And if it all amounts to nothing, it doesn't matter, these are still our glory days
In the time since I last got around to updating this, I've got a job at the local hotel, washing dishes and allegedly doing some bar work. It's a living. And I'm now down in Glasgow, staying in a flat which the family for some reason has for my sister who's starting uni. It's been good, seen Ally for the first time in too long [actually, it'd got to the point where I'd not seen anyone outside my family in two weeks, with people being away and so on. And my sister who's still in the UK only briefly, too]. And I'm behind on work I was planning to do and generally lonely and angsting about medication and my reliance on it/ if I'm abusing it or just ... enjoying the feelings at times. Generally trying to work stuff out and ending up doing nothing.
Anyway, I've been meaning for a while to write about ten of the most memorable times from the last year, as a general piece of pre-emptive nostalgia. Or just to remember the good times. So, anyway, here's ten moments from the last year I never want to forget.
[NB: Numbering is arbitrary, or chronological to some extent, but I'm counting down from 10 to 1 or so to hopefully give a minor element of suspense or anticipation. It will fail.]
10:Freshers week, and all ensuing immediate fallout.
Freshers' weeks are always interesting. This year's was very good, and set something of a tone for the year. Some things have deep dark secrets, somethings that are just fun, and it's great to see everyone again. I remember running into James at the Societies faire, again, having attended mainly to see him, and both of us commenting we'd known we'd find each other here and looking forward to the year ahead. I remember being the first student in Melville, and being unpacked within half an hour. But some big things happened then which set the tone of the year.
9:Lunchtime games of Go with Nicholas.
My friendship with Nicholas has been weird. Generally, if two people live down the corridor from each other in first year and meet in freshers week, they're likely to be friends at first, then gradually drift apart. With Nicholas, I've had the opposite kind of thing - we didn't speak that much in first year, started talking more in the second half of second year because the classes got smaller, then started hanging out socially and doing things together only after he'd moved out of Melville. This is in part because he introduced me to Go, and got me hooked, and partially because we started taking the 5000-level courses, all of which had class sizes of under 20. Also, we do get along well and respect each others intellect and have similar psuedo-intellectual (in my case) or intellectual (in his case) interests. Anyway, in first semester, we had heaps of great games as I was learning to play after our 9-12 morning lectures. One of those had Craig messaging me a bit... excessively, for the first time of the year, which was a bit annoying, and restarted our conflict, which got ugly. A fonder memory, though, is just playing Go to the music on my iPod, and us both simultaneously starting to sing quietly along with Common People. Pulp have been the soundtrack to my year, really, and I'll argue to the death (or at least until my opinion changes) that Different Class was the best album of the 90's. OK, Computer produced music is heavy on it but nevermind.
8: An incident I should probably not describe here which involved Pamela, myself, Jamie, Ally, Jen, my window, Fraser's room, Craig, Fraser, and his window.
It is an utterly hilarious story but it's not one I can tell for the sake of those involved. It's the time when I got possibly the most angry I've been at uni, and it's the only time I know I've actually scared a friend [Jen] by how angry I was while I've been here. It was crazy, but also stupidly fun. It's a really great story.
10/4: MT5824, Topics in Groups in general.
Every year until last I screwed up first semester. This year, I decided I'd try as hard as possible not to, and decided to see how well I could do in a 5000-level course while I was at it. I loved this course, because I ended up really getting to grips with the material, attended every single related session, and about half the class of 18 are people I'd count as friends. In particular, chatting to Paul was interesting. He was in the year above, and actually had been in the room adjacent to mine in Melville the year before I arrived, as well as a very good laugh in general. I'll miss him next year. The course is on what's probably my strongest subject, Group Theory, and was taught by one of the best lecturers. It's a very good course.
7: Cardiff, Choir of the Year Grand Final.
Haddo Choir, featuring my sisters, Mother, girlfriend and neighbour, reached the grand final of the Choir of the Year contest. So I went to wales to visit. It was great. Pamela sung well. She was on TV. I hugged her lots. My sister Beth's boyfriend was there. I miss her now, she's been in Ugandah since April. I mean, I really do. That night was great though - there were heaps of people I've known for ages there. And they did incredibly well and pulled of a virtuoso performance.
6: James Bond night.
