Missing

Me that is. Its the first official day of the new semester and I wasn't there. I wasn't there because I was in bed, where I have mostly been since Friday. That or hauling my large stuffed My Melody* and blanket around like a giant female Linus.

The advantage of being super paranoid and buying books is that I can at least do some home reading. Disadvantage is that seasonal flu (for I am assuming it is that, and I do not in fact have the plague, or the much afeared lurghi (I now have Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan in my head)) is that all I want to do is sleep.



*Seriously that is her name. But heck her friend is Hello Kitty so why would having a general pronoun be especially unusual in a world where the star of the world has a greeting as her first name.

Exams over....

Well for now anyway.

January's exams done. Three of them. The only one I am relaxed about, with some irony, is the subject I am least good at.

Now we begin again. Books ready. Waiting for SFE to confirm whether I can have speshul tape recorder thingy as recommended by DSA assessment.

Holiday, of sorts

So I'm on holidays. Or at least not being in university-days. I have three exams to revise for, one of which is all day. Yes ALL day. By which I mean from 9.30 till 4.30 (your opinions on the all-dayness of this may differ from mine, but in my head this is most firmly all day).
Said exam is a practical examination. The other two are a multiple choice computer exam, and an essay exam. The computer exam includes negative marking too. Frankly I'm not sure which I'm more terrified of.

However, since we have the grades for the coursework associated with the essay based exam I have spent part of my day working out what I need to score to pass. Yes, I am a bit weird, I spent my day calculating what everyone in my class needs to get to pass (yes I do need to get out more).
I need:
Fail Marginal to get a bare pass (a D-), it is impossible for me to get an A, to get a B I need a  B+, to get a C I need a D-, and to get a D I need that oddly named Fail Marginal.
I like this. I like having some kind of focussing point.

It would be nice if I knew what I had got for the coursework in the other two...

In other events. I have changed several of my modules for next semester, and now am doing a work placement module. Erm where ??

A week gone

First I was ill, and then it was the snow...it equals no university for a week and two assignments that I manically drove people nuts over got extended.

My computer died a bit, I've watched too much crappy daytime television and I've taken up eating bizarre food combinations...all in all I feel as though I am *truly* living the student life.

In other news its my birthday tomorrow, woo me...I was going to be tremendously sensible and use my book tokens/gift vouchers for uni books. However, I was persuaded out of this and now am the proud owner of Superfreakonomics, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, a Jo Nesbo novel, and some Woody Allen films...

Technology is mine enemy

I've just done my first online assessment for a module (second one week after next). And goodness what a faff. Not really the most accessible thing ever, on account of having to download extra software to run it. Which both my computers objected to in quite strong terms. I think they were on the verge of having a Mrs Trellis of North Wales moment.

However, it is done. And now I'm scared. I am reasonably confident with the essay for this module that I haven't totally fucked it up. And frankly for the first time ever I am actually in two of my current modules entirely satisfied if I get a D. really truly, not normal me. But they are linked and while the one for the exam/essay is quite good, the other is awful hellish and makes me want to kill myself every Wednesday night. So I am doing a get through this year. And then Zoology goes back to being major and no more do I spend money on freezing my bum off.

Also slightly scared that I just realised I have two big essays about to be set within three days of each other...I will be locking myself up in my secret bolt hole, with books n'stuffs.

The why yes I really am f***king annoyed post

I understand that not everything on field trips will go to plan. I know that you can't predict for injuries and traffic. You can however, take the 40 minutes you planned for to look at item 1, rather than the hour an half you did take. And the subsequent twice as much time for the other places. You have watches.
Also you did know that your workplace, the place at which I study, had rented out the car park for the evening to several thousand people for an event that ended at the time our coach due to arrive back in car park. So a little foresight might have told you that getting back was going to involve some problems. Like maybe that we wouldn't be able to park in the car park, or even allowed in, and that we'd have to drive endlessly around the city centre like very swish vagrants.

