwards. So what did I actually learn?
1 obviously I might have learnt a little about criminal law
2 studying took much longer than I had anticipated. The subject is one of those that largely, does not fit into neat boxes, it inter-relates, one topic merging into another. This entailed making the effort to get a fair chunk of it into my head, so that it could make sense. Like driving a car, or being dead, you cannot just be a bit dead, or mostly know how to drive. It is either or. So, quite a few days here and there catching up with my reading, and reading ahead.
3 the source material sucked. The subject is all over the place, with common threads. There are also countless different ways to refer to things. Our textbook had apparently been written quite quickly by a variety of people. It lacked an index or glossary, and was haphazard in using and defining terminology.
4 the lectures were great, particularly once you got a feel for what was useful colour and what was examinable syllabus. However scheduled from 17.00 to 19.00 on a Wednesday evening, I am getting a bit old for those sorts of hours nowadays.
5 it was necessary to plan how I was using my time, continously. For example, I took notes of class lectures, then wrote them up, then checked them against the text book. This was taking too long, and falling behind, so I took time off to catch up. Some work I had to do more quickly just to keep on track.
6 sometimes you need to cut your losses, as the exam neared, it was clear that I was still struggling with some topics, and I was better off aiming to pick up a few extra points on something I found easy, than battling with something I found impenetrable.
7 one approach did not work for everything. There were key facts, that were in my fifty pages notes, and even then extracted into a shorter note. Those just needed to be rote learned. There were also stories and things to understand, that were easier for me to learn, as long as I could find a way of understanding them.
8 my personal learning abilities, are very reliant on me understanding something. If I don't understand something, then I find it incredibly difficult to learn.
9 prioritise and decide on what to study right up to the wire, make decisions on what is the best use of your time. For example a little rote learning, or reading more generally.
10 past papers are your friends, learn to master past papers, but don't rely on getting an carbon copy exam. We certainly did not!
But most of all, I learnt about the sheer wierdness of trying to learn something. Would that you could just pour the knowledge in somewhere. Or run a mental programme that undertook to stick all this knowledge into your head.
Maybe the answer is difficult, because the question is badly framed. Learning is not a single process. It includes different tasks, and actually novelty of approach makes things memorable, routine makes them less so.
Learning is about
rote learning of facts - dates, names,
understanding - knowing how concepts interact with each other, and how you can apply them to problems
weltanschuung - German term for a view of the world - each subject has its own view of the world. This is one of those things that is so big, that you tend not to notice it. You probably won't get told what it is. But in order to pass the exam you need to tap into what the teachers expect you to be able to do, and how they expect you to approach questions. There is no point answering an accountancy question as you might an English question.
For learning as an individual, there are probably a variety of tasks
listening,
reflecting
questioning
talking
writing
discussing
studying to rote learn.
The more different ways you try and get material into your head, and the more you manipulate it, summarise it, explain it in your own words, the more likely it is to be retained. Hence a chat after class about something, might help it to stick, when reading it in the text book again did not. As above, novelty helps.
It is also important to recognise that some subjects are just infinite. Criminal Law could easily be a four year degree course. We studied it in two months. So we could not know everything, and although there was a slimmed down syllabus for us to study, it was haphazard, and there was no guarantee that it covered everything in the exam. By the end, I just had to accept that I would never master everything in the syllabus, but with application I could know enough to pass.
With luck I will have passed by a decent amount, my target was just to pass, but getting above 60% would be gratifying and above 70% would be fantastic. Professionally it does not make any difference, and actually knowing about the subject is more important, but I suppose I just rise to the competition.
It has been a long time since I have done any proper studying, the sort of studying that is examined afterwards. So what did I actually learn?
1 obviously I might have learnt a little about criminal law
2 studying took much longer than I had anticipated. The subject is one of those that largely, does not fit into neat boxes, it inter-relates, one topic merging into another. This entailed making the effort to get a fair chunk of it into my head, so that it could make sense. Like driving a car, or being dead, you cannot just be a bit dead, or mostly know how to drive. It is either or. So, quite a few days here and there catching up with my reading, and reading ahead.
