So I couldn’t sleep earlier. Had a couple of things on my mind. I’ve just managed to get two tickets for the HSBC Rugby Sevens finals in Cape Town on the 10th… and good tickets at that, but I can’t go because I already have tickets for Majozi at Kirstenbosch. Also I’ve been to Sevens twice before so I’m feeling kinda meh about it anyway. While tossing and turning I decided to rather go to Majozi and donate the rugby tickets to my kids’ school to raffle off at their Food Fair happening on the 1st December.

Then I grappled with thoughts regarding one of my M students who is rather battling at the moment. She is making progress but very slowly. Her writing isn’t always coherent. I think the thoughts and ideas are in her head, but she battles to articulate them academically. That’s something I think all postgrad students – including myself, can relate to. So typically after reviewing just a few paragraphs, I’ll often send her work back to her to rewrite, after having made some changes myself but then eventually deciding it’s actually is her job – since she’s going to get awarded with the Masters Degree afterall.

I feel for her though. It’s an uncomfortable struggle because it’s been almost three years now and she still hasn’t hit the sweet spot. I think there is still hope. I firmly believe just a few more steps and it will come together for her, however I also think she is losing faith. The truth is, there is nothing I can do about that. It’s a fact of life, a philosophical stance I just started adopting but should have a long time ago actually…. sometimes things are just out of one’s control. It’s better to let it go. She has to decide to motivate herself. This is not my monkey to carry, so I am not going to try to hold on or control it.

So then I just tossed and turned thinking about nothing in particular for another few minutes before deciding bugger this, I might as well just get up and work for a bit. My own work has also been progressing – also slowly – but steadily. The end goal has increasingly been coming into focus. The past few weeks I’ve had really solid ideas, and this week it felt to me as if I made ‘first contact’ with what the final product of my work should look like.

I’ve been collecting all the bits and pieces, so tonight just before I attempted to go to bed the first time I printed a process flow of the pharmaceutical manfacturing process so that I could map my thoughts directly onto that printed page later. I’m glad I did, because as I sat down earlier I literally scribbled all the bits and pieces of information I had onto this page, and then used coloured pens to connect my thoughts. It was then that I started seeing what my model is going to look like 😍.

My supervisor will more than likely want to string me from my toes for openly blogging about my research findings, let alone posting this picture – but I’ll take my chances because I’m feeling rather stoked. And I’m pretty darn sure this makes very little sense to anyone but me in this very rudimentary format. I’m just so proud and happy it actually finally seems like ‘something’ that can work! Loads of work still ahead but let’s take this moment and say ‘Three cheers to perseverance’ Hip Hip hurray. Hip hip hurray ….and the last one Hurray! ☯️👏🏾🥂🍾