Being on the Hall committee got me out a good bit. It also enabled us to put on some great shows like renting the cinema for a midnight screening of James Bond. That and the Halloween and Christmas parties. The last was especially memorable - sitting with Alana after talking about some things I was angry about really felt good, and I felt all mature and everything.
5: Study room late at night before exams.
Nothing says "University" like pulling 40 hour days to the sound of an iPod shuffle the night before an exam you're worried about. No, not crazy partying, drinking, wild sex and spending more money than you have, studying all night. Honest. But that's always going to be remembered. And only this year: helping subwardens revise.
Square root of 20: Fundamentals of Pure Mathematics exam.
It's incredibly disconcerting to sit down to an exam and find the paper that you did the night before as the final exam. On the plus side, it's good for getting a good grade.
4: Who am I?
While walking through Melville I said "hi" to Rob and Erin, two first years I know. They asked me to settle a dispute: "Is your name Jonny or Myles?". I explained by stopping Myles who was passing by, and showing that there were two maths students with a vague beard, shaggy hair, and glasses from Aberdeen living in Melville. The subtle different was that I'm two years above him. And am not a debator.
Pi: Hot Fuzz.
Best film of the year so far, without a doubt. "If you wanna be a big cop in a small town, why don't you fuck off down the model village?", "He's not Judge Judy and executioner!", "By the power of Greyskull!". It's a great film. We watched it lots.
3: 85 credits of honours is too much for one semester
In semester 2, we discovered that doing 50% as much again of the standard amount of work is enough to just about kill you - I remember a one morning which Nicholas and I fell asleep a total of 6 times in 3 lectures, despite actually being interested in what was going on. And taking notes. It was very very tiring. Also, hyperbolic Geometry was just insane - the first tutorial had me taking 3 hours to do what turned out to be something which I've been able to do in 3 minutes since standard grade once I worked out what the notation was. And there was Berndt Stratmann's use of the phrase "As I'm sure you'll recall from school" to refer to definitions I don't think any sub-university courses use [the definition of a compact set, I seem to recall, split the class between amusement and panic at the presumed knowledge].
2: Revising Lie Algebras while listening to my iPod and playing air guitar...
... during my Symbolic Computation exam. That was the least exam condition-y exam ever.
1: Just after my last exam of the year.
Went back to Melville. Yelled out "Yatta" on the door with Frank after Heroes [when it takes something to talk me into doing something, it's got to be ridiculous], went to Aikman's and had a long nice lunch with Nicholas, Owain, James and his gf. And Colin turned up later. Riffing off the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, generally just relaxing with friends. And then we were offered C2, Carling's Low-alcohol beer for free because they couldn't sell it. New levels of hyperbole were give to describe how awful it was: simply put, even the alcoholics refused a second free round. It was a very nice relaxing afternoon, after three weeks of dexies and lucozade and no sleep.
0: The entirety of the summer project.
It was generally great, standout moments including the Friday where we discovered Nicholas's lease expired that night, rather than a week later, at which point he was away for the weekend. So we had nowhere to stay for a while. There was that week when Arthur arrived and he did stuff no one else understood. Then we all got projects, and it turned out he'd sort of solved more or less all of them. Then he invented stuff which none of us really got our heads around. That great point where I was checking for exam results online while sitting in the office across from the one all the papers from the maths department were in, none of which had been reported to the central people. Or the other two times I was living at the maths department. Going rock-climbing and planning to do it regularly, after only three years of meaning to. Or the awful realisation I'd got no work done on my project in a week, so decided to pull an all nighter, which had 4 amazingly productive hours between 1 and 5 am. And in the morning there were sections it took me 10 minutes to understand the working of. I really need to get the project finished at some point...
And there were a lot more great things, like my brilliant technique for creating revision timelines: Get the back of an envelope, draw a line with marks for days, mark in exams, block in all-nighters before every exam possible then work your way back to the present to try and get enough time to cover everything. It works, too. Also, calling Lyndon and never failing to wake him, no matter what time in the morning, evening, afternoon or night it was. Long talks on the phone with Pamela. Hugs. Casanova, Phonogram, The Seven Soldiers of Victory. Peep Show and Heroes on TV links. All-nighters in the microlab. Deciding I'm definitely going for a PhD. Realising I'd become a responsible one, at times. FOPP in ST Andrews, RIP. Alternating subway runs with Fraser. Godel, Escher, Bach. Narbonic. Little Nemo. Meeting and getting to know Frank, Alex Stone, Emma, Lyndon, Myles, Alex Wood, Fraser, Scott, Arthur. Randomly walking into the lower common room and spending 4 hours playing poker. Learning to enjoy a night out. Getting to grips with LaTeX.