3 the source material sucked. The subject is all over the place, with common threads. There are also countless different ways to refer to things. Our textbook had apparently been written quite quickly by a variety of people. It lacked an index or glossary, and was haphazard in using and defining terminology.
4 the lectures were great, particularly once you got a feel for what was useful colour and what was examinable syllabus. However scheduled from 17.00 to 19.00 on a Wednesday evening, I am getting a bit old for those sorts of hours nowadays.
5 it was necessary to plan how I was using my time, continously. For example, I took notes of class lectures, then wrote them up, then checked them against the text book. This was taking too long, and falling behind, so I took time off to catch up. Some work I had to do more quickly just to keep on track.
6 sometimes you need to cut your losses, as the exam neared, it was clear that I was still struggling with some topics, and I was better off aiming to pick up a few extra points on something I found easy, than battling with something I found impenetrable.
7 one approach did not work for everything. There were key facts, that were in my fifty pages notes, and even then extracted into a shorter note. Those just needed to be rote learned. There were also stories and things to understand, that were easier for me to learn, as long as I could find a way of understanding them.
8 my personal learning abilities, are very reliant on me understanding something. If I don't understand something, then I find it incredibly difficult to learn.
9 prioritise and decide on what to study right up to the wire, make decisions on what is the best use of your time. For example a little rote learning, or reading more generally.
10 past papers are your friends, learn to master past papers, but don't rely on getting an carbon copy exam. We certainly did not!
But most of all, I learnt about the sheer wierdness of trying to learn something. Would that you could just pour the knowledge in somewhere. Or run a mental programme that undertook to stick all this knowledge into your head.
Maybe the answer is difficult, because the question is badly framed. Learning is not a single process. It includes different tasks, and actually novelty of approach makes things memorable, routine makes them less so.
Learning is about
rote learning of facts - dates, names,
understanding - knowing how concepts interact with each other, and how you can apply them to problems
weltanschuung - German term for a view of the world - each subject has its own view of the world. This is one of those things that is so big, that you tend not to notice it. You probably won't get told what it is. But in order to pass the exam you need to tap into what the teachers expect you to be able to do, and how they expect you to approach questions. There is no point answering an accountancy question as you might an English question.
For learning as an individual, there are probably a variety of tasks
listening,
reflecting
questioning
talking
writing
discussing
studying to rote learn.
The more different ways you try and get material into your head, and the more you manipulate it, summarise it, explain it in your own words, the more likely it is to be retained. Hence a chat after class about something, might help it to stick, when reading it in the text book again did not. As above, novelty helps.
It is also important to recognise that some subjects are just infinite. Criminal Law could easily be a four year degree course. We studied it in two months. So we could not know everything, and although there was a slimmed down syllabus for us to study, it was haphazard, and there was no guarantee that it covered everything in the exam. By the end, I just had to accept that I would never master everything in the syllabus, but with application I could know enough to pass.
With luck I will have passed by a decent amount, my target was just to pass, but getting above 60% would be gratifying and above 70% would be fantastic. Professionally it does not make any difference, and actually knowing about the subject is more important, but I suppose I just rise to the competition.
Sunday 17 May 2009
studying paralegal and the garden
This is my first blog post in quite a while. I have been studying for a criminal paralegal course this year, so that tiny element of time, that is laughingly called my "free time" has been spent on studying criminal law.
It is quite a while since I did any proper studying, so going back to a series of lectures and studying is a bit of a culture shock. Studying when you actually have a full time job is a world different from studying when you don't. Basically I now realise that full time studying was largely a case of mooching around, and if you actually did a couple of hours studying, you felt positively bathed in glory. With a full time job, any study time is quarried out of a packed day, and you just need to hit the books.
