Power failure of another kind

I shall be glad when these two weeks of working from home are finished and I can get back to a regular routine at college again. Contrary to expectations, the time has really dragged and I feel disconnected from the course and everything I was hoping to achieve.

I have been reading Brendan Hennessey's book on writing feature articles, thinking I was being conscientious and preparing for the next unit, but now I'm beginning to wish I hadn't bothered.I think it's more of a book to refer to when you're actually working on things. It's a tough read and made tougher by his references to things I don't understand, never having worked on or for a publication. He needs to decide who his reader is - the book seems intended for the complete novice but he uses jargon they wouldn't understand. The references to appendices are wrong too and it took me a while to figure out that figure numbers refer to the chapter they are in and are not just numerically numbered from the start of the book. All of these small difficulties have made me feel like an outsider and I have lost some of my enthusiasm, which is a shame.

I've also been looking at newspapers and magazines, as per Christina's instructions, and here too I've started to flounder. Suddenly it all seems very hard for a newcomer to penetrate and my inspiration has dried up. The sooner we get started with our new units, the better, as far as I am concerned.