Reach for the stars...

niccatw

I've been practising the breathing thing this evening! Now I just need to generalise it over into the car .

You're right Maty. It's quite a handy trick.

niccatw

Greeting from a very frsoty Scotland tonight. It looks gorgeous!

Luckily I now have my very own wearable sleeping bag to tramp around in. :j
The post office was a nightmare though. It was queued out and I was there for 45 minutes. I really felt for most of the staff (not the one sitting in the background footering about on her mobile. Pah!).

Rumour has it many companies are not refusing to post to Scotland due to the back log caused last week. No idea if that's actually true!

And Royal Mail are obviously trying their best as we got post yesterday (Sunday).

Have roasties in the oven and then must bash on with the lack of course work...

(Got more hours at second job this weekend and New Year weekend - which is double -time - I am determined to half that RBS loan as quickly as I possibly can!!!! Keep and eye on my signature )

niccatw

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x3t9v

DIY SOS - it's official!

MatyMoo

niccatw wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x3t9v

DIY SOS - it's official!

:j:j:j :T:T:T :j:j:j :T:T:T :j:j:j :T:T:T :j:j:j :T:T:T :j:j:j

Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

Nice write up too

Yay to getting your sleeping bag thingumy , sounds like you could need it by the end of the week .

Bah to hours in the post office :eek:

Double yay to double time :T:j Good luck with halving the pesky loan

Yum, love roast potatoes (& parsnips and carrots!) Enjoy

My niece has a couple of Christmas gifts on their way down from Scotland and is panicking they won't be here in time. But haven't heard that businesses are now not shipping north of the border.

And as you can tell, I have no musical knowledge whatsoever. Didn't get anything right in the XFactor Final. Oooops!!!!

Have a good week

Maty
-x-

MatyMoo

Seems you were right - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11980827

niccatw

Oh burger!

I think I might neglect to mention this to mum!!! Who will be waiting for my nephew's christmas present to arrive from Amazon!

I have my bag thingy (ParcelForce) and my Amazon delivery with mum's present safe in hand now. I'm still waiting on another Amazon delivery, but that's just for me so I'll survive! (Though I won't looking as spiffing as I will once I have it as it's an Ayurvedic beauty book! :rotfl::rotfl:)

Maty, I'm a sucker for Olly Murs song Thinking of Me (Shhh, don't tell the cool people; they won't like it.)

niccatw

Ok...

5 assessments down...

1 case study to go... by noon on Friday!

I can't see how it's doable! It's a pretty indepth case-study, linked to lots of the various evidence bases out there - and I know I haven't done anywhere near enough reading!

So, my options are

1. Hand in something flung together that I know will fail, so I can redo it on a second attempt (which I do get for the case study).

2. Hand in something that might just accidently scrape a pass and then mess up my chances of getting the marks needed just in case I ever wanted (or got the funding) to complete the second year...

3. Ask for an extention. ...Which probably really wouldn't help much at this time of year!

Any-one hazard a guess as to why I've never bl**dy learned NOT to leave things until the last minute!

niccatw

Ok, so I bit the bullet, phoned uni and explained my case-study was never going to pass.

And asked what my options were. In the end we agreed to an extension to the 5th January.

I also had my meeting with my boss, which I've been asking for for weeks and she kept re-arranging.

She said she spoke to my supervisor. So I reckon boss has been putting me off until she spoke to supervisor. Which I actually think is a bit sh*t given I asked for the meeting when I came back from my week off in November and I told her why I wanted the meeting.

But hey ho! Upshot is we have to have a meeting with the three of us together to "be honest with each other and talk about our fellings." I can't really type what I think about that on here!!!

So, here's where I'm coming from - I find her (supervisor) very difficult to work with because I find her very inconsistent. In that I always feel as though I am being pressuriesd into agreeing to more than I feel comfortable with and I never feel as though questions are actually choices.

So my stress levels go up and I go all quiet and petulant. Then I get angry. But at me because I didn't say anything.

Though again I find it difficult to tell her these things as I always get a "but..." and then lots of further questions which I feel are pushing me to agree, when that's not what I want to do.

I appreciate we are very different and we work in very different ways and that doesn't necessarily have to change, but I think we maybe need to understand how the other person works better.

But how the h*ll do I articulate all this in a positve way when I hate talking about these things at the best of times! All advice welcome, needed and apreciated!!!

And we'll probably both be going into the meeting a little on the defensive!

On the plus side I think my boss realised I wasn't just being a mardy a55 and that actually I perhaps wasn't back to my normal self yet. (Can't think what gave that away given when Iasked for the week off at short notice, I said it was because I was feeling stressed and just needed not to be at work!) Though I do get the feeling that she thinks 6 months on all should be fine!

Teeny, weeny baby steps, one forward , three back...

(And I feel I should actually point out that I do like my supervisor as a person. I just feel we have very different outlooks that don't necessarily match in working practice!)

MatyMoo

Hi Nicca

Been thinking about you and the dreaded supervisor all day. Like you, I hate these sort of confrontations but sometimes they have to be done and you will have your Manager there to mediate.

I have a habit of not being able to say what I want to say (& getting mad at myself) so in this instance I would probably write down bullet point styly the things that I want to get across with reasons and examples and take that with me.

The other thing I would (have done) is pretend that this is for a colleague and not me as I am very good at fighting for others rights and leaving myself to take all the sh1te.

Sometimes you don't need to be positive or constructive, you just need to say what is bothering you, why and how these situations make you feel. and it is up to the Supervisors and Managers to work it out from there. After all they are paid more to be able to deal with extra's like managing staff (& conflicts)!!!

Good luck my lovely, at the end of the day it is only a job and it REALLy isn't worth you getting your self stressed to the degree that you have to demand time off to calm down or unwind. (And yes, I know it pays the bills so it is easier to say than do).

Maty
-x-

niccatw

Cheers Maty! When I went back to work in May, I had, in my mind, decided that I'd give it two years... which I figured was enough time to get the debts to a manageable (if not gone!) level and me to a place where I want to be in my personal life (by which I just mean getting rid of the clutter, doing things like yoga and sewing and spending more time with the people who make me laugh...). If by that point work was the thing stressing me out, then it was time to change that.

I've only been back 6 months and I'm playing it by ear. I like the rest of the team I work with (mostly); it's just the ones in the same profession as me that I have trouble with! I don't know what that says about our profession as a whole!!!

If I could get to the stage where it was feasible to go part time, then that would be good. I could explore other things I love to do and make new vocation out of them (Any-one know how much you can get paid annually for sleeping?).

I spoke to one of my other colleagues today. She's been through the same meeting with the same two people (regarding the same supervisor!!!). She says they'll both bottle it and not say much. So if I want anything sorted, it'll have to come down to me.

Which means I will need a list of bullet point lists!

And I think you're right - I can only tell them how I feel.

So I need to keep it to the more objective. I don't respond well when I feel I am being pressured, be that being expected to take x amount of people onto the caseload in one go, or being asked to explain what I am going to do with some-one before I have met them. Those things send my stress levels sky high and I then shut down and don't do anything.

Question is, what do I need!!! (Valium? )

* Probaby a feeling of control rather than being controlled!
* Manageable chunks. Not looking at the entire waiting list in one go as it's long and it's scary!
* Feeling that decisions are being made with and not about me.

A goddamn halo and a payrise!