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I didn't mean to sound like I'm sulking. Just naturally the couples will stay together and have conversations that I can't relate to. This usually leaves me with no social participation and makes for a pretty boring day. I love both my sister's boyfriend and sister-in-law and don't mean to say that I wish either were gone. Also, our family has a very sweet, loving, and sadly high-maintenance dog, so it's probably for the better that I'm there to make sure he gets his medicines throughout the day. I hope that clears up the FML a little! Happy holidays!

OP here. I wasn't expecting this to get published. The longer version of the story is that with a couple of friends I decided to go on a hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge on the banks of the Yangtze River. One of the big problems with the hike is the altitude. Much of the hike is at around 2km above sea level. Basically, after around 4 hours of hiking almost continuously uphill I was pretty tired. One friend was also tired and took an offer to get a donkey ride to the top of the 28 bends (the most notoriously difficult part of the whole 2-day hike). The woman who owned the donkey wasn't actually that old, probably early 50's (I'm 40ish) and works taking travellers to the top of the bends. I was tempted to also get a donkey but elected to instead give my backpack to my friend on the donkey and try to race him up the slope on foot. The two of us actually hiking the bends set off while the woman who owned the donkey saddled it. I actually felt pretty good that it was only at the 16th bend that she managed to catch up with us. That was until I noticed that she'd decided that my bag was too heavy for the donkey and she was carrying it herself! But in the end I did complete the entire hike. Got some amazing photos and really enjoyed myself. Probably got a bit fitter too.

Hey, everyone, OP here! Thank you for everyone's kind words, and the play did indeed go to plan apart from that little hiccup. Extra little story: We had another show on the next day, and during the exact same scene, the exact same co-actor clinked her glass against mine so hard that it broke. I think she might have taken the drunkenness a bit too seriously. Fun times.

OP here! I didn't think my FML would get posted so I didn't create an account until now, haha. First, thank you all for your suggestions and understanding! Now, to clarify some things...(long comment incoming!) 1. I actually started researching for this assignment on Christmas (My family doesn't celebrate Christmas or New Years so I had no holiday celebrations to distract me). The institutional login went down on the 31st of December and during that time, I had just finished reading textbooks and articles on the Cognitive Metaphor Theory and have only started to look for articles related to my text and such. So yes, I spent 6 days reading up and researching more on the theory because I didn't understand it. Although I'm a second year English major, English is not my first language and it definitely isn't my country's national language either, so I had some trouble with certain words and concepts. 2. My classes officially ended after the first week of December, my class had consultations with our lecturers in the following week. It's not encouraged to start writing essays before the consultations because our ideas can be rejected and in Year 2, rejection is a high probability because we "need to be more unique" and "everything has been done to death". Also, paying attention in class rarely (in my experience) helps in university, especially for a course like mine because what you learn in class may never be applied in your essays. But yes, I actually did go and see my lecturer to have her explain things to me after each class, the unfortunate thing is that she speaks in a roundabout way so even when I ask her to clarify things further, it still makes no sense. Hence I often end up learning everything again by myself. 3. I had a 3000 word essay on Victorian Literature on top of this Stylistics essay. It's completely my fault for underestimating how much time and research I needed on my assignments (I spent two whole weeks on my Vic Lit essay) because I thought that my anxiety and perfectionist-tendencies wouldn't go insane this time round. 4. The Institutional login issue is a campus-wide one. Despite this, none of my classmates and I have the balls ask for a deadline extension. Prior to this issue, it has already been extended by a day and most of us don't want to bother our lecturer since she's the nicest one and the only one who really cares so far. She's also new and has done a lot for us (as in helping us catch up with the basics we weren't taught in Year 1 so that we can understand Stylistics). Also, as soon as it opened, I went over to the library to ask about what happened and they told me that the IT department decided to "restart" the servers, which I find ridiculous because it's less than a week away from examinations period and the majority of the university have their assignments due before examinations period starts. 5. My classmates are unfortunately on the same boat as I am, meaning, none of us get Stylistics enough to teach someone else. We've spent our entire time in Stylistics trying to catch up on the basics of Linguistics while learning Stylistics at the same time so a lot of whatever that's taught in Stylistics flew over our heads. 6. There's no "winter break" for my university because my country is a tropical country (which is weird because we have "summer break". Christmas is unfortunately also viewed as one of the minor holidays so no, there's no study break during Christmas as well, but it's still a public holiday. I hope that clears some things up! Also, I'm a 'she/her/female' :)