It's been a good year, mostly. Goals for next year: get a [good] PhD place with funding, get a good first, have a good set of friends I'm still in contact with after uni.
Anyway, I've been meaning for a while to write about ten of the most memorable times from the last year, as a general piece of pre-emptive nostalgia. Or just to remember the good times. So, anyway, here's ten moments from the last year I never want to forget.
[NB: Numbering is arbitrary, or chronological to some extent, but I'm counting down from 10 to 1 or so to hopefully give a minor element of suspense or anticipation. It will fail.]
10:Freshers week, and all ensuing immediate fallout.
Freshers' weeks are always interesting. This year's was very good, and set something of a tone for the year. Some things have deep dark secrets, somethings that are just fun, and it's great to see everyone again. I remember running into James at the Societies faire, again, having attended mainly to see him, and both of us commenting we'd known we'd find each other here and looking forward to the year ahead. I remember being the first student in Melville, and being unpacked within half an hour. But some big things happened then which set the tone of the year.
9:Lunchtime games of Go with Nicholas.
My friendship with Nicholas has been weird. Generally, if two people live down the corridor from each other in first year and meet in freshers week, they're likely to be friends at first, then gradually drift apart. With Nicholas, I've had the opposite kind of thing - we didn't speak that much in first year, started talking more in the second half of second year because the classes got smaller, then started hanging out socially and doing things together only after he'd moved out of Melville. This is in part because he introduced me to Go, and got me hooked, and partially because we started taking the 5000-level courses, all of which had class sizes of under 20. Also, we do get along well and respect each others intellect and have similar psuedo-intellectual (in my case) or intellectual (in his case) interests. Anyway, in first semester, we had heaps of great games as I was learning to play after our 9-12 morning lectures. One of those had Craig messaging me a bit... excessively, for the first time of the year, which was a bit annoying, and restarted our conflict, which got ugly. A fonder memory, though, is just playing Go to the music on my iPod, and us both simultaneously starting to sing quietly along with Common People. Pulp have been the soundtrack to my year, really, and I'll argue to the death (or at least until my opinion changes) that Different Class was the best album of the 90's. OK, Computer produced music is heavy on it but nevermind.
8: An incident I should probably not describe here which involved Pamela, myself, Jamie, Ally, Jen, my window, Fraser's room, Craig, Fraser, and his window.
It is an utterly hilarious story but it's not one I can tell for the sake of those involved. It's the time when I got possibly the most angry I've been at uni, and it's the only time I know I've actually scared a friend [Jen] by how angry I was while I've been here. It was crazy, but also stupidly fun. It's a really great story.
10/4: MT5824, Topics in Groups in general.
Every year until last I screwed up first semester. This year, I decided I'd try as hard as possible not to, and decided to see how well I could do in a 5000-level course while I was at it. I loved this course, because I ended up really getting to grips with the material, attended every single related session, and about half the class of 18 are people I'd count as friends. In particular, chatting to Paul was interesting. He was in the year above, and actually had been in the room adjacent to mine in Melville the year before I arrived, as well as a very good laugh in general. I'll miss him next year. The course is on what's probably my strongest subject, Group Theory, and was taught by one of the best lecturers. It's a very good course.
7: Cardiff, Choir of the Year Grand Final.
Haddo Choir, featuring my sisters, Mother, girlfriend and neighbour, reached the grand final of the Choir of the Year contest. So I went to wales to visit. It was great. Pamela sung well. She was on TV. I hugged her lots. My sister Beth's boyfriend was there. I miss her now, she's been in Ugandah since April. I mean, I really do. That night was great though - there were heaps of people I've known for ages there. And they did incredibly well and pulled of a virtuoso performance.
6: James Bond night.
Being on the Hall committee got me out a good bit. It also enabled us to put on some great shows like renting the cinema for a midnight screening of James Bond. That and the Halloween and Christmas parties. The last was especially memorable - sitting with Alana after talking about some things I was angry about really felt good, and I felt all mature and everything.
5: Study room late at night before exams.
Nothing says "University" like pulling 40 hour days to the sound of an iPod shuffle the night before an exam you're worried about. No, not crazy partying, drinking, wild sex and spending more money than you have, studying all night. Honest. But that's always going to be remembered. And only this year: helping subwardens revise.
