En français, s'il vous plaît...
I'm listening to Jean-Jacques Goldman's En Passant, and feeling a sudden urge to keep up my French. I said when I left school that I'd keep it up somehow, and I haven't really done much with it recently, other than occasional conversations with Caroline on MSN. So, henceforth shall I write this in both French and English ... well, when I can be bothered, at least. It will be gramatically incorrect, unfortunately, so if there's anyone out there who feels like correcting, do feel free to jump in. I will cut the French though, because obviously this is going to double the length of my entries, and no-one will want to read my posts twice.
So.
Today has been a funny day. Usually one of my busiest days, with 3-hour labs bookended by two lectures; but today actually I only had one lecture. This, of course, is due to the lecturer's strike today. *g* Hooray for that. Originally it was only my first lecture which was cancelled, which we knew about on Friday. So, I toddled off to my labs this afternoon, only to be greeted by Dr. Hughes, making sure everyone had signed in and then sending them off again, as the demonstrators were striking. Happy happy.
This morning, of course, I took part in psychological research AND WAS PAID, oh yeah. £5 for 45 minutes work is good. The testing today was to do with working memory and mental arithmatic, and involved trying to remember sets of letters or asterisks while doing some fairly simple mental arithmetic (i.e. 47 + 6, that sort of thing). Nothing harder than addition, but still, I got utterly confused a couple of times what with trying to remember things such as 'mef gip nah' in order to say whether the string of letters at the end was the same or different. After that, I had to take a test desgined for primary school children to measure my working memory when not doing mental arithmetic. Despite being for children, the test was actually quite hard, but hey, FIVE POUNDS. Happy happy.
I came back, rushed through my algebra homework (which I now realise I got totally wrong), my labs task (obviously turned out to be pointless), and an irritating question about estimating the mass of the earth given some constants and the fact that a ship of given height disappeared over the horizon at a given distance from the observer. Argh, that question caused me pain. I thought I had it sorted yesterday afternoon, and only needed to write it up. Sat down to do that at half eight last night, suddenly realised I'd made a completely unfounded assumption and so had to basically start again. And it turned out to be a lot harder.
Mark came up to my room at about nine, bringing with him Welsh cakes, and proceeded to play chess with himself and show me the various ways in which you can checkmate; then he amused himself while I carried on working. I still hadn't managed it when Ben came up at 10:15pm, having been to the Undie with choir. We chatted for a bit, and Ben and Mark played chess with very few pieces, and then tried to help me with my work. Neither of them could do it. Ben was a little sleepy in any case, and after lying on my bed to see if he could work out the problem proceeded to simply pu this head down on my book and close his eyes. Mark tried very very hard, for which I am immensely grateful, but still couldn't do it. By this time I had just given up, and resorted to sitting at the end of my bed and stroking Ben's hair, which I think I did for about three-quarters of an hour, if not more. It's very relaxing.
At about half eleven, we all went to bed, and I had another go this morning. I ended up approximating wildly; as a result I think my estimates are a couple of orders of magnitude out, but I don't really care any more. It's not summative, and I have more important work to do.
Such as, I thought, my labs preparation task, which was the longest one ever - about 2 pages, and it's only worth two marks at most! And then it was cancelled anyway. So, I have finished labs now until October, which is a happy thought.
I also got my last lab report back today. Not so happy there. I got 70%, decent enough, but worse than last time, which is disappointing. Then again, I was ill when I did it. But what really gets me is the complete inconsistency in the comments compared to last time. For my Discovery report, I was told that my written style was 'exemplary', and that my table and figure captions were 'very good'. This time around, they are 'good' and 'poor' respectively, this despite the fact that the only change I made to the latter was in response to advice from the marker of the first report. In fact, knowing that I'd done well in those areas of my last report, I was very careful to do everything the same way in this one, which makes it all the more annoying that they seem to think I've done so badly this time. (For the record, the scale goes exemplary - very good - good - acceptable - poor - unacceptable, so there's quite a discrepancy). Ah well. I did well enough overall, anyway; I am glad about that.
This evening I treated myself to pasta instead of college ming (I have a 5:15pm lecture so am back too late for normal ming in any case, it being formal on Tuesdays as well), and curled up with that and the first episode of Pride and Prejudice. Actually, I think it may have somehow started half-way through, because I'm sure Wickham doesn't turn up that early on, and surely the adaptation (BBC, by the way) doesn't start off with the Bennets knowing Mr Darcy? *is confused* Ah well. Fun, anyway.
