Life is the null hypothesis

Over the past few days, my thoughts have been sinking back to the same beaten tracks, probably not helped by my weekend binge.

On Tuesday I woke and felt like I'd been slammed by a tonne of bricks – likely due to my total lack of sleep and damage I'd done to my body. I managed to haul myself to work listening more to The Power of Now and feeling quite serene. Sylvie came to see me first thing to talk about what happened. That she woke up in the middle of the night and thought to herself that her colleagues making her cry was not okay and that it needed to be fixed, and if there was anything she could do to help push through the validation, she would do it.

This sounds very similar to my experience a few weeks ago when my colleagues were permitted to make changes to the proposal, thereby sending the message that passive-aggressive bullying is okay.

I agreed with Sylvie - that it is not okay - and that something needed to be done.

I wanted to dedicate most of my time to formatting the validation document but as usual there were various interruptions at work. One of my second year groups came to see me (Jimi, Melody, Rebecca) to say they had nothing for their presentation next week. Basically they had focused on their Photographing the City presentation and thought they could wing it by making something up last minute.They are headed for a fail at this rate, but it is the time to let them fail as they need to learn their lesson.

We were supposed to see Hassan the Dean to talk about the atrocious behaviour in the cluster but he postponed. Andy Rees popped by to ask if I was okay, which I thought was nice of him.However, the news of my anxiety and mental breakdown spreading around the department doesn't really make me feel great.

I spent most of the day pointlessly formatting tables and writing what assessments went with what modules. I am hoping this document is a bare minimum pass. Julia and Sylvie were amrking presentations for Photographing the City and swung by at the end of the day and invited me for wine and chips. After having coffee and chocolate, I decided to join them. Initially I tried to have a diet coke, but ended up drinking white wine with them.

We ended up botching a lot about work. I think the tide is turning with the media 11. People are starting to realise the cabal isn't all it cracked up to be and, of course, people are worried about their jobs. We did end up talking about the universe again for some reason.

I have been thinking that we fear death when in fact life is the null hypotheses - the weird anomaly outside of the norm. So why do we prize something so temporary when in fact we should accept that the world will endure?

We got really drunk after 3 bottles of wine and I walked home, picking up a McDonald's on the way back. I scoffed a Big Mac and talked to David on the phone before watching Hey Qween on the sofa.

I woke up at 1.10am with American Dad on the TV, and hauled myself to my proper bed. I slept somewhat disturbed and woke again around 7.30am. Feeling fuzzy headed, I wished I hadn't drank so much NOR eaten the McDonald's. I checked my phone for about 30 minutes before getting up and getting showered, feeling a somewhat grey veil over the day.

I took my journey to work very slowly, buying a skinny hazlenut latte from Costa coffee and walking in. The third years did a 'practice run' of their presentations. I felt very tired and unenthused, which is ashame. But quite frankly I feel ready for them to go, and I want it to be the end of the teaching year so badly. Jess's group presented Kinkex – an app for condom company Durex. Katie's group have a very bog standard strategy of El Torneo for Bacardi. The last group – Ben, Nicole and Gavin – presented a rather disappointing proposition for Burger King. And when I told them it would probably get a 2:2 they went into absolute meltdown.

They have had 12 weeks to figure this out, but they started blaming me for not being around (kazakhstan, mental breakdown). However we fleshed it out to come up with a PR-able idea - #BKKeepIt100. being 100% honest on social media about the whoppers they've told in the past.

Joela, a student having financial difficulties, popped by my office and just cried. I gave her some tough love saying that she had made excuses not to attend and saying you don't have enough money to get to uni is not satisfactory – if she can't afford it she will only make her problems worse. I did, however, give her a hug at the end of the conversation.

I tried really hard to keep formatting the document, but my mind just wandered. I instead set up a load of social media accounts for my new business – The Ideas Atelier. The company name got approved today and so I thought I would push it forward. But then I started to get bogged down in the details. Too many things, too thinly spread a focus.

I went to a training session on calling potential students to get them to accept their offers, which felt like we were turning into telemarketers rather than academics. Afterwards I decided to go straight home, being that I was tired.

The tiredness is getting to me and making the days blur into one, which is exactly what started my panic attacks in the first place. But I am a bit stuck until this validation document is done.

I went home and tried to nap for 2 hours but to no avail, so I decided to catch up with my blogging. I may go for a walk and have a bath before another early night. I clearly need a break from boozing and to flush out my system with water and exercise.