I’m back in Cardiff for the summer =(
Okay, maybe it doesn’t quite deserve a sadface, but still. I miss my room in Stanmer Court, and I miss the kitchen with the little flying creatures and the clogged sink and the dying microwave, and I miss the incredibly changeable temperature in Arts A2, and I miss walking all the way across campus to see any of my non-flatmate friends.
I missed all those things when I came home for Christmas and Easter, but at least then I knew I’d be going back within a month. This time I’m not going back for at least 2 months, and even when I do go back it’ll all be different. I’m not good with change.
In my American History seminar today, Richard mentioned that Abraham Lincoln was a rail splitter. Which reminded me of this brilliant sketch by Bob Newhart. Amazingly, they have it on YouTube. It’s a one-sided conversation between a man on the phone to Abraham Lincoln just before the Gettysburg Address. Sounds strange? Yes, but listen to it. It’s brilliance.
And if you find that amusing, his Driving Instructor sketch is definitely worth a listen as well. My mother and I quote it far too often.
I should be in a Media Studies seminar, but I couldn’t be bothered to go. I had a test at 9am and just wanted to be done with the term after that.
My parents are coming to pick me up this afternoon. I wish I could stay for this evening, but since I’m going to Florida on Tuesday, and we’re driving up to the airport on Monday, I’d only have Sunday to get everything sorted if I left tomorrow. And that would invariably end up with me panicking. Which is never a good thing.
By the end of last term, I quite wanted to go home. But this term, the end has come upon me so quickly that I’ve barely had time to think about it.
If the whole of university goes as quickly as the last two terms have gone, I just know that 4 years of my life will pass in a blur, and at the end of it I’ll be left wondering what exactly I did with my life all that time. Still, I’ve had 2 very good terms, so if the rest of the university is destined to go just as quickly, I can cope with that.
Okay, I’ve apparently not updated this for quite a while. Mainly because I’ve had nothing to say. Therefore I am announcing a change of pace to this blog!
Instead of my random pointless posts, I’m going to attempt to update this on a more regular basis with life-related things instead of sheer randomness. How that’ll work out remains to be seen.
This morning I finally did something with the Walking Society (so, over 10 weeks after making my New Year’s Resolution to join it, I got there. Better late than never, I suppose). Kate and I joined them for an Easter Egg Hunt. We had to follow ribbons that were tied up on various things (trees, lamposts etc), up the path at the side of Brighthelm, along a country road, across some fields, onto another path and then finally down into Stanmer Village. There was a tree in the church graveyard that had been filled with lots of chocolate.
Considering we only had to pay £1 to go, I got an excellent (or egg-cellent … but I won’t go there) amount of chocolate; an actual Easter Egg, 4 Creme Eggs and a tube of Smarties. Plus I got out in the fresh air and did the most exercise I’ve done since … actually, since Friday when I managed to strain almost every muscle in my upper body EyeToying with Emma and James. But yes, fresh air and chocolate. I approve.
I also need to stop saying ‘I approve’ to everything. It makes me sound like an idiot.
Anyway. I’m very grateful to my body clock today. It woke me up at 9am, so I had time to get up, have breakfast and get to my 10am lecture (I usually set my alarm for 15 minutes before I need to get up because I need a little time to ‘come to’. I’m not one of those people who can just leap out of bed, as I may have mentioned previously).
Why didn’t I set my alarm? Good question. As a matter of fact, I did. But when my body clock woke me up, there was no evidence that I’d set my alarm. Or, indeed, that I had a clock in my room. Yes ladies and gentlemen, power cuts are back in Stanmer Court. Or at least they were for almost an hour this morning. Let’s hope this isn’t a recurring theme again.
It’s a shame my lecture wasn’t at 9am, though. “My alarm didn’t go off because there was a power cut” is a pretty good excuse for missing a lecture, don’t you think?
In other news, my mobile phone has no signal. I usually have at least 1 bar of signal, often more. But for whatever reason, today I have no signal. Anywhere. I’ve tried turning the phone on and off, in the hope that it’ll be kicked into action to find some network coverage, but no such luck. So let’s hope no one important (or even unimportant, just anyone in general) is trying to contact me, because they won’t get through.
ETA: Sphie and Mark have no signal either. So O2 appears to be screwing up.
I can get 1 bar of signal if I leave my phone on my windowsill, but it goes as soon as I take it off. Fun times.
I just checked Sussex Direct, and saw that my results from last term for my American History course are up.
I got 70% in my essay, which I’m rather proud of. However, the comments about me seem … less than favourable.