Square root of 20: Fundamentals of Pure Mathematics exam.
It's incredibly disconcerting to sit down to an exam and find the paper that you did the night before as the final exam. On the plus side, it's good for getting a good grade.
4: Who am I?
While walking through Melville I said "hi" to Rob and Erin, two first years I know. They asked me to settle a dispute: "Is your name Jonny or Myles?". I explained by stopping Myles who was passing by, and showing that there were two maths students with a vague beard, shaggy hair, and glasses from Aberdeen living in Melville. The subtle different was that I'm two years above him. And am not a debator.
Pi: Hot Fuzz.
Best film of the year so far, without a doubt. "If you wanna be a big cop in a small town, why don't you fuck off down the model village?", "He's not Judge Judy and executioner!", "By the power of Greyskull!". It's a great film. We watched it lots.
3: 85 credits of honours is too much for one semester
In semester 2, we discovered that doing 50% as much again of the standard amount of work is enough to just about kill you - I remember a one morning which Nicholas and I fell asleep a total of 6 times in 3 lectures, despite actually being interested in what was going on. And taking notes. It was very very tiring. Also, hyperbolic Geometry was just insane - the first tutorial had me taking 3 hours to do what turned out to be something which I've been able to do in 3 minutes since standard grade once I worked out what the notation was. And there was Berndt Stratmann's use of the phrase "As I'm sure you'll recall from school" to refer to definitions I don't think any sub-university courses use [the definition of a compact set, I seem to recall, split the class between amusement and panic at the presumed knowledge].
2: Revising Lie Algebras while listening to my iPod and playing air guitar...
... during my Symbolic Computation exam. That was the least exam condition-y exam ever.
1: Just after my last exam of the year.
Went back to Melville. Yelled out "Yatta" on the door with Frank after Heroes [when it takes something to talk me into doing something, it's got to be ridiculous], went to Aikman's and had a long nice lunch with Nicholas, Owain, James and his gf. And Colin turned up later. Riffing off the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, generally just relaxing with friends. And then we were offered C2, Carling's Low-alcohol beer for free because they couldn't sell it. New levels of hyperbole were give to describe how awful it was: simply put, even the alcoholics refused a second free round. It was a very nice relaxing afternoon, after three weeks of dexies and lucozade and no sleep.
0: The entirety of the summer project.
It was generally great, standout moments including the Friday where we discovered Nicholas's lease expired that night, rather than a week later, at which point he was away for the weekend. So we had nowhere to stay for a while. There was that week when Arthur arrived and he did stuff no one else understood. Then we all got projects, and it turned out he'd sort of solved more or less all of them. Then he invented stuff which none of us really got our heads around. That great point where I was checking for exam results online while sitting in the office across from the one all the papers from the maths department were in, none of which had been reported to the central people. Or the other two times I was living at the maths department. Going rock-climbing and planning to do it regularly, after only three years of meaning to. Or the awful realisation I'd got no work done on my project in a week, so decided to pull an all nighter, which had 4 amazingly productive hours between 1 and 5 am. And in the morning there were sections it took me 10 minutes to understand the working of. I really need to get the project finished at some point...
And there were a lot more great things, like my brilliant technique for creating revision timelines: Get the back of an envelope, draw a line with marks for days, mark in exams, block in all-nighters before every exam possible then work your way back to the present to try and get enough time to cover everything. It works, too. Also, calling Lyndon and never failing to wake him, no matter what time in the morning, evening, afternoon or night it was. Long talks on the phone with Pamela. Hugs. Casanova, Phonogram, The Seven Soldiers of Victory. Peep Show and Heroes on TV links. All-nighters in the microlab. Deciding I'm definitely going for a PhD. Realising I'd become a responsible one, at times. FOPP in ST Andrews, RIP. Alternating subway runs with Fraser. Godel, Escher, Bach. Narbonic. Little Nemo. Meeting and getting to know Frank, Alex Stone, Emma, Lyndon, Myles, Alex Wood, Fraser, Scott, Arthur. Randomly walking into the lower common room and spending 4 hours playing poker. Learning to enjoy a night out. Getting to grips with LaTeX.
It's been a good year, mostly. Goals for next year: get a [good] PhD place with funding, get a good first, have a good set of friends I'm still in contact with after uni.