Archive for the 'University' Category

So, I’ve been at the glorious university that is Imperial College London for just over a week now, and I have to say that I’m in love with the place.

For a start, the location is absolutely beautiful. The campus is slap bang in the middle of South Kensington, one of the most affluent areas of London, a stone’s throw from such attractions as the Natural History Museum, Science Museum and the famous Hyde Park. My halls are located in Chelsea, which is possibly even more affluent than Kensington, and it really shows. As I’m sure you will know, I am a petrolhead, and as a result I have a love for fine automobiles, but living here is making me start to feel almost saturated by them. If you’ve ever visited the Vatican, you’ll be able to draw a parallel here - there’s only so much fine art you can see before you stop noticing it. Looking out of my bedroom window, the cheapest car I can see is a Mercedes A Class; on a typical walk from here to campus I normally pass 2 Audi RS4s, a brand new Jaguar XKR and at least one Aston Martin DB9.

I’ve only had a couple of lectures so far, but I’ve been amazed by the quality of the teaching here. The lecturer I’ve seen so far is Tony Fields - a man who genuinely loves his subject and delivers his content in a lively and exciting way, and somehow manages to keep everyone interested despite the skill range of his audience reaching from ‘What’s programming?’ to ‘I have run my own software company’.

The main thing that’s struck me about this place though, is that it is incredibly refreshing to be surrounded by people who have a genuine passion for what they are studying, have a thirst for knowledge, and are interested to know what interests you - basically geeks - and it means that I’ve found a place that I can call my home.

Still, for some reason I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m trying to get this summer out of my system still, or if I subconsciously miss my parents/friends, or if there’s something wrong with my health. It could be all of these things, or none of them, but what I do know is that I need to sort it out soon before it affects my study - I can’t keep relying on exhaustion to send me off at night. Right now it’s 3:45am, and I don’t even remotely feel like sleeping, yet I have a lecture at 9am.

In other news, the Scottish judicial system has decided in its infinite wisdom that a guilty plea and a means assessment isn’t enough to reach a verdict as to how sodomized I’m going to get by it’s long, hard dick. So, I have been summoned once more to Peebles court. If I can’t get the case transferred to a local court, then I’m going to have to somehow get from London to Scotland ready for 10am on Wednesday the 22nd, following a 6pm finish at university the previous evening.

It seems that increasingly so, I’m beginning my blogs with the shameful words, “It’s been a while since my last update”. And, as it has been for the past few months, I’m going to have to do the same here, except without actually writing said words. A lot has happened in the past month or so, most of it determining my future to some extent, and I’m proud to say that life is sweet.

At the beginning of December I went to Churchill college in Cambridge for two interviews, one logic/mathematical oriented, and another simply maths oriented. Unfortunately, when I say ’simply’, I actually mean ‘excrutiatingly’. Both for me and the interviewers. As it was, in fact, just past 9 o’clock in the morning, and I’d been up since 4.45am, I was not at my brightest, and plotting graphs of parametric equations involving trigonometric functions kept returning a 404 from my left brain. Take for example the following question:

sin²(2⁴ × 3⁵) + cos²(2⁴ × 3⁵) = ?

Now, I straight away fell into the trap of trying to work out the value of 2⁴ × 3⁵, when anybody who had done the maths modules I had done would have remembered the trigonometric identity which means that the answer to that question is 1, so long as the parameters of the functions are the same. It was at this point that my downward spiral began. After failing miserably to answer questions, or just after a very long time, often prompting the exclamation, “Finally!” from the interviewers’ mouths, I left feeling pretty sorry for myself. And, about a month later, the reply came saying that Churchill college didn’t see me as the right material for the place. However, I was put into the intercollegiate pool, and plucked out of said pool by Jesus college, who as we speak are planning to give me an offer.

This is the point where my rant begins. The reason that I don’t have a definite offer from Jesus college. The small niggly downfall of Cambridge administration that I’ve spotted a few times now. Upon being phoned by the adminissions tutor at Jesus, she informed me that the white form — that which I painstakingly wrote out in the neatest of handwriting, carefully listing every single module I’d taken at AS, with UMS, with grade, with exam board — had gone missing from my file. It all clicked into place when I remembered back to the first interview I had at Churchill, where they asked me what scores I’d received in my Maths modules, and even at that early hour of 8.30am, my brain had chugged away wondering why they didn’t already know. This has really, really annoyed me. What is the point of bureaucracy if it can’t be done right? Why do we have to go through a ridiculous amount of paperwork, which should by rights be done by a computer system anyway, when it just ‘disappears’ from my file?

This is where my rant ends. I (and Chris) have since been offered jobs with a web development company based in Cambridge as part of the Year in Industry program, and have both accepted. So, at the end of this academic year, I’ll be shipping off from this place to live in a flat with Chris and ultimately geek out. I’ve also decided that entering for Grade 8 piano isn’t going to be something I’ll do this year, as playing the piano is only a hobby of mine, not a career, and the pressure it was putting on me was stopping me from enjoying it.

In terms of other exams, I have 3 maths module exams coming up shortly, and one physics exam, and I’m completely unprepared for all of them. I also have my driving theory test coming up, for which I am prepared, but utterly complacent as a result. With any luck, I’ll pass that and then be well on my way to driving by the end of March. February will see both Valentine’s day and my birthday, and a lot of fun will be had. I’m going to be spending both Valentine’s day and the weekend before my birthday with Caley, and then the weekend following my birthday I’m gonna have a LAN party at mine - with any luck I can persuade my parents that it’s in their best interests not to be there.

So, until the next time, thankyou for reading, and good night.

Well, it’s 3 minutes to midnight on Sunday, and I’m taking a brief soujourn from my A2 physics investigation writeup to have a glass of water and drop a couple of Pro Plus, perhaps in the naïve hope that it’ll help me work better. I’m ashamed to say that when the clock strikes midnight, it will be the day of the deadline for handing in the final version of my coursework, and I’m only just scratching the surface of it.

For the past week or so I’ve been pretty under the weather - a combination of a cold and fatigue caused by trekking all the way to Bristol for their admissions day, among other places. On the university front, things are progressing nicely - I’ve had an interview at both Imperial and York, and been for an informal chat at Bristol (which cost me £70 to get to). York have since offered me a place, as well as Warwick who it turns out have unannouncedly given me a similar offer. Still no word from Cambridge though, but the difference I’m experiencing between Cambridge and Imperial is that Imperial actually seem to want me to study there. The interview was very friendly, I received a lot of positive feedback, and I quite enjoyed the day there.

As ever, my increasingly procrastinating nature has led me to leave the entire write-up for this physics coursework until the very last minute, and yet I’m writing a blog post when I should be doing said write-up. As it stands at 15 pages, it’s quite a spectacle to behold. Beautifully presented, fantastically written - just a little thin on the physics. In fact, it can be quite neatly summarised by this picture (clicky for to make big):

In other news, me and Caley have been a couple for a year now - there must be something wrong with the woman to put up with me for such a long time without complaint. Ah well, c’est l’amour…

Physics, ho!

Update: It’s 4.38am, I’ve just “finished” it to the “best” of my ability, and am going to go to bed and SLEEP >.<