Hopefully I have done enough to pass, I am getting to the stage where it does all seem to be largely falling into place, with the exception of the stuff that is just too detailed and process related for me to pick up. I'm the sort of person who does not bother to learn my own phone number! Rote learning has never come easy. In fact it is probably a surprise to some people that I can manage to hold down a decent job.
It has been a surprise just how much work needs to go into the studying. I've been taking the odd day off to study, just to keep up. Unfortunately our text book is really poor, and criminal law is one of those subjects where you need to see the links between different areas, so it is really a case of putting in the hours getting the stuff into your head. I have however really enjoyed it. Not the studying/exams/worry stuff, but the subject is interesting and it does make you think. I've been reading a bit of criminology, which I have found rather abstract and theoretical, criminal law is much more to my taste.
The subject is of course huge, and a paralegal course merely scratches the surface, so I don't expect to know everything. I suppose part of the key to remaining sane when studying is accepting that you won't know everything at the end of it, and not beat yourself up too much on that count.
The garden has been getting distinctly unkempt, so I spent the latter part of the afternoon mowing the lawns (first cut of the year!), and a little bit of weeding and pruning. The lawn just needs cut. However there are plenty of other jobs that you can just dabble away at in a distracted fashion, as the mood takes you. I have plenty else to worry about, so I was more than happy to just dabble away at the garden in a distracted fashion. Doing a bit of weeding here, a bit of pruning there. I was getting worried that it was turning into a complete jungle, but actually there is enough stuff planted up now, that a lot of it more or less looks after itself, with only a little light weeding. In fact it has gone from jungle, to not too bad, in less than an afternoon. I am keen for future planting to be restful, attractive, nature friendly, and low maintenance. Accordingly, the banking that I have long struggled with, will just be allowed to grass over, and I can just run a mower down it every now an again, rather than trying to weed it.
It is quite a while since I did any proper studying, so going back to a series of lectures and studying is a bit of a culture shock. Studying when you actually have a full time job is a world different from studying when you don't. Basically I now realise that full time studying was largely a case of mooching around, and if you actually did a couple of hours studying, you felt positively bathed in glory. With a full time job, any study time is quarried out of a packed day, and you just need to hit the books.
Hopefully I have done enough to pass, I am getting to the stage where it does all seem to be largely falling into place, with the exception of the stuff that is just too detailed and process related for me to pick up. I'm the sort of person who does not bother to learn my own phone number! Rote learning has never come easy. In fact it is probably a surprise to some people that I can manage to hold down a decent job.
It has been a surprise just how much work needs to go into the studying. I've been taking the odd day off to study, just to keep up. Unfortunately our text book is really poor, and criminal law is one of those subjects where you need to see the links between different areas, so it is really a case of putting in the hours getting the stuff into your head. I have however really enjoyed it. Not the studying/exams/worry stuff, but the subject is interesting and it does make you think. I've been reading a bit of criminology, which I have found rather abstract and theoretical, criminal law is much more to my taste.
The subject is of course huge, and a paralegal course merely scratches the surface, so I don't expect to know everything. I suppose part of the key to remaining sane when studying is accepting that you won't know everything at the end of it, and not beat yourself up too much on that count.
The garden has been getting distinctly unkempt, so I spent the latter part of the afternoon mowing the lawns (first cut of the year!), and a little bit of weeding and pruning. The lawn just needs cut. However there are plenty of other jobs that you can just dabble away at in a distracted fashion, as the mood takes you. I have plenty else to worry about, so I was more than happy to just dabble away at the garden in a distracted fashion. Doing a bit of weeding here, a bit of pruning there. I was getting worried that it was turning into a complete jungle, but actually there is enough stuff planted up now, that a lot of it more or less looks after itself, with only a little light weeding. In fact it has gone from jungle, to not too bad, in less than an afternoon. I am keen for future planting to be restful, attractive, nature friendly, and low maintenance. Accordingly, the banking that I have long struggled with, will just be allowed to grass over, and I can just run a mower down it every now an again, rather than trying to weed it.
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