Today is a good day. My job search training has finished, I had the best hot chocolate this side of the milky way, and I got 88% and 90% for chem assignments 1 and 2 respectively. I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing though. An irc friend said memorization does not equal understanding and I think they're right. It comes back to maths too - I think I need to sit down with some finger puppets ^_^
Also I visited my local library for the first time. It is very small but it has a lovely proper library type atmosphere. I actually wanted to sit down and read in there! Kew and Hawthorn libraries don't make me feel like that. It even has its own little history rooms (where I found a bigass novel on MLC which made me cringe). Anyway I need to expand my horizons a bit (I can't believe I'm saying this after my refusal in year 8), and got three books. The first is called "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley which I found in the philosophy section. After seeing the first episode of a show on SBS about a little girl who is taken back in time through the history of philosophy my interest was piqued. I chose this book because the reviews basically says he cuts through the bullshit and gets to the point. I saw a Descartes book there but the title put me off (so shallow I am). This is the one I'm most interested in reading. I read a few pages in the car, right now a Russian anarchist is escaping from prison. The next book is Tolstoys Anna Karenina. I made a promise to myself that I would read more literature and why not start with a Russian? That and I couldn't be bothered using the computers to look for anything else. It was just sitting there and I thought why not - the best way to choose a book! Finally I also got "On Giants Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries from Archimedes to DNA" by Melvyn Bragg. I wanted a science book just to round it all out but everything was either mid high school science or stuff that I had no concept of. Plus this book said on the back that it might just get the reader interested in science! Which I am but it's a very tentative and scared interest.

I have not got books from a library to read for years. It's exciting and I felt so happy doing it, just like I used to!! I have no idea what's good or what's bad, and it's a nice liberating feeling. After years of restricting myself to SF because it was safe, it's nice to just jump in with knowledge and thus no judgement. I've done that for too long.

I still feel sick about the test (allegedly due tomorrow but I will do it on Saturday and study for it tomorrow) because even though I've done those two assignments, right now I feel like I know nothing about chem!! I know that's untrue, and that I'm really really tired from not sleeping and getting up early for centrelink, but it's a bit like standing at the edge of a cliff and having to jump off without knowing for sure if your hanger glider is gonna hold you up.