Because gentlemen, some of us live in places where buses only operate between ten and four on Sundays, and so have had to call in very many favours to get to and from university in the first place, and people are not happy when they get messed around doing people favours.

It was cold. Very very cold. I am annoyed.

Zoom, just one look...

Or: OMG I want a scanning electron microscope...

Practicals that involve being near very brilliant (and very expensive) equipment are awesome. I could have been totally happy without the practical on calibrating a light microscope, but the electron ones oooooh. Nice.

Reason number 300 to come to university: They have big toys. With buttons and gold plated ladybirds (not for decorative purposes, its for viewing through the scanning microscope). I got to see bacteria on a ladybird's mouthparts, which sounds vaguely like something you would do on date five, and the hairs on her very dead legs.*And a fly, which seemed to have died from having his head drop off, and someone in the class' hair, and a bullet.



*I have absolutely no idea what gender said bug was clearly but its a ladybird, so we'll assume its a lady-bug...

It seems...

that mobile blogging in fact is not as easy as I thought, and two posts have vanished into goodness knows where...

I get to go to a course rep meeting tomorrow, woo. Actually despite my sarcasm I am quite interested (somewhat self selecting I suppose since I am unlikely to have volunteered otherwise). I'm less keen on the fact that Wednesday is my late night day and by the end I will be one tired little bunny. Not least because I wait in the bus station, the extremely cold bus station, for quite some time since night time buses don't appear to have quite the same joined up-ness that daytime ones do.*

I handed my first proper assignment in today, I have low expectations for it frankly, but I've tried. That I got deeply confused by the process of handing in does not bode well...


*Random aside, this genuinely confuses me do they assume that all shift workers, doctors, nurses etc can drive or live next door to their place of work?

Actual Factual Practi-cual

Yes first practical.
Was it exciting? Not especially.
Was it new? Not particularly.
Do I still hate microscopes? Yes. Yes I do.
Do they still make me go cross eyed? Very much so.
Are lab coats still horribly uncomfortable? Indeed.
Did I see some metaphase bits of onion? For once yes.

Field Trip

We did go in a bus and we did go to some rocks and we did see a mine.

I felt pretty much as though I was 7 yesterday. Things I don't like: people not being clear about what they mean, or why they want you to do something. Transparency in teaching, people, transparency.

I was very relieved that it was a proper coach, with a qualified coach driver (I trust minibuses not a bit).

It wasn't bad, and in parts (well part) was interesting. I could however, think of several hundred things I'd rather do on a Saturday.

On the many browser challenge

I got my first assignment, and bizarrely I've realised I'm going to have to start using a third browser on my computer. Most of the useful plugins for citing and keeping records of journals to cite, go with Firefox. And Mr Mozilla and I parted ways some months ago, because frankly its like entering an unfit overweight beer swilling man with poor eyesight into a night time speed orienteering challenge. So by preference I use Chrome, and because the university website refuses to believe that Chrome is a browser I also use IE*. But neither Chrome nor IE seem to work with any decent citation plug ins, so Mr Mozilla will get another chance.

Though in some ways this is moot, since this one I have to handwrite...



*Some geeky types have a vehement hatred of IE (equally some hate MF, but IE hate seems more common) which I cannot fathom, yes MF is open-source but currently it doesn't do the job as well as it should. I don't care how much money someone makes from my using their product if it works. Random aside over.

Unexpected

Who'd have thunk it, the most boring sounding module turns out to be looking like it might be the most interesting. It's a mandatory one, and is called Essential Practical Skills or some such. Which pelts fear into my heart. That says to me microscopes, and preparing things and such.*

It probably will involve these things. However, the lecturer is so positive, and genuinely appears interested in all 79 of us that I think it might be okay. Okay he might be faking it, but I don't think he was, he seemed sincere. And enthusiastic, which must be quite hard when you've been given what must essentially be the most dull module to teach ("yeah so you'll get these first years and you have to teach them to write and use microscopes, and not kill themselves").