Now I shall perhaps do some work, and then early bed methinks, as I'm rather tired. *yawns*
En ce moment, j'écoute à En Passant de Jean-Jacques Goldman, qui me rend le désir d'entretenir ma commande de la langue française. J'avais dit quand je suis parti du lycée que j'irai l'entretenir dans quelque façon, mais je ne l'ai pas fait sauf qu'en parlant avec Caroline sur MSN quelquefois. Alors, d'ici je vais écrire mon journal en français aussi qu'en anglais ... bof, quand j'ai pas la flemme, en tout cas. Je sais que j'écrirai des choses grammatiquement incorrectes (?!), alors s'il y a quelqu'un là qui veut me corriger les erreurs, je vous serai vraiment obligé. Je vais mettre le français au-dessous d'un 'LJ cut', car bien sûr que cette façon d'écrire va prendre deux fois l'éspace qu'autrement, et personne ne voulait pas lire mes écrivants deux fois.
Alors.
Aujourd'hui, c'était une journée peu bizarre. D'habitude c'est un des mes jours le plus occupé de la semaine, avec des recherches en laboratoires durant 3 heures, encerclé par des deux cours, mais aujourd'hui je n'avais qu'un cours. C'était bien sûr grâce aux grèves des lecteurs. *g* Une raison pour fêter, vraiment. À l'origine ce n'était que l'un de mes cours qu'on avait annulé, ce qu'on nous a dit le vendredi. Alors, je me suis pris pour aller aux recherches laboratoires cet après-midi, où je me suis rencontré avec Dr. Hughes, qui a verifié que nous étions tous là avant qu'il nous a expédié, car les démonstrateurs faisait la grève. Que je suis contente...
Ce matin, bien sûr, je faisait parti d'une recherche psychologique, pour laquelle ON M'A PAYÉ, oui, c'est bon. *g* £5 pour trvaillant pendant 45 minutes, c'est vraiment bon. Ce que j'ai fait aujourd'hui avait à voir avec la mémoire travaillante (je ne sais pas le vrai mot en français, désolé) et de l'arithméthique mentale, et il m'a fallu essayer de me souvenir des groupes de lettres pendant que je fasse de l'arithméthique mentale assez simple (i.e. 47 + 6, des choses comme ça). Il n'y avait rien plus dûr que faire l'addition, mais en tout cas je me suis confusé beaucoup car j'ai dû me souvenir des phrases comme 'mef gip nah' afin de dire si les lettres me posé au fin étaient les mêmes ou différentes. Après cela, j'ai dû prendre une contrôle utilisée pour calculer la mémoire travaillante des gamins de l'école primaire, pour calculer la mienne quand je ne faisait pas d'arithméthique mentale. Bien que ce contrôle soit pour des gamins, je l'a trouvé assez dûr, mais bon, CINQ LIVRES. Je suis contente.
Ok, well, not writing the whole post again in French after all, because oh my word doesn't it half take ages? Perhaps I shall come back later. For now, au revoir mes amies...
So.
Today has been a funny day. Usually one of my busiest days, with 3-hour labs bookended by two lectures; but today actually I only had one lecture. This, of course, is due to the lecturer's strike today. *g* Hooray for that. Originally it was only my first lecture which was cancelled, which we knew about on Friday. So, I toddled off to my labs this afternoon, only to be greeted by Dr. Hughes, making sure everyone had signed in and then sending them off again, as the demonstrators were striking. Happy happy.
This morning, of course, I took part in psychological research AND WAS PAID, oh yeah. £5 for 45 minutes work is good. The testing today was to do with working memory and mental arithmatic, and involved trying to remember sets of letters or asterisks while doing some fairly simple mental arithmetic (i.e. 47 + 6, that sort of thing). Nothing harder than addition, but still, I got utterly confused a couple of times what with trying to remember things such as 'mef gip nah' in order to say whether the string of letters at the end was the same or different. After that, I had to take a test desgined for primary school children to measure my working memory when not doing mental arithmetic. Despite being for children, the test was actually quite hard, but hey, FIVE POUNDS. Happy happy.
I came back, rushed through my algebra homework (which I now realise I got totally wrong), my labs task (obviously turned out to be pointless), and an irritating question about estimating the mass of the earth given some constants and the fact that a ship of given height disappeared over the horizon at a given distance from the observer. Argh, that question caused me pain. I thought I had it sorted yesterday afternoon, and only needed to write it up. Sat down to do that at half eight last night, suddenly realised I'd made a completely unfounded assumption and so had to basically start again. And it turned out to be a lot harder.
Mark came up to my room at about nine, bringing with him Welsh cakes, and proceeded to play chess with himself and show me the various ways in which you can checkmate; then he amused himself while I carried on working. I still hadn't managed it when Ben came up at 10:15pm, having been to the Undie with choir. We chatted for a bit, and Ben and Mark played chess with very few pieces, and then tried to help me with my work. Neither of them could do it. Ben was a little sleepy in any case, and after lying on my bed to see if he could work out the problem proceeded to simply pu this head down on my book and close his eyes. Mark tried very very hard, for which I am immensely grateful, but still couldn't do it. By this time I had just given up, and resorted to sitting at the end of my bed and stroking Ben's hair, which I think I did for about three-quarters of an hour, if not more. It's very relaxing.
