Talk about dumbing-down - Macroeconomics exam today was not 'two questions from a choice of three in each of two sections, two hours' but 'one question from a choice of two in each of two sections, two hours'. The questions were longer, but it is laughable to claim they were twice as long. If I pass, that's why, and I won't consider it legitimate unless I'm at least out of the bottom quartile. And I won't be.

Because I'm useless at algebraic manipulation, graphical manipulation and essentially the logic of economics. The spark has quite spectacularly fizzled out, and the course now seems deadly dull and dreadfully difficult.

Politics, on the other hand, feels alarmingly manageable. I say 'alarmingly' because I was still convinced that in fact I am a mathematician making excuses for his non-ability even in mathematics by taking a cowardly way out towards a pure essay subject, one that just about anyone can do. Clearly, Politics must be lacking in rigour if I, a mathematical type, can do better in it than Economics.

Never did I consider the possibility that I am in fact better at essays; that their internal logic is more suited to my autistic mind than algebraic manipulation; that my way with words exacerbates this advantage in essay-writing, allowing for interesting and/or concise expressions of ideas, a talent further honed through my lyric writing (lawks, five years I've been doing that now - doesn't feel it, but then I couldn't imagine a time when I wasn't doing it now). Two years not studying maths can't have helped, but I suspect it wasn't the critical factor.

Spoke to my tutor, who was most helpful, and pointed out that many Aspies are told they're 'meant' to be mathematical when their talents may lie elsewhere. And so it is that two of my four courses for the next few months have been changed, of which the critical change is the addition of a research module in Politics, which acts as preparation for a dissertation.

Read that again. Twelve months after the ill-fated decision to chase the Econometrics stream, I have decided to do a dissertation in a subject I wasn't even studying until two years after it was first a possibility for me.

Who can say if this is a change for the better...

So, The Mennyms. Auditions this week.

I only went and did one. I was hoping to glean information on how these worked, and also on the musical itself and its writing.
( At one end of the South Hampshire conurbation, Havant and Waterlooville were ready to shock the country. At the other, I was merely about to surprise myself. )

That's my decision made. I am now going to become vegetarian, and at least some of the money saved on not having singing lessons will go on eating alternatives. I'd already phased out most of my meat-eating at university through a simple meat -> Quorn substitution; the main implication of this decision is to inform others, preventing them from providing me with meat. This might be problematic, as in the inability to make the normal substitution when eating out I may have an awful lot of problems finding something I do like...