[Note: This is just a personal update and will have little to do with language study, so feel free to ignore]
Hello everyone! I haven’t posted anything in a while so I thought I’d update everyone on how I’m going (and give myself a chance to complain/rant, haha).
So, I’m currently in my 4th week of my university bridging course. I’m doing fairly well, but am kind of bored since everything is very basic. I did very high-level subjects in year 12, so most of the concepts in this bridging course are more than familiar to me. It has been helpful in understanding how this university works and the expectations of me as a uni student, but I’ve been struggling to stay focused for long and get work done for reasons I shall explain in the next paragraph. I’ve been graded on a few assignments so far though and am doing fairly well, so that’s good.
Anyway, so... People who have read my previous posts may remember I’ve been struggling with fatigue and general joint point for a while now. Often when I go to the GP I’m met with “It’s just mental health, talk to your counselor” and a list of ‘sleep hygiene’ habits to adopt to help improve my fatigue. Anyway, after a lot of doctors and a lot of explaining and confusion and frustration, my doctor ordered a blood test to investigate my iron levels, as well as a few other fancy names of things I couldn’t quite understand at the time. A week later, I go back to see what the results show. She looks at the results, turns to me and says “you have the Ross River virus.” For those of you who don’t know, the Ross River virus (or Ross River fever) is a mosquito-borne virus that can cause chronic fatigue, severe joint pain, dizziness, as well as a plethora of other ‘flu-like’ symptoms. All of which I’ve been experiencing. I honestly nearly cried because I finally had an answer. However, the problem is that there’s no current treatment for it. Sufferers can experience symptoms up to weeks, months, and for us lucky few, a year or more. I was given some strategies to manage the chronic fatigue and joint pain as a result of Ross River, though there’s nothing much I can do besides just wait til I get better. It could be a week, a month, a year, or even a decade, I don’t know. I just know that this is something I’ve had to live with for so many years, and this is something I feel I’ll be figuring out how to manage for quite a while more.
So, with this in mind, I haven’t really had the energy to focus on my language studies. I shall try to start a new, more flexible, routine that will allow me to complete my uni work and study both Korean and French. I’m sorry for not posting for a while, and shall try to update this page more in the future :)