don't worry, be happy :)

 

I was reading yesterday's G2 at breakfast this morning, and lighted upon this article on how to cut back food waste - no doubt triggered by the £8-a-week statistic that's been bandied about recently. As the two introductory paragraphs remark, food waste is by no means the province of domestic households and it is often difficult to make the 'correct' lifestyle choices*. But it's no use just shifting the blame and sticking our heads in the sand** - every little helps and all that, and constructive advice is always more agreeable than pure sanctimony.

 

I am tempted to save and distribute the article, although I know that I would not be popular to say the least if I stuck it up in our kitchen in Durham - and in all fairness it might seem a little bit like saying 'I told you so', which is never helpful or necessary! I think that my housemates already think I'm some sort of crazy environmentalist anyway***...

 

In any case, for easy disgestion****, twenty ways to reduce food waste, courtesy of Laura Barton and Jon Henley (and expanded upon in the article itself):

 

1. Avoid the supermarket

2. Ignore 2-for-1 offers

3. Shop daily for perishables

4. Bulk-buy non-perishables

5. Be storage savvy

6. Meal-plan for the week

7. Cook

8. Buy quality not quantity

9. Freecycle/ become a 'freegan'

10. Utilise your freezer

11. Don't be afraid of an empty fridge

12. Grow your own herbs and salad

13. Buy vegetables whole

14. Know how much a portion is

15. Bulk-cook meals

16. Learn how to use leftovers

17. Look to previous generations

18. Take sell-by dates with a pinch of salt

19. Rediscover packed lunches

20. Equip yourself

 

 

*Case in point: At home, I have a small convenience store, a couple of newsagents, a couple of butchers, and an organic produce shop within about ten minutes' easy walk. Within a mile I have access to a Spar, a couple of other convenience stores, a Tesco Express (which actually sells 'proper food'), a couple of bakeries, a couple of greengrocers, a Somerfield... that's just off the top of my head. Within two miles, I can go to one of two big Sainsbury's or a big Co-op - I don't suppose I could list all of the smaller food shops within that distance. We have a car, and despite the questionable reliability at times, there is also a bus network - you can turn up at a stop and would be very unlucky to have nothing come within twenty minutes.

 

Then in Durham, where I have an incredibly busy lifestyle and am basically reliant on my feet, there is a Somerfield a mile away in the wrong direction, some small food shops in town half an hour's walk away, and they're closing the only supermarket within reasonable walking distance of the centre. Then the newsagents ten minutes' away sells onions, milk, and expensive non-perishables if we run out and need something urgently - and that's it. Literally. It's not that you can't buy food responsibly, but it takes a much greater degree of time and effort (- and yet must seem like convenience paradise to people who live in the middle of nowhere!)

 

**For those of you who really don't care, this article is completely unrelated, rather amusing, and needs distributing, I feel :-)

 

***I'd disagree. I don't do nearly enough. But then there are degrees and it does depend on your starting point!

 

****Oh dear, I just re-read that... it was not intentional. I am actually turning into my mother.

 

Sometimes the news just makes you feel sick, and there's nothing more to say.

 

Lalalala lalalala bleh

lala Lalalala bleh

lala Lalalala

lalalalaLalalalaLalaLALA eeeeeeeeeeee...

 

mwumph.

 

 

*nods*

 

I feel like I want to write something on here. Not so much of a what-I've-been-doing-of-late nature, because that would take way too long and probably get pretty boring - suffice to say, then, that I have been busy, busy, busy and in the most part having an excellent time - but more of a where-I-am-right-now-in-life nature. Problem is, I don't know where to start!

 

Who reads this, really? How do I fix the tone? I often feel like my writing style veers from one extreme to the other, from overly informal to overly scripted (we're in the latter at the minute, in case you were in any doubt). Do I talk about home friends, university friends, family? Anecdotes, politics, internet-randomness or personal issues? Generally I just write about something as and when it occurs to me, but inevitably I restrict myself a bit - my general guide on whether an entry should be published or not, for instance, is whether or not I'd be comfortable reading it on someone else's blog. Reading back over entries from the past months and years, it occurs to me not how much I've put in but how much I've missed out. Is that because this is the internet, because anyone could read it? Is it because I am conscious of the fact that cyberspace does not need any more teenage angst? Or is it simply that I find it very, very hard to open up, in person, on t'net, whatever? I don't know, in all honesty. The irony is that I quite like reading about other people's personal issues, particularly those of people I don't know - call it nosiness or boredom or schadenfreude or what you like! I personally think of it as a bit like really getting to know a character in a book.

 

So where am I in life at the minute? I come back to the fact that I don't know. The bruise is nicely blackened and throbbing away (- having time to think about it has brought it out, as I suspected), and it's a time of change in how I feel I relate to my family. I feel more grown-up, more independent somehow, although at the same time I know that that is perhaps symptomatic of being near to the end of a term and therefore having been living on my own terms for the past nine weeks. I have the overwhelming end-of-things sadness that Flix talked about, but at the same time I'm actively looking forward to going home, actively looking forward to the summer, and perhaps not so emotionally tied to university-life as I thought I was. I'm confused, and happy, and have made a particularly good new friendship this year which I hope will last for at least the next two; at the same time I have spent a lot of the last few days wanting to cry my eyes out.

 

If there's one thing that I have learnt of late, it's my reliance on other people. Not in a clingy or overbearing manner (I hope!) - just how important it is to me to have someone to talk to 'til gone midnight, how important it is to tell someone about my family, how important it is to have all the little discussions with my housemates during the course of the day that gradually bring us closer together. Just how important it is to see someone for a couple of hours, and laugh, and be silly, and muck around, and not even touch on Big Personal Tales of Woe but be able to flourish with the human contact! No man, or indeed woman, is an island.

 

I don't even know where this entry is going, so maybe it's time to stop there.

 

 

In other news, of the jump-up-and-down-squeaking nature, I got my exam results back the other day. 84% average! And while three of my close Maths friends may have got 87%, 87%, and 99% respectively (- hanging around with clever people seriously isn't doing my ego any favours!), I'm still pretty chuffed :-)

 

Last night I went to a college production of 'Much Ado About Nothing'. It was fantastically, fantastically acted (to the degree that even seasoned theatre goers were impressed), and it was held outside in the quad. Evening light, birds singing, roses blooming. Lovely :-)

 

Someday I will find my Benedick...

 

I'm feeling guilty. And indecisive, and enthusiastic, but mostly guilty.

 

It looks like this: I have to choose my third-year modules in the next ten days or so. None are compulsory, all are equally weighted, and I have to choose six. There are various issues, ranging from "What are Solitons, anyway?", to the fact that a lot of the stuff I'm interested in is being taken by really bad lecturers, to not wanting to restrict my choice even further for fourth year due to the tight pre-requisite system. There is also the slight issue that apart from Differential Geometry, a certain choice, there's nothing really leaping off the screen at me (or nothing that doesn't have lecturing issues - Number Theory, Galois Theory, and Geometry would all appeal much more if I didn't anticipate them becoming basically self-study).

 

And then there's Mathematics Teaching. I have always been fairly clear that I do not want to be a Maths teacher. Quite apart from the marking, the kids who don't want to be there, and the endless government initiaves which wouldn't know one end of a blackboard from another, I don't think that I'd be very good at it. You need a certain personality and more importantly, an ability to explain things which I simply don't have. Yes, it's a worthy career option. Yes, it directly uses Maths and yes, there is a shortage of Maths graduates training as teachers. But a bad teacher is worse than no teacher at all, and I'm not sure that