Naturally, you have all thoroughly read Harry Potter. One particular line from the epic has been making its rounds in my mind for months — I am certain you know it well:
WIT BEYOND MEASURE IS MAN'S GREATEST TREASURE
A fabulous motto, don't you think? You might ask how this phrase managed to stick in my mind for months, and there is indeed a simple answer: I haven't been using it a lot, not by my usual standards. My mind, that is. And it would appear that I've adopted the motto to a point, for purely defensive purposes of course, along with muttering to myself in French.
So I wound up working with mentally disabled people, which is, by all means, not unpleasant, and certainly valuable work, but on the other hand it is not exactly voluntary, nothing like well-paid, and, most importantly, frightfully, excruciatingly, dull. There are days with a lot of work, and they're not really that bad, but typically, there isn't particularly much that requires my attention. My reaction to this situation was to spin down my mental faculties to a point where I don't get to write blog posts or programming code an awful lot, but where maintaining an inane French inner monologue and crafting the odd mildly humorous but mostly rather snide remark is enough to keep me going without going totally batty. (you be the judge of that)
On a wildly different note, my slice of aforementioned treasure still appears to be in place; after all, I got a place at Mansfield College at the University of Oxford to read Physics, starting Michaelmas next.