Yesterday I spent the day at Nottingham University with mum and brother.
Arrived at the Uni and started in the arts centre where we had a coffee and a bite to eat. Mum bought some expensive greetings cards and the nice lady on the desk let me use the internal phone to get in touch with Computer Science to see if they were expecting me. They were very relaxed about the whole thing and said spaces weren’t limited anyway so it didn’t matter. So at that we wandered around the main campus which is a gorgeous place surrounding a large lake with boats and wildfoul. The January sun came out for us which was nice.
We had a very good look round the Student Union building which is where I found the single best reason I’ve yet found for going to a University. They have a Guinness Society!!! The society apparently has trips to Dublin and discounted prices locally. Wow! Other societes that caught my eye were the Computer Society, Philosophy, Thai Chi, Science Fiction, Sound… there were loads! We stopped off at the bookshop which was a mistake as mum never leaves a bookshop without spending money. I did manage to get Douglas Adams’ Biography and a small book on Voltaire though.
We eventually made our way over the the Jubilee Campus on the free hopper bus service. I got to show mum the campus and she liked it a lot, although she pointed out that it was starting to look a bit scruffy considering how new it is, pfft. We had a look around then had some lunch.
Then there was the actual point in the visit, the talks. Mum and Brother were allowed in to the talks as there were hardly any people there. Unfortunately BOTH the people who were supposed to be doing the talks had been called away at short notice and others were drafted in to take their places. The talks didn’t really tell me much about the Uni I didn’t know already but I did have the opportunity to have a long, one on one discussion with Colin Higgins, a Senior Lecturer which was brilliant. He also showed us round the department personally which was good of him.
After that we sneaked to have a peak in the lecture theatres which luckily were empty, then it was back on the hopper to head home.
I really do love Nottingham and the talk with the lecturer went some way to easing my worries about the course. I still have worries about the value of a Computer Science degree though. Another thing that was put slightly into question was whether or not I should take a gap year. Mum now thinks I shouldn’t but I think I may HAVE to financially. More thinking to do on this.
Moving onto today, I woke up to find out both my Mum and reubs had written letters of resignation for their jobs!! Mum is fed up of doing the work of three people I think and I think reubs got sick of the people he was working with. Mum has applied for about 7 jobs already including a trainee signwriter which I actually think she’d really enjoy. Reubs plans to get a job until September then go to Stamford College to do a diploma in art, then a foundation course hopefull leading to a degree course.
I dashed into school to get to my first Stats lesson with the lower sixth group. Despite having been going to the school for coming on seven years I thought the lesson started 10 minutes earlier than it did and was in a panic to get there on time. When I got there it turned out that they weren’t even doing stats today! Man. Had double Computing where I found out that I can’t actually run subqueries on the version of mysql installed on tralk, GRR! Went to a maths revision session at lunch, then a maths lesson doing Mechanics with differentiation and integration then a free.
After school djkoa and I dashed off to his to pick up a pressie then went over to bouncykaz‘s place for a visit yey! Spent ages playing with Kaz’s christmas pressies and watching cut scenes from Bruce Almighty. Lots of talking until gone 9 O’Clock! It was brilliant to see Kaz properly and hopefully I’ll get to see her within the next few MONTHS! Wez and I went back to Bourne and dashed to the chippie before it closed with a swift U-turn on a main road, grr, they were mopping the floor around us while we were eating.
For some reason Wez wanted to nip into school to see what the stage crew had been doing in their three hours of ***supervised*** work after school. The caretaker asked what the bloody hell we were doing there that time of night so we explained we thought he might be lonely and had come to visit. Wez complained about the stupid things the stage crew had done, Mr Austin complained that they’d better not move the 300 chairs it had taken him 5 hours to place and then we went home. I biked in the rain.
Good morning Laura, as you’ll probably be reading this.