Emma is a very bright student who demonstrated over the course of the term a real aptitude in and affinity for American history. Her class participation mark is not as high as it might have been however. Emma’s contributions were always salient, and she always had something intelligent to say. But, although her attitude had changed by December, the apathetic air she cultivated at the beginning of the term detracted from her otherwise sensible contributions for the first month or so.
Apathetic air? What the hell Tristan, what the hell? I was easily one of the best contributors in the class (though, to be fair, that wasn’t exactly difficult because hardly anyone actually spoke), and I THOUGHT I was always fairly enthusiastic. Apparently not.
So I ended up with a Grade 2. Damn my apathetic air, I could have got a 1.
I’m back home in Cardiff. Considering I haven’t been here for 11 weeks, so far nothing I’ve seen has changed. Besides my house feeling really weirdly small.
I have so much stuff to unpack. I’m not looking forward to doing that in the slightest. I’ll do it … tomorrow. After I’ve visited my grandparents in the morning. Because wow, I haven’t seen them in 11 weeks.
Anyway.
The first term of the first year of university is over. The time went SO fast. The weeks just flew by, and in one sense, I did so much. In another, I did nothing. I got drunk a lot, went to some seminars and lectures, did an essay or two, and got drunk some more. That’s my term summed up right there. Oh, with some added drama of course. Who can forget the drama? Hopefully next term will be considerably less dramaful. *crosses fingers*
And now I have a month in which to do … not much.
I had the first of two tests today. This one was for Other Americas. It was horrible.
Well, the first question wasn’t too bad - admittedly I panicked when I looked at the first section because it was either answering on something from Week 1 that I hadn’t bothered to re-read in my revision, or the Cuban revolution, which I didn’t revise either. But then I realised that the first question wasn’t as scary as it seemed and rambled about Native Americans and the way in which they were treated by the Spanish settlers.
The second section, on the other hand? Ugh. It was a question on rootlessness vs. a question on magical realism. Seriously, what kind of word is rootlessness? Not being entirely sure what it meant, I did the question on magical realism. I wish I’d gone with my gut feeling on what rootlessness meant and done that question instead, because I had literally nothing to write about magical realism. I’m not sure my answer even stretched to a page in length.
And I have another test - for Foundations of America - tomorrow at 9am.
Still, at least I’ll be done for the term by 10.30.
Last night I was bored of doing my essay* so I decided to have an early night. I went to bed at quarter to 11 (okay, it’s not that early, but it’s earlier than I’ve been going to bed for most of the nights I’ve been at university!) and woke up this morning feeling just the same as if I’d gone to bed at 1 or 2am. How rubbish is that? Answer: very.
When I go home for Christmas (for a whole month! That’s far too long), I intend to spend a considerable amount of time sleeping. I used to think that I was the kind of person that needed at least 8 hours sleep to function properly, but it turns out I only need 5. Still, there’s a considerable difference between being able to function and actually being fully awake. I don’t think having lectures or seminars before 11 is a good idea, simply because it takes me at least an hour after I’ve woken up for my brain to kick into gear.
I’ve never been the kind of person who has enough sleep and then can quite happily dive out of bed in the morning, though, the way the Sims do when they’ve had a full night’s sleep and their little bar is full of green goodness. No matter how long I sleep for, I always want to stay in bed just that little bit longer.
*on the Darwinian revolution. It has to be between 1500 and 2000 words. So far I’ve done 1239 and it’s like pulling teeth. I don’t suppose it really helps that I never listen in my Historical Controversy seminars. But come on, they’re 2 hours long and at 9am, what do they expect?
You know what really annoys me?
Well, probably a lot of things, but a specific thing that annoys me at the moment is inconsistency.
I’m writing a presentation/essay plan about the Salem witch trials and late seventeenth century New England society. And I’ve found 3 different stories as to how the whole Salem witches thing started:
Scenario #1: Three girls were looking into a crystal ball, and saw the image of some ‘witches’ - three of which were people they knew, so they accused them of being witches
Scenario #2: Similar to the above, except that the girls were looking into the crystal ball in order to see their future husbands
Scenario #3: Two young girls started acting really strangely and when the doctor couldn’t diagnose them, he said that they had been bewitched, and the two girls blamed Tituba the black slave.
It’s not even as if I’ve found this conflicting information on Wikipedia or something - all 3 stories come from what should be reliable textbooks. How am I supposed to know which one is the real one? Does anyone know which is the actual truth, or is there so much speculation around the whole thing that no one can know for sure?
Luckily, I can get away with not actually putting how the events started, so it’s not as if my work could suffer through putting down the ‘wrong’ one. However, I would like to know, just for myself, you know? If the textbooks can’t agree, how can they expect us poor students to know what we should be learning?