Deja Vu

It’s been a strange couple of days, and I know now where the feeling comes from.

Six years ago next month (October 2002), I was battling with some tight deadlines at work, whilst completing my OU studies for a renewable energies course (this is the course’s successor), and with my first load of exam marking for the course which I was tutoring at the time.  Around this time, my gran, who had been very fragile for a while, fell and fractured her hip, which necessitated a long stay in hospital.  So juggling everything else with hospital visiting, family calls etc. was a difficult job.  Something good did come out of this though, in the early hours of a Sunday morning I completed a job application form, and a month later I secured my job at UCE (now Birmingham City University).

I remember one really stressful Friday afternoon, when I was sitting the exam in Wolverhampton – in fact apart from my PRINCE2 practitioner exams it’s the last time that I sat an exam despite all the courses I’ve since taken. 

The memory of this came back to me really clearly this afternoon.  OK, I was on the other side of the examiner’s desk, invigilating a databases exam (shudder), but there was the same pressure for exam marking, and planning to visit someone in hospital this evening, who has broken her arm in three places.

I’m fully aware that there have been some 2200 other days since then when I’ve not been in an exam situation whilst not having the pressure of exam marking and not visiting someone in hospital afterwards… but it still feels slightly strange having recognised the similarities.

Now if only I could experience winning the lottery this Saturday.