I always get restless at this time of year. I work on the academic calendar, have for so long now that New Year sometimes seems an anticlimax because really, my new year starts in September and has done for many years.

May and June are months of transition, finalising work and projects to be handed in, revision and taking exams, and wondering about what comes next. What does come next is, of course, arranged long before - posgraduate courses accept applications a year in advance so it’s been rare in the past few years that I haven’t known a year before where I’d be, all things remaining as they should. Then in September comes the ‘what next?’ - there’s barely time to settle into a new year before the next one needs slotting into place. Sometimes I want to slow everything down a bit, take a breath and gather myself together. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m going the right way because everything moves all the time, never stopping. Even when I was kicking my heels for a year working full time before my MPhil it was because I needed the money for what came next.

My writing’s going well, I think. My supervisor has a chapter for second reading, and will hopefully be in touch soon. I’m planning to submit in July/early August and then - a couple of weeks off. I’m working four days a week at the moment, studying for three and at least two evenings a week. That I came home today to work and ended up falling asleep at my desk for an hour says something about my current energy levels.

I’m looking forward to August. It won’t be the Edinburgh I was contemplating, but I’m planning some time off to do things around the flat that I’ve been putting off because I need to write and not procrastinate, and if the weather holds spending some time just lying in the garden reading teenage and children’s fiction to prepare for my PGCE - although it’ll be wonderful not to read something I have to read for once.

I love the books I’m studying, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t have managed to do it if I didn’t and I love reading the theory and the other fiction around the same time. But it’ll be nice to read something without thinking I really should be reading something else ….