My Week

I've decided to rename the days of the week to fit my current lifestyle.
The week starts with:

• "Mad Panic Monday" as I realise how little work I've got done, and how much needs to be done, for....
• "Shitty Tuesday", which starts with a rubbish French class at 9, is followed by a 1 hour break in which I try to convince myself that i do have something to show my project supervisor, followed by my advisor meeting, then lunch, then 2 hours of computational optimisation in which I try not to fall asleep (but almost fail). Next is...
• "Weekend Wednesday" because "Shitty Tuesday" is over and, whilst I don't have any lectures I do have stuff to do. I will convince myself that I have a whole week to get work done before next Tuesday (whilst knowing that the majority will be done on Monday). This is followed by...
• "Tongue-tied Thursday" as I have Pratique de l'Oral at 9 am and will be tired and unable to speak French properly from staying up until 2 completing the preparation for the class. Next would have to be...
• "Freedom Friday" as the week is finally over (and it starts at 12). I'll treat myself to an afternoon "off" and do basic stuff like go shopping or do washing. This is predictably followed by...
• "Sleepy Saturday" on which I make no effort to get up before 12 as I'm a student and I'm tired. Finally,...
• "Study Sunday" is spent procrastinating on Facebook with my work laid out in front of me.

And there we are, a typical week.

Like getting blood from a stone

I gave up on the French last night. I read the front of the booklet we were given at the start of term and it said we just had to prepare notes ready to do the synthesis in class. There were 10 of us today. The lecture starts at 9 am which is never a good time for a lecture as everyone's tired. Nonetheless, yet again we had the majority of the class sitting in silence will I and 3 or 4 others made all the input. I can't say my points were particularly good but it got to the point where the teacher had waited so long for someone to say something that I just made any comment about the texts, no matter how poor it was, just in the hope of encouraging some dialogue. I could kind of understand if we were all in the 1st year and a bit shy about talking French BUT WE'VE ALL BEEN ON OUR YEAR ABROAD! We've lived in French speaking countries and spoken the language with natives. Surely it shouldn't be difficult to speak to each other. If she doesn't know it already (she's French), I'm going to teach the teacher the expression "Like getting blood from a stone" so she use it when she describes our class to the other lecturers.

Stupid French

I'm getting a bit fed up of my French courses. Sitting here, at 11:30 pm, the night before a French lecture, attempting to stick together 600 odd words about 2 articles I care very little about, I wonder what the point of these French courses is. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be studying French, however the modules that I have to do offer very little...of anything.
I have 2 hours a week of French from 2 half unit modules: Pratique de l'Ecrit and Pratique de l'Oral, a writing and a speaking class. Every year the structure of the courses is the same. For Ecrit we have to read an article/text or 2 and write some sort of summary or synthesis by following a strict format. There is very little chance to express anything in the way of personal opinion and the courses offer very little in the way of useful skills.
The speaking class fares little better. The first 2 years were quite good as they involved analysing adverts in the 1st year and films in the 2nd. This year we are focussing on written texts but, as with the writing class, we are forced to follow a particular format in order to gain the marks.
Our coursework for this module revolves around a presentation on a text as well as a debate. The debate this year will be a bit of a farce I expect. There are only 3 people in my class. One person will "chair" the debate while the other 2 of us argue our various points. I can only hope that we have opposing views otherwise the debate will be very short!
The upside to having just 3 people in the class means we all have to speak. In this way, my oral class contrasts nicely with my writing class in which there must be about 16 people...and no-one speaks. We all sit there with our work in front of us and the teacher asks a question about it. I contribute in classes however I don't like to always be the first one to say something.
So, we all sit there until I or one of the few other contributors gets fed up of the silence and answers the question.
I'm certainly not brilliant at either of the classes but it's difficult to feel enthusiastic about these classes especially when the material is so uninspiring.
Ah well, back to work.

Facebook

I think this song speaks for itself and pretty accurately describes how a lot of today's students spend their time: "On the Facebook".
For those that don't know, Facebook is a social networking site grouped into communities of educational establishments. You can see profiles of people at your uni but need outside people to add you as a friend before you have access to theirs. The site recently made some controversial changes which mean that most of your actions - such as posting a message on someone's wall, changing you photo, adding details about yourself and suchlike - are made known to your friends through a sort of news feed. Whilst this has many good aspects as it can make you feel more in touch with all the people you've added as your friend (even though you barely know a lot of them), it does make it a lot easier to stalk people....

