I've been feeling a little under the weather for several days now, and I'm pretty sure it's not just because I had a tooth extracted yesterday.

To be honest the experience was far from enjoyable. The dentist accidentally spilt a tiny bit of anaesthetic in my mouth - it tasted foul, and the assistant had forgotten to set up water for me to wash my mouth out with, so I had to wait for a while trying not to swallow. Then you have all the fun of the dentist reaching inside your mouth with tools you close your eyes to avoid seeing and this supremely unpleasant and lengthy sensation of pulling... and occasionally slipping, or cracking off a bit of the crown of my tooth instead. She warned me that would happen, but it was NOT nice. They let me take the tooth home but I took one look at it and threw it away in horror. Ewwww. I walked back to college with gauze in my mouth and instructions to rinse my mouth with warm salt water three times a day for five days. That required me to go out and buy salt! So here I am, according to logic, only three-quarters as wise as I should be.

But that's not why I'm feeling ill - that started before the trip to the dentist, though the tooth-extraction didn't exactly help matters. I've been feeling tired and occasionally shivery, and having difficulty eating as much as I usually eat. It could be nerves prior to graduation, one of those inexplicable occasions with amazingly complex dress code; I always seem to screw up dress codes, and this time around we have hoods and bands and madness too. It could be the fact that my director of studies decided to go to a research workshop in Edinburgh in the week between us getting our results and the graduation dinner tonight - meaning I won't find out my score breakdown (and whether or not I can do Part III) until this afternoon or perhaps tomorrow. Nice work, Dr. Brookes! Or it might be the fact that there's a significant chance that this is IT... my university life is rapidly drawing to a permanent end, leaving me in the lurch with absolutely no plans for the summer holidays, let alone next year.

I don't want it to end.

I want to know if it IS going to end.

I feel ill.