There's no place like London...
I don't believe i told many of you, but i had a combination open day/interview with UCL yesterday; I was extremely impressed by nearly every aspect of the campus, even if the whole place made me feel like a bumbling yokel. It's right next to the BT Tower and labyrinthian in scale, yet surprisingly compact, there seems to be an awful lot of construction work going on and the buildings are are mixture of old and majestic with shiny and new. The library in particular is sprawling and ancient and reminded me of the library from The Unseen University in Discworld, with the notable and unfortunate exception of an orangutang. There are two unions (one specifically for the university college and one for the university of london, both of which are technically UCL's unions), one of which has a 50m swimming pool, which made me very happy, there's also a massive theatre on the UCL main campus, which also has a few bars and a cinema inside.
The linguistics department are currently in the process of moving into their own building (of the Georgian variety) which is beautiful and has all of the shiny technology i could ever wish for. The interview itself was resoundingly strange, and entailed sitting opposite an eerily calm professor, who asked me in a very low tone, completely devoid of emotion "Mr...Elliott...could you, uh, tell me a little about yourself?", and subsequently let me talk for 15 minutes whilst never breaking eye contact. Suffice to say i was somewhat taken aback when the interview was over, but i must've done well because i recieved an email today from the department stating that, unofficially, they want to offer me a place.
I can't bring myself to relax before they send me the official offer, but if everything works out London's going to be where i'm heading come September. I'd be extremely chuffed to get on the course as the intake is only 24 students per year, and there are 10 full time staff, which is a pretty favourable ratio. So a feeling of tentative triumph in this corner.
The linguistics department are currently in the process of moving into their own building (of the Georgian variety) which is beautiful and has all of the shiny technology i could ever wish for. The interview itself was resoundingly strange, and entailed sitting opposite an eerily calm professor, who asked me in a very low tone, completely devoid of emotion "Mr...Elliott...could you, uh, tell me a little about yourself?", and subsequently let me talk for 15 minutes whilst never breaking eye contact. Suffice to say i was somewhat taken aback when the interview was over, but i must've done well because i recieved an email today from the department stating that, unofficially, they want to offer me a place.
I can't bring myself to relax before they send me the official offer, but if everything works out London's going to be where i'm heading come September. I'd be extremely chuffed to get on the course as the intake is only 24 students per year, and there are 10 full time staff, which is a pretty favourable ratio. So a feeling of tentative triumph in this corner.