Entering The 2nd Year

Well we've been back for a mere 9 days and ive been off university for 4 days as well as 2 days for the weekend and my day off twice in the 2 weeks so far. Im in my 2nd week of being back in this 1st term and ive been off since last Wednesday as I contracted a serious viral infection.

Before I even came back to university, I've been so stressed out to the point I've had to seek mental counselling due to the state I was in all the time. A load of nightmarish things happened to me during the time I finished year 1 and joined this year including major family problems, my neighbours dog barking all day everyday and also 3DS not working at all, no matter what I did.

I was so stressed out and dreading the course so much, I considered quitting to be honest. I finally solved my 3DS Max problem but I have to wait for my new copy to arrive as its 8 days late and apparently its due on Friday now, after I rang the company. Im undergoing counselling too but after 3-4 days at being back to uni or w/e, I fell hugely ill with a viral infection hence Ive been off since then and still not made any signs of recovery so far.


As it is i'm stressed to breaking point, but now Im very worried about how far behind I am with this now, it doesnt help I dont have 3DS Max on me yet nor having any practise with it in the holidays either. I chose the most demanding pathway of the 3 too, Virtual Environments. In order to pass, we have to at least 40 hours a week with it, although Im hoping that does mean divided along the 3 modules, 120 hours a week is just impossible of course o_0.

Before I fell ill though, I did get to meet all the tutors for Virtual Environments and get a grasp of each of the 3 modules. Im studying Animation, Visualisation and Games Design, the latter being the one I'm most excited about tbh :).

The Visualisation is being taught by a 3D Artist from a company specialising in 3D design work and Games Design is taught by a 3D Games Artist from the former company Free Radical and now based at Eurocom. I actually found to be able to be taught by people from backgrounds like this quite a privilege and fascinating, their showreels were definitely impressive as well!

After looking at the projects for the 3 modules, I do love what we have to do actually, it does look fun, interesting and rewarding in the end definitely. All 3 are very demanding beyond belief though and I am intimidated whether I can actually manage to do well in them tbh, especially designing an outer space or underwater based roller coaster for Visualisation, Animation is probably going to be the one I find easiest somehow. For Games Design, I have to develop a completely new, unique and fun card game to play which I feel pretty intimidated by, but I need to be able to do stuff like this and get my creativity flowing bigtime if I want to land the career Im after, so theres a lot of pressure on me at the moment. Animation has us building and animating a robot which will be the victim of a comedic gag, one that will be something like a banana skin on the floor but with our own unique twist to make it fresh. I believe Im more capable of doing this than the other 2, as Im forming ideas of how Id like to do it already.

Since Ive come back, Ive had to miss my tutorial session and my first SSP2 session as well as this weeks seminars and the like for VE, which is a huge setback, as Im off for the rest of the week too.
I've had to make huge sacrifices too, I quit my Japanese supplementary course to ease a lot of pressure and free up as much time as possible, I also have taken a 9 month break roughly from my hobby work to focus on my uni projects as well.

To be honest though, I dont mean to be so negative at the start of my new year, but I will need a miracle to get through this. The work we have to do is pretty exciting and interesting, but due to all these complications I keep suddenly suffering and fear of not being capable enough to succeed enough, its going be a battle on the scale of life and death in some ways to get through this, but im sure it will really have its rewards when I do get through it.
Although, I have to say...next summer cant roll around fast enough =/.