More than halfway through.

More than halfway through it all and almost halfway through the first semester of year four. Time moves. I feel totally different to how I felt before. I'm more at ease with learning. I'm wanting to learn loads. There's always another 'why?' or 'how?'

Strangely I find the more I think I know and the more it permeates my life, I'm left with a ripple of discord, that on occasion surges into a torrent, where who I think I am, or where I am, is put to question again and again. It's unsettling, but I see it as a process. I'm kind of caught between two worlds. I'm not sure if it's a choice or not or how I got here, the realisation happened after the transition started! I'm guessing there are loads of students go through this kind of thing. They'll no doubt be theories and counter theories to explain it away. But it is strange and rather exciting at the sametime and I'm wondering where it'll take me.

So even though the ground seems a little unsettled and challenging now, Uni is where I belong. No where is perfect but my consistent experience of Uni life and interaction with those there, is that I'm welcomed, equal and have just as much right to be there, to fail or succeed as anyone else. Of course I want to succeed, but it's the experience of being saturated in learning, both taught and self taught, that provides the evolution of real value, regardless of success.

Yet sometimes it feels like I'm only paddling! I have no choice but to balance being a mother to two children with their own particular needs and demands, and my studying. I want to do both things well - really well, yet my motivation and energy levels make it implausible. I have to be mum, run the house, run the PA/carer company, be a manager to the PAs/carers, ensure my kids needs are met, take LittleBoo to her medical appointments, go to my own medical appointments, support TeenBoo with his needs, look after the ridiculous number of lovely animals we have and somewhere in there, somehow try and find a little bit of time for me to 'just be.' At times it's laughable. I try hard to keep up with friends but we all lead such hectic and full on lives - it's often impossible.

At the same time I'm making new friends at Uni and wanting to spend time with those who share similar ideas and values to mine. And that's quite hard because although I'm excited and extremely happy to meet new people, I'm often nearly running on empty from everything else and feel I sometimes may find it hard to give enough.

I often wish I were younger! I feel like I'm only just beginning my life and yet I'm 46! Like most everyone, I feel young but as my mother kindly reminded me, I'm middle aged! I never thought they'd be so much welcome destruction and construction going on for me. Fundamentally I'm obviously still me, yet even at this stage, only half way through my under graduate Uni experience, I've already changed, grown, and developed in to a revised more confident and thinking me. Ironically before Uni I was often accused of thinking far too much and too deeply about things - and it wasn't a compliment! Now I feel I'm in place to develop my thinking further, which I'm sure will mean I become more comfortable within myself, and of course inevitably, with myself. It's all good.