I am a little perturbed that our first essay is to be handwritten...

* Curiously the one practical skill I am bizarrely now quite happy with, dissection, they don't do much of because "students don't like it". WTF. Seriously this annoys me. Let me cut things up damn you.

Tuesday (and Wednesdayish)

Well Tuesday was the first lesson in an actual lab. Not doing any practical stuff though. It was however, a very warm lab, the same warm lab that contributed to my going a bit wrong when college visited the university open day. So my please open the windows plan can't come soon enough. Very traditional style lecturer, a proper actual professor too, but good. I don't mind if they're not especially warm people if they make sense, which he did.

I am, however, starting to feel like a grumpy old woman. Door slamming, persistently late, noisy, chattery people are starting to annoy me. Being 18 is not an excuse for not turning up on time, all the time. And note to the five boys behind me, you get upset because you maybe have to be parted from each other for a lesson and make a whole row of people change places? Seriously, what are you six?

Today is my first evening lesson...

First proper lesson/s

Today was the first day I had an actual lesson. This afternoon, 1-5 was the scheduled slot, however in practice it was 1-2 lecture and then 4-5 lecture. With nothing to do in the middle bit, bar trying to avoid the noisy, busy, hellish Fresher's Fair (nice to share info, but please universities of the world realise that some of us do not like crowds).
This bizarre system is so that next week and the two weeks after the middle slot can be used for drop in tutorials, I'm almost tempted to have issues even when I don't, just so I have something to do. Then the four weeks after that we have from 2-5 doing practicals...and then after that its back to the drop in or nothingness.

I find this baffling, and annoying frankly. Why they can't schedule the two lectures one after the other I don't understand. But hey ho.

Lecture theatre seats 180 and there are dead on 180 in the class. Which is snug. And also means we can only go in the not quite so shiny lecture theatre, because none of the others are big enough.

Observations from first proper lectures... Some people are totally oblivious, particularly late people. C'mon you people have you no sense of embarrassment?! Doors are loud. Lecturers make bad jokes, and they fall far flatter in a bigger room (secret to this teach only small groups with unreliable humour). And scanning your ID card is all a bit Jennifer Government for my tastes.

Not in uni today (oddly) but still spending on it...

According to one of the many handbooks I have been given in the last week, I needed some special clothes. Special in the sense that they aren't things I'd normally buy-trousers and a "bright coloured anorak". I'm not quite sure why people seem to think that its implausible to do muddy and knee scuffing things in a skirt, I've managed thus far in my life (personally I think grazed knees are rather fetching). But such it is, and so I spent half the night hunting for a very very cheap pair, since I don't intend to spend much on something I wouldn't voluntarily wear.*

Thanks to the joys of camping shops I now own a fluorescent pink anorak. I defy anyone not to find me in that thing.


*No really I hate trousers that much. How the rest of you women are comfortable in something that attempts to bisect your bum is beyond me. "Figure hugging" jeans are imo one step away from speculum. And blokes. Why? Seriously, why? You have all those (frankly ludicrous looking) attachments, why on earth do you insist on trying to shove the things in trousers. Looks painful.

Day three, the day in which, reader, we actually enrol

Yes it took till Wednesday. However, it was a billion times more simple than it had been made out to be, and that's even allowing for the fact that there were two me's on the system.

So now being formally enrolled means I have a new shiny ID card, so have been able to apply for my [freebie] NUS extra card, and student mango card (35% off bus fare, yes please).

I also collected my strange collection of essential tools. Including my rather fashionable hard hat.

And had a library tour, which I was grateful to have as an unofficial one, rather than the proper one because he made it last 15mins rather than half an hour.

First Day Part one

Just about to catch bus to first day...eeek. First day is only a couple of hours and doesn't really involve much it seems.

Observations so far:
1. I'd forgotten the 'joy' of BBC breakfast (enhanced by the fact that I get London news not local)
2. It's cold.