Ethically exhausted...already

It's been a while since I've turned to the blogosphere, but as I managed to write around 12,000 words over the Christmas holidays, I don't think I had any words left to give to this blog (or to use in conversation - just ask my housemates/parents/Julius about my complete inability to make any sense for the last few weeks).

My faithful big blue bike at Neptune, about 7 miles from Selby.
Image from my Project365 (or 366) blog

However, everything is in, hand-in #1 last Thursday (3 essays) was celebrated with an impromptu 15-mile bike ride up the York-Selby Solar System route. Well, once you get to Jupiter you might as well go all the way to Neptune, right? The only problem being that you then have to turn around and head back. Against the wind. I fell victim to cramp at Venus but luckily Tesco was within limping distance, so all in all, lactic acid overload notwithstanding, I enjoyed myself greatly after being cooped up for so long. The temperature across the country then dropped by about 10 degrees (no joke...), which motivated me to finish off the last essay and hand that in this Monday. No endorphins for me this time though, 2 hours later I was in my first lecture of the new Spring teaching term. No rest for this Master's student.

Good question.
Image from www.flprobatelitigation.com/articles/ethics

As I may have already mentioned though, I have high hopes for this term, with a lot of syntax and a burgeoning feeling of actually achieving something in my near future. However, this comes with quite a high time- and effort-cost; I've already read upwards of 150 pages of journal articles and book chapters, not to mention the 50-odd question ethics form, replete with information sheets, consent forms and example test items, which needs completing, checking and submitting by 3rd February.

Welcome into 2012. You're not going to see much of it, but you'll be blimmin' busy.

Hello 2012, hello Harry Fairhurst...

If you're not from York, you might wonder why Mr Fairhurst merits a blog-title greeting.

If you are from York, you'll know exactly where (rather than with whom) I've been spending my time. Oh yes. The library.

The sunset from my perch in the Harry Fairhurst building.
I did see the sun that day. Honest.

A week today, the first four summative assignments of my Masters are due and, even though the formative ones went pretty well, I can't help but feel a bit nervous. I mean, I'm quite pleased with how I managed my time over Christmas - I got in plenty of present-giving/receiving, daft-game-playing and a superhuman amount of eating over the festive period, don't get me wrong, but I also came back to York with two full drafts and a 2500-word stream of consciousness about multiple wh-constructions in Czech. If I carry on with these workdays in the library, we're on course for the 12th January, I think (and there's a whole host of lovely linguists to lunch with and keep me sane in the meantime).

Looking forward to 13th January, there's a lot coming up this term. We're specialising more this term, so whilst phonetics has been fun, I can bilabial-click-it goodbye and focus on syntax, syntax and more (first language) syntax. There's a really interesting-sounding colloquium in the first week of term about grammaticality versus comprehensibility, so that seems to be starting as it means to go on, and, as I mentioned back in December, the other Rebecca-Louise-syntactician and I will be livening up the department with our art/syntax project. Yeah, they're totally compatible. AND I may even have half a good idea for my dissertation...watch this space!