At about half eleven, we all went to bed, and I had another go this morning. I ended up approximating wildly; as a result I think my estimates are a couple of orders of magnitude out, but I don't really care any more. It's not summative, and I have more important work to do.
Such as, I thought, my labs preparation task, which was the longest one ever - about 2 pages, and it's only worth two marks at most! And then it was cancelled anyway. So, I have finished labs now until October, which is a happy thought.
I also got my last lab report back today. Not so happy there. I got 70%, decent enough, but worse than last time, which is disappointing. Then again, I was ill when I did it. But what really gets me is the complete inconsistency in the comments compared to last time. For my Discovery report, I was told that my written style was 'exemplary', and that my table and figure captions were 'very good'. This time around, they are 'good' and 'poor' respectively, this despite the fact that the only change I made to the latter was in response to advice from the marker of the first report. In fact, knowing that I'd done well in those areas of my last report, I was very careful to do everything the same way in this one, which makes it all the more annoying that they seem to think I've done so badly this time. (For the record, the scale goes exemplary - very good - good - acceptable - poor - unacceptable, so there's quite a discrepancy). Ah well. I did well enough overall, anyway; I am glad about that.
This evening I treated myself to pasta instead of college ming (I have a 5:15pm lecture so am back too late for normal ming in any case, it being formal on Tuesdays as well), and curled up with that and the first episode of Pride and Prejudice. Actually, I think it may have somehow started half-way through, because I'm sure Wickham doesn't turn up that early on, and surely the adaptation (BBC, by the way) doesn't start off with the Bennets knowing Mr Darcy? *is confused* Ah well. Fun, anyway.
Now I shall perhaps do some work, and then early bed methinks, as I'm rather tired. *yawns*
En ce moment, j'écoute à En Passant de Jean-Jacques Goldman, qui me rend le désir d'entretenir ma commande de la langue française. J'avais dit quand je suis parti du lycée que j'irai l'entretenir dans quelque façon, mais je ne l'ai pas fait sauf qu'en parlant avec Caroline sur MSN quelquefois. Alors, d'ici je vais écrire mon journal en français aussi qu'en anglais ... bof, quand j'ai pas la flemme, en tout cas. Je sais que j'écrirai des choses grammatiquement incorrectes (?!), alors s'il y a quelqu'un là qui veut me corriger les erreurs, je vous serai vraiment obligé. Je vais mettre le français au-dessous d'un 'LJ cut', car bien sûr que cette façon d'écrire va prendre deux fois l'éspace qu'autrement, et personne ne voulait pas lire mes écrivants deux fois.
Alors.
Aujourd'hui, c'était une journée peu bizarre. D'habitude c'est un des mes jours le plus occupé de la semaine, avec des recherches en laboratoires durant 3 heures, encerclé par des deux cours, mais aujourd'hui je n'avais qu'un cours. C'était bien sûr grâce aux grèves des lecteurs. *g* Une raison pour fêter, vraiment. À l'origine ce n'était que l'un de mes cours qu'on avait annulé, ce qu'on nous a dit le vendredi. Alors, je me suis pris pour aller aux recherches laboratoires cet après-midi, où je me suis rencontré avec Dr. Hughes, qui a verifié que nous étions tous là avant qu'il nous a expédié, car les démonstrateurs faisait la grève. Que je suis contente...
Ce matin, bien sûr, je faisait parti d'une recherche psychologique, pour laquelle ON M'A PAYÉ, oui, c'est bon. *g* £5 pour trvaillant pendant 45 minutes, c'est vraiment bon. Ce que j'ai fait aujourd'hui avait à voir avec la mémoire travaillante (je ne sais pas le vrai mot en français, désolé) et de l'arithméthique mentale, et il m'a fallu essayer de me souvenir des groupes de lettres pendant que je fasse de l'arithméthique mentale assez simple (i.e. 47 + 6, des choses comme ça). Il n'y avait rien plus dûr que faire l'addition, mais en tout cas je me suis confusé beaucoup car j'ai dû me souvenir des phrases comme 'mef gip nah' afin de dire si les lettres me posé au fin étaient les mêmes ou différentes. Après cela, j'ai dû prendre une contrôle utilisée pour calculer la mémoire travaillante des gamins de l'école primaire, pour calculer la mienne quand je ne faisait pas d'arithméthique mentale. Bien que ce contrôle soit pour des gamins, je l'a trouvé assez dûr, mais bon, CINQ LIVRES. Je suis contente.
Ok, well, not writing the whole post again in French after all, because oh my word doesn't it half take ages? Perhaps I shall come back later. For now, au revoir mes amies...