It is inadvisable to eat wasps

A few friends came over last night. AS the night drew on, we were getting hungry and decided to order a pizza. We settled on Domino's "Meltdown" which offers three different levels of spiciness. We went for level 2 which, along with the meatballs, Jalapeno peppers, chilli cheese and American mustard, also adds fresh red chillis.
I'm quite glad that we didn't go for level 3 as that would have added chilli flakes which would have filled in the small gaps where there wasn't already something hot.
As it is, after the last slice which appeared to have more chilli slices than pizza, I feel a bit like I've eaten a wasp.

Smarter than you!

The British are more intelligent than the French!
I base this on the fact that, whilst the guy who took over my internship in July (who is now back at uni) has 35 hours of lectures per week, I only have 8. This can only mean that the French are less intelligent and subsequently need more tuition. There's no other way to look at it.

Damn Freshers!

Gah, stupid freshers! Not only did we have a fire alarm this morning (ok, 9:45 wasn't such an unreasonable time I suppose) but I think I'm getting Fresher's Flu. Ok, so it's more like a slight cold but I feel like blaming someone.

Enterprising

I've joined Yound Enterprise this year. I did it in College and i think it's a great scheme. Essentially you set up and run a business for the duration of the academic year. It's great at giving you an insight into how a small business can function and really helps develop interpersonal skills.
At college we made personalised, printed T-Shirts and we are probably going to end up doing something similar this year (although hopefully better). I'm a little dissappointed that there isn't any sort of inter-university competition but we may try and organise something with other local unis.
There is one potential issue: I'm the only guy...in a group of about 10. Ok, on the one hand I'm single,....but on the other hand (and without meaning to be too sexist), how easy it to get 9 women to agree on anything?

Blackout!

Yesterday saw the end of the world! Ok, I'm exaggerating a lot but there was certainly a lot of inconveniece caused. At about 12:30pm, there was a power cut to the university (and to Egham so someone said however this is just hearsay). This meant that, apart from there being no lights or power (obviously) there was no access to the network, and no water (I assume it's pumped everywhere). Some lecturers decided to cancel their lectures but, unfortunately, mine didn't so I had to sit through 2 hours of Computational Optimisation, in a dark room, with, well, lets just say he's not the most charismatic lecturer we have.
Afterwards, I came back to my room, and was feeling quite tired so I decided to lie down for a while until the photography social I was due to go to at 7:00pm. I turned my radio on so that, when the power came back on, it would wake me up....... Eventually I woke up at about 6:45pm of my own accord, slightly disorientated as you don't really notice how much abient light is provided until it's gone. I headed off to see if the social was still on despite the blackout. It was and by then a lot of places had lights back on but I gather the power was restored to my halls at about 7:30pm.
Not quite sure what caused the power to be out for so long but I seem to remember power issues at the start of other years. I'd make some joke about them not paying their bill....but I can't be bothered.

What a way to wake up

Before I went to sleep the other night, I tuned my radio into a random station so I'd wake up to music rather than "Nick Ferrari - God of Radio" (ok, that's not quite his tagline but it sounds like the sort of thing he thinks) on "London's LBC". The following morning, I woke up to Johnny Vaughan on Capital FM interviewing none other than David Hasselhoff! They played his new single which has to be one of the funniest/cheesiest things I've heard in ages. Below is the video for your viewing pleasure.....

Well, I feel safe!

The inevitable happened today. I have a swipe card to access my building, flat and room. When I enter my room I have to put the card in a slot by the door so that the lights work. It's all very fancy but doesn't seem to take into account that people will often want to go from their room to the kitchen without locking their door.
Anyhow, today I did that and accidentally locked my card in my room. So, off I went to the "New Halls Reception" to ask for a temporary card to get back into my room. The conversation went something like this......

Me: "Hi, I've locked myself out of my room"
Receptionist: "Ok, what room are you in?"
Me: "XXXXXX hall, Block X, Flat XX, Room X"
Receptionist: [Looks for number to program temporary card which is on a paper list sitting on the desk] "Ok, here you go. Bring the card back next time you pass"

Note that at no time did she ask who I was, did she verify that the name I gave was that of the person who rents my room, nor did she take note of who she had given the temporary card to. So now I have a card which, now that I've used it to get in my room, can't be used again (it's one swipe only)..........unless I go on ebay and buy a magnetic card reader/writer. All it would then take is for someone to distract the receptionist while I run off with the list of codes and everyone would be receiving second hand laptops and stereos for Christmas!

Obviously it's unlikely to happen, but if one person can think of it then why not more? I'm going to mention it to the manager of the halls if I can and hope it was just a mistake.