pain

I just want to give you a general advice (yes Macko’s blog is full of useful tips). Don’t eat a sandwich for lunch together with two cups of coffee and dinner three hour after. That alone is far from satisfying especially for a person like me who need to eat more than four times per day. Anyway I stayed at school for another two hours and was completely drained of energy when I came back (thank god that no one was in the corridor when I came back since I’m not the most sociable creature when I’m hungry…). I had a big plate of pasta salad and I started to feel a soaring pain in my stomach shortly after 5 minutes of frenetic munching. My stomach was obviously fed up with my way of treating it “-coffee and virtually no food what the hell were you thinking?!” I had to pay the price and I was forced to go home from the pre-party I went to after dinner. I felt miserable since I didn’t like the thought of going to Umeå Open (a concert) with an agonising pain in my stomach. I phoned home and my father answered. He managed to calm me down since he was convinced that the pain would go away soon and he also managed to give a biological explanation. The pain subsided a few minutes after our conversation and I was able to go to the concert and have a really good time.

Downhill skiing

Frequent readers of this blog know that I have tried downhill skiing before in a small slope outside Umeå. I am back from a four days experience in Kitellfjäll. It is situated in the 400 km north west of Umeå and it is a part of Skanderna which is a very old mountain chain. I’m not a very experienced skier so I started with a smaller slope and yes I had fairly good control over the icy surface. I can’t say that I wanted to try the bigger slopes but you don’t pay 2 000 kr to spend four days in a beginners slope. So it was time to turn up the heat, to take the big lift up to the highest slope. I have to admit that I’m a little afraid of heights and I felt weak even if the view was breathtaking. My brother and his two friends started descending one of the slopes and waited for me before it started to go sheer down. I said to myself “fine I can do this I know how to break and I can always do that if I’m going too fast...-I’m approaching the others and it is time to slow down but nothing happens (!) panic, I have to stop my velocity at all cost so I decide to go for the only thing I can think of, to fall. The problem with that breaking technique is that you have very little control over where you’re going. I tumbled straight into one of Erik’s friends and knocked him over and continued for another 10 meters. Too experience such a fall during the first day is not good for your ability to sky and I lost everything I had learnt so far. I wished myself back in my student room in Umeå but I was still on that damn mountain and I had to get down somehow. I was too afraid to ski down so my kind and helpful brother and I walked town that slope and it took us almost half an hour. This might sound like a total disaster but the trip to Kittelfjäl turned out to be great. I’m still a pretty lousy skier but I learnt a lot and mountains mixed with good company is a combination I really can recommend.

Massage 2

Don’t get too excited…two new texts in just one day. I just want to give you a short update on my massage venture. I know I know it might not be the funniest thing in the world reading about my ailments…but I’ll try to make a point out of it so it might be worth reading anyway. The masseur was able to detect some seriously malfunctioning back-muscles. They are tense very tense which means that they are working overtime - wouldn’t you get all worn out if you never had time to rest?? Well that is exactly what is happening with some of my muscles, 24 hours shift with no rest (!) The bright side of this rather gloomy diagnose is that it can be fixed! With lots of stretching and work out sessions at the gym and (my wallet won’t like this) some more massage hours. The point I’m trying to make (yes I told you about a point in the beginning) is that it is DEFINITELY worth to make sure that your body is feeling alright, the amount of time it will take to fix is nothing compared to the agony you experience while in pain.

massage

I have just eaten a toast and a sandwich and I had intended to do some studding, but I don’t have enough motivation to do it right now so I’m writing something on my blog instead. I have had a back problem for more than 3 years now, I don’t think it is nothing serious and that is probably the most logical explanation why I haven’t done anything about it. Well to be honest I have been to a physiotherapist a couple of times and been sent home with a list of different exercises. I have carried out the programs for at least four weeks without the slightest improvement and have finally been too tired of doing them every night. Maybe I need to be more patient but effort and result is something which normally is closely connected so I have almost in some tragic way accepted that my back hurts every evening and morning. To be in pain is never pleasant and I have finally decided to make another try with my back. I will this very evening go to a masseur and it will hopefully (fingers crossed) improve my back condition and also give me more information on what is wrong with it.

For the sake of yourself

The university is a great arena for loads of things; you might for example be on a dead boring lecture wondering what the hell I’m I doing here? Or you might have a giving discussion about something that actually has something to do with your education (or a less giving discussion about how awful the cheap coffee tastes). Being a student is normally expensive you borrow money every month and you will end up with a nifty load in the region of 250 000 sek (20 000$) it is a respectable amount of money and you really want to make sure that you can start to pay back as soon as possible. My point is that it is of vital importance to you that your education is of high quality and that you as a student make the most of it. You wouldn’t buy a car for 300 000 kr if you know that the tires would fall of after a couple of miles and you would definitely not crash a brand new car into a brick wall… I’m a teacher student at the University of Umeå and there is a debate going on whether our program is good enough. Students are moaning about how rubbish everything is and constantly questioning the different classes they are taking, it could sound like this “oo this sucks why haven’t they removed this course yet?”. Okay I have to admit that there are a couple of things that isn’t as good as it could be. There is, for example a lack of control. It is perfectly possible to go to a seminar in lets say English without having read the book the seminar is about (yeah I know it sound like a joke but it is happening) there is also a need for raised standards. I am of the opinion that students definitely would work harder and see it more as a challenge if some classes were more demanding. But I also think that some students must change their attitudes. You are only fooling yourself if you constantly are looking for short cuts when it is time for a group assignment or group work. You might have an easy time at the university but the short cut may prove to be a detour in the end.