Swiv's Idea of a University
Created | Updated Feb 12, 2004
Crikey it's been a while! Why has it been so long? Oh yes I remember: Christmas, Exams, and Semester Break - general chaos and instability and being away from the computer on Wednesdays.
So to update from the end of 2003 rapidly: Trial by Jury went off fine, apart from the audience not being able to hear all the singers over the top of the orchestra, the usual G & S problem. The group presentation was survived - I wrote it the day before - we were last up and consequently had about 30 seconds each, after having spent over an hour and a half listening to the other groups rambling vaguely onwards. Finally - I've still not got my final essay from last term back; the joys of a year long module, but I should get it back tomorrow or Thursday.
Oh yes, that's right, it's second semester and I have to go back to work. I'm supposed to have done some stuff since the end of last term, but I've been going about it, even my revision, in a half-arsed-can't-get-motivated kind of a way.
Over Christmas I did a peanut-sized amount of reading for my dissertation - mostly to have a good excuse for escaping massive family sociability after Boxing Day. I then spent revision week dancing between my room and Parliament Hall pretending to go through my notes and do some extra reading; but really just killing time between evenings when I figured I could legitimately finish the nice quilt I was making1.
The exam - the lone exam - was ok though. Amazingly for a Smith exam paper it didn't have a pile of quotes all over the place to discuss. But I still have no fondness for Saturday exams; hopefully it will be my last of them anyway, they can't really give every single modern and medieval historian six hours of exams on a Saturday in May.
Hopefully.
We have a new marking system now. No one knows how it works fully - probably not even the staff. Instead of getting a final module mark that's a nice whole integer on a scale of 1-20, you can now be marked to one decimal place. That's fine, except apparently the system doesn't apply to my (final) year - we get to round up the mark that we get given and then that goes into working out our final average, whereas everyone below takes the 13.6 or whatever mark it was and takes their averages without rounding up or down. That sounds straightforward enough, and it is; but the tricky thing now is where the class divides fall - first, 2:1, etc - and that, I just don't know. But I was 0.1 of a mark off a first, so I'm just going to round it up for my own happiness.
After a bit of post-exam gallivanting - always accompanied by my faithful copy of Polybius' Histories looking for some 'light' dissertation reading - I'm now settled back in to St Andrews. I've been back two days, had no classes, and I already feel shattered. On Wednesday I'll have had my only class of the week, and I've not gone near any modern history since Christmas, so I might have to take the rest of the week to brush up on that, with a brief interlude in which to discuss my dissertation with Professor Smith. Hopefully I won't sprain my ankle on the way to his office this time.
Otherwise, not much to report, just getting back into things gently, aided by chocolate (actually, I've run out, panic), and Rag Week is coming up, which could be fun.
