The candle burning on both ends!

This week I have started my secular studies. Because I have ten years at my current job, I qualify for a fast track “experience route” entry into membership of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). This in turn needs an accredited degree, or in my fast track case, three modules form the final year of an accredited degree in order to satisfy the RICS’ academic requirements. From there it would be a question of satisfactorily completing their Assessment of Professional Competence (APC).

The course that I am studying from is the College of Estate Management’s Diploma in Surveying.

Now that I’ve started, this has been the week from hell – and it is not showing any signs of getting any easier for me. Talk about jumping in at the deep end! I’ve started studying Year-3 “Applied Valuation” without ever having studied valuation, or having dealt with it at work! Well, Chinese normally makes more sense than what I am reading I can tell you that much.

So this week has seen me putting in eleven-hour workdays: I get in at 8:00am and work through until 2:30pm, and then study straight through until 7:00pm. To say the least, this week has been exhausting. I have not seen much of my family, and so I got out early Friday afternoon and we have come over to our plot of land in La Linea, Spain to stay for the night in our caravan. I managed to put-in a few hours of studying under a sun-canopy while enjoying the al-fresco approach to my studies.

Eli meanwhile showed his usual sense of bravado when it got dark. Grabbing hold of mummy’s hand he said, “Don’t worry mummy, if there are any tigers or bears here I’ll punch them away!”