When I was about ten years old, a doctor told me that I had terrible tonsils. My mum refused to allow them to be removed, claiming that they are my first line of defence. It turns out that this means I get lots of tonsillitis, while they defend me against various invading forces. Or something.

I haven’t had it for a while, but following a fairly strenuous period since Christmas, they have now exploded, and ow! But it’s never just a sore throat, is it? I also have immense back pain, throbbing headache, hot-cold-shiverings, and great fatigue. This is not ideal.

Mum suggests that I could solve all the world’s problems, or at least improve my own health, by giving up breastfeeding, which, she says, takes a lot out of me. I was thinking about this yesterday evening, while sitting comfortably (despite the back pain) on the chair in Bernard’s bedroom, peacefully feeding him to sleep. It was a pleasant half hour during which I could do nothing but rest and relax. Meanwhile, here are a few other things that take a lot out of me, which I have also considered giving up:

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Until a few months ago, it was about 15 years since I last wrote an essay. Essays, as I recalled, were things you concentrated on. They were performed by taking the question, an A4 pad, and a lot of pens to the library, making a lot of notes, planning a structure, and then fitting the notes and quotes into the structure, with appropriate padding. This process could take a number of days, depending on your motivation/distraction levels at the time, but by the very definition of being at university, you didn’t really have anything much better to do.

It’s just not the same anymore. Now that I’m a grown up, I don’t have the luxury of time to sit at the window on the 7th floor of the Brynmore Jones, doodling in the margins of some treatise by Freud. Nor do I have an A4 pad. Back when I were a lass, it was still acceptable – nay, normal – to submit handwritten work.

I have written six essays in the last six months, despite working four days a week, running a home, and wrangling an alternatively active or sick toddler.^[1] I have two more to complete by the end of April.

I enjoy essay writing far more now than I did at university. I absolutely relish it. The research! The books! Finding references and getting ideas and planning it all out! Slotting it all into place, and editing – oh, I never did much of that before! But now I drop a grade if I go more than 10% over the word limit, so editing is required. The 10% under has not, so far, been a problem. I have to squeeze most of my writing into my working day, but when nearing completion I have been known to sit at my computer late on a Friday night, polishing and perfecting my work. Tonight I have submitted a piece entitled, rather vaguely, “think about a group of which you have been a part,” with half a dozen sub-questions about group dynamics. Having done a little organisation theory at uni, I had some ideas, but this was the most challenging essay so far; certainly the most academic, although my piece on the early breastfeeding experiences of first time mothers in my area was astoundingly well researched (and I got an A).

I am really enjoying this course. After all these years, getting back into studying is like having a really good stretch when you wake up. It’s that satisfying.

1. and yet I also watch more TV than I ever have in my life [↩]