It all gets better when life is straight, it's bigger than you, the welfare state
Wow, it's been a while since I updated this: not since I got the funded PhD offer from Imperial, which was followed on consecutive days by ones from St Andrews and a very nice e-mail from Royal Holloway saying "When would it be most convenient for us to give you a fully funded PhD place. Oh, and we're holding a conference on the 7-8th of April, which we'll fund your travel to and would like you to attend, regardless of whether or not you accept our offer."
I spent those three days partying with friends, followed by a session of UT2004 and 3 with James and Owain at the weekend. It was great: essentially the last three weeks have been a mixture of relaxing with the surprisingly vast quantity of friends I seem to have, and starting some hardcore typing up of my dissertation ("The integers, being numbers, are arguably rather significant in mathematics"). Although I've done less of that in the last week.
Plus I bought the fourth series of The Wire, and have now seen the 5th as well; it's undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best dramas ever in any medium. It's how television should be.
Oh, and there was a sister's 18th ceildh which I was home for, and I've in a somewhat related note, acquired a new bus concession card to replace the one which my dad attempted to dry on the stove after the sea incident. I recieved that this morning, along with a letter from Oxford University, dated 12th March, but postmarked 25th, and was essentially too late, as, in a fit of boredom last week, I accepted the Imperial offer.
I apparently am the sort of person who decides which university to study at for the next 4 years of my life on the grounds that sending an acceptance e-mail seems like excessively good positive procrastination. But everyone was telling me I was going to end up going there anyway and couldn't understand why I'd not accepted. And with my level of indecisiveness, it was only ever going to be accepted impulsively. The Oxford letter was interesting: it doesn't say anything, really, except that I wasn't accepted for funding in the present round, but would be reconsidered in later rounds, and should get in touch if I recieved an offer requiring urgent decisions. Due to the fact that having to choose between Oxford and Imperial would've been hard, that I'd not been told to get in touch with them, and that I was convinced my interview was so bad there was no point in considering, I didn't, so essentially never really found out if I would've got an Oxford place [funded, I definitely got in].
I'm also the sort of person who goes to lectures in a kilt, and has to be talked into wearing a shirt before going. I'm apparently the number one person keeping the president of SNPsoc sane, which speaks volumes. I'm the sort of person who can write 29 pages of dissertation without finishing the introductory section - my best case calculations say I need to do about 40 pages, so 120 hours in the next week if I want to get my first draft handed in on (my own personal) schedule. I'm the sort of person who gets invited to an academic conference as an undergrad because I was doing a SH project on the topic, and have decided to do a PhD with one of the rising stars in the field. And don't actually seem to be able to understand much of the material I'm trying to write up at present, but we're dealing with baby steps here. I'm approaching the end of an undistinguished* career as a taught student by doing three lecture courses which I'm not really paying attention to, two of which have utterly lost me, but will hopefully be saved after May 2nd, D-Day. I'm the sort of guy who seems to be winning a lot of Go games through insane invasion lately. I'm the sort of person who manages to get a Christmas present in the end of March, and still be waiting for the last one.
I've got a lot of good friends here, and things are pretty great, aside from the stalling project, and the worrying state of Number Theory and Group Rings, a module which seems to be baffling the lecturer as much as the students at the moment, so therefore is permitted to be temporarily written off. This year's shown me I'm a lot stronger than I thought, and taught me, among other things, that I'm an extrovert, which I suppose has been hinted at a few times before, but really doesn't seem to sit right with me. I seem to be coping with life scarily well, to the extent mental health people are saying they should probably stop seeing me. London is going to be crazy; hopefully I'll cope, but I've got a good number of friends here to visit next year, and a couple who're thinking of trying to join me at Imperial in the coming years. That sentence is excessively scary.
Ally's doing his crazy thing again, great TV series are ending, there's a major football competition on soon, and I've started rereading Infinite Jest. Things are, all told, pretty good. Except for the dissertation. But I have Leonard Cohen tickets for July, which rather trump it.
*OK, arguably untrue, but I've never won any academic prizes, never been top of the class at anything. Although the fact a dear friend of mine is currently visiting Cornell University, trying to decide between there, Oxford and ETH Zurich for his PhD next year is part of the reason for this holding at uni. It's the sort of decision that is what everyone really wants, but must simultaneously be impossible to make.
I spent those three days partying with friends, followed by a session of UT2004 and 3 with James and Owain at the weekend. It was great: essentially the last three weeks have been a mixture of relaxing with the surprisingly vast quantity of friends I seem to have, and starting some hardcore typing up of my dissertation ("The integers, being numbers, are arguably rather significant in mathematics"). Although I've done less of that in the last week.
Plus I bought the fourth series of The Wire, and have now seen the 5th as well; it's undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best dramas ever in any medium. It's how television should be.
Oh, and there was a sister's 18th ceildh which I was home for, and I've in a somewhat related note, acquired a new bus concession card to replace the one which my dad attempted to dry on the stove after the sea incident. I recieved that this morning, along with a letter from Oxford University, dated 12th March, but postmarked 25th, and was essentially too late, as, in a fit of boredom last week, I accepted the Imperial offer.
I apparently am the sort of person who decides which university to study at for the next 4 years of my life on the grounds that sending an acceptance e-mail seems like excessively good positive procrastination. But everyone was telling me I was going to end up going there anyway and couldn't understand why I'd not accepted. And with my level of indecisiveness, it was only ever going to be accepted impulsively. The Oxford letter was interesting: it doesn't say anything, really, except that I wasn't accepted for funding in the present round, but would be reconsidered in later rounds, and should get in touch if I recieved an offer requiring urgent decisions. Due to the fact that having to choose between Oxford and Imperial would've been hard, that I'd not been told to get in touch with them, and that I was convinced my interview was so bad there was no point in considering, I didn't, so essentially never really found out if I would've got an Oxford place [funded, I definitely got in].
I'm also the sort of person who goes to lectures in a kilt, and has to be talked into wearing a shirt before going. I'm apparently the number one person keeping the president of SNPsoc sane, which speaks volumes. I'm the sort of person who can write 29 pages of dissertation without finishing the introductory section - my best case calculations say I need to do about 40 pages, so 120 hours in the next week if I want to get my first draft handed in on (my own personal) schedule. I'm the sort of person who gets invited to an academic conference as an undergrad because I was doing a SH project on the topic, and have decided to do a PhD with one of the rising stars in the field. And don't actually seem to be able to understand much of the material I'm trying to write up at present, but we're dealing with baby steps here. I'm approaching the end of an undistinguished* career as a taught student by doing three lecture courses which I'm not really paying attention to, two of which have utterly lost me, but will hopefully be saved after May 2nd, D-Day. I'm the sort of guy who seems to be winning a lot of Go games through insane invasion lately. I'm the sort of person who manages to get a Christmas present in the end of March, and still be waiting for the last one.
I've got a lot of good friends here, and things are pretty great, aside from the stalling project, and the worrying state of Number Theory and Group Rings, a module which seems to be baffling the lecturer as much as the students at the moment, so therefore is permitted to be temporarily written off. This year's shown me I'm a lot stronger than I thought, and taught me, among other things, that I'm an extrovert, which I suppose has been hinted at a few times before, but really doesn't seem to sit right with me. I seem to be coping with life scarily well, to the extent mental health people are saying they should probably stop seeing me. London is going to be crazy; hopefully I'll cope, but I've got a good number of friends here to visit next year, and a couple who're thinking of trying to join me at Imperial in the coming years. That sentence is excessively scary.
Ally's doing his crazy thing again, great TV series are ending, there's a major football competition on soon, and I've started rereading Infinite Jest. Things are, all told, pretty good. Except for the dissertation. But I have Leonard Cohen tickets for July, which rather trump it.
*OK, arguably untrue, but I've never won any academic prizes, never been top of the class at anything. Although the fact a dear friend of mine is currently visiting Cornell University, trying to decide between there, Oxford and ETH Zurich for his PhD next year is part of the reason for this holding at uni. It's the sort of decision that is what everyone really wants, but must simultaneously be impossible to make.