Fulfilling my promise

To my knowledge, I've never made a promise to my boyfriend of three-and-a-quarter years. I used to think I was good at making and keeping promises: it seemed the default behaviour of an extremely shy and nervous child. I grew up terrified of being told off by anyone other than my immediate family. In school and beyond, I avoided doing wrong by not doing much of interest at all. Somehow, I maintained pleasant groups of friends in primary school, secondary school and even during undergrad, despite rarely contributing to lunchtime conversations and lacking opinions on most topics. I was known for being clever, and happy to share my knowledge when asked, but was otherwise, much like the main character on one of my favourite TV shows, a functional mute. Only on special occasions did I show much character: I played the lead in the year six play, sang my heart out on a cold autumnal walk back from an under 16's nightclub in Berlin, and sang terrible karaoke while wine-drunk in a student bar on a Thursday night. Three nights later, I was back to being the quiet one, speaking no more than three full sentences on the night I met my now-boyfriend. The next few months I saw as an awakening, but in reality they were defined by misguided emotions combined with the freedom to test my limits for the first time. Thankfully, things sorted themselves out nicely; a month after the worst night of my life, I was looking forward to a first date, and at the time of writing, that is still my most recent first date. Mind you, it hasn't all been plain sailing: not even a year in, I made the massive decision to move to a completely different part of the country for three years; at a birthday party the following year I was so in my own little world that he couldn't enjoy himself and decided we should go home, and we haven't really enjoyed any of the three new years we've spent together, with me ending up in tears more often than not.

When I was young, I cried a lot. I've never been very aware of the people around me, so I don't know whether this was particularly notable to them, but I do know I never found out why I had such outbursts. I've never wondered much about why my parents didn't seek the answers; maybe they were afraid of what the answers might be, thinking they couldn't deal with it. We've always been very insular as a family, not helped by the fact that neither of my parents drive. Looking back, I feel my cleverness masked any lack of skills and assuaged any worries, but I've never broached the subject to anyone but my sister, and even then, we skirt around the emotional aspects. I certainly can pass as a normal human being, and sometimes I even think I am. Normality is a spectrum and there's no way I'm wholly abnormal. I progressed from top achieving pupil to top achieving graduate, and amassed several offers for postgraduate study, without questioning whether I was suitable or capable. I had a strong interest and a decent explanation for why I wanted to progress in this way, but no real understanding of how to get things to happen or ask the most basic of questions. I agonise over writing emails and deciding how and when to follow things up. The lockdown, for all the joy I got from learning that I can live quite successfully with my boyfriend, only compounded my communication difficulties, and now I face the arduous task of making it clear that I need some sort of help, things are not "okay", as I always find myself responding when asked. I'm actually floundering in insecurity and struggling to maintain the façade. I can't promise because I don't know my own mind; I can't trust myself to remember important details or complete tasks in a timely manner; I can't focus or prioritise or conclude any of the many threads which have formed a matted mess of files across half a dozen storage locations. The extra screen time can't have been good; my glasses prescription has worsened by 0.5 in two years, but I at least managed to get tested without weeks of indecision. 

I have to move from contemplation to action; self-love and good faith may tide me over between the troughs, but I shouldn't be looking to sustain the status quo, I should be seeking my most able, productive self. I should be able to hold myself to account, and to have confidence that I will succeed at things I want to do for the people who are most important to me. I shouldn't be scared to promise, or to fulfill my promise.

Get out your worries

I have been thinking and worrying too much, so the point of this post is to get it out so that I may sleep. A fortnight ago, I travelled home for the first time since returning to the lab, and despite keeping distance from my family, wearing face coverings on public transport and increased use of hand sanitiser, it felt much more normal and comfortable than my visit in July. Since then, more rules have been introduced, but they would've made very little difference to my trip. In fact, now that people in established relationships do not have to distance, the new rules would actually make me feel better! (I justified being close to my partner because we did move in together pretty much at the start of lockdown and the only reason I left was to return to work once it reopened.)

It is all too easy to feel restricted, particularly now that students have been asked "not to go to bars or other hospitality venues" this weekend, but I can only control my response, and that is to adhere to the request. I am exceedingly thankful that both of the governments I live under now allow couples to meet without distancing, even during these additional restrictions, and I will take advantage of this to keep my relationship going as well as possible. I am also thankful that I have two lovely flatmates, with whom I will be happy to isolate if the time comes. 

I can only do what I can do!

A-level playing field

This post was originally published on my academic blog, http://msci-going-on-phd.blogspot.com/.

Today, six years on from the day I received my A-level results, another cohort was just awarded their grades. Unlike those of us who came before, this year's crop weren't able to sit exams to earn the results, but have to settle for widely-criticised moderated grades, which were lower than teachers' estimates in almost 40% of cases. I can't help wondering what might've happened to myself and other high achievers at my school had the distribution of our grades depended on the school's past performance and largely ignored our own individual trajectories to GCSE and AS. 

I also wonder whether the bitter disappointment felt by so many this year would have been lessened if AS exams still counted towards the final A-level grade, because that would've allowed other forms of mitigation, such as students not dropping more than one or two grades below their AS result. I appreciate that there was not time to administer a replacement formal measure of progress over the 18 months of A-level education completed before schools closed, and not everybody would have achieved as highly as predicted, but surely there could have been a mechanism to submit work that the centre-assessed grades were based on for moderation instead?

Shifting the entire group based on performance of previous cohorts does not seem fair, particularly when many university places won't be held in time for appeals based on meaningful individual factors, such as mock grades. These results influence the course of lives, so it is unfathomable to me that pupils were marked down simply because a lower proportion of previous years' students achieved high grades.