Learning curves

Recent activities and events in my life have made me realise a lot of things I embark on are extremely steep learning curves.

Some of you might know that I'm entering the final stages of my PhD where I actually have to write the damn 100,000 word thesis. I've started for a while now (24 days to be exact) and its really tough. Where does one start? How does one structure the thesis? Its not something I can run to my supervisor and say 'Help! Spoon feed me!' So I've been trying to figure all this out on my own and got a little depressed. Things didn't help when I read through the University's guidelines on presentation of the thesis (I want to get this exactly the way they want it right from the start - saves me making all the corrections etc etc) and they said that I could dedicate the thesis to people. Who do I dedicate it to?? There's the obvious people like my family and Roger... but there's also my PhD supervisor and a whole lot of other people who have supported me through my PhD. And then it got worse.... I realised that I don't have much time left in the UK. The fact that I'm already considering when to hand in my thesis etc is freaking me out - I want to hold on to all my friends and happy days in Birmingham!

So I've been mulling over my thesis and trying to sort various thoughts out in my head and I've ALSO been having rather intensive driving lessons and come home feeling rubbish, and wanting to bang my head on the wall. I've never had to go through lessons without getting concepts or things easily. Everything, up till now, has always been rather clear cut to me and I don't think I've truly struggled with anything the way I have been with driving. I feel that after 20 hours of lessons now, I should be able to drive very smoothly on the road and know what to do at junctions etc etc. But different things happen all the time when I go out for drives on my lessons and I have to react differently to each situation. For example, there was a pigeon today on the road and it refused to budge. I had to go really slowly and couldn't swerve to the other side of the road because of oncoming traffic. I didn't kill the pigeon but I was told that if I was going on a fast road and if that is what it takes not to kill myself or any other human being, then I have to just run over the pigeon. ARGH! I just stared at my teacher and thought 'gosh... I've not gotten my license and I'm already considering running over little creatures'. *sigh* My teacher said that all these are learning experiences and I guess I just have to stick with it and persevere . Driving is afterall, an essential skill and I need to focus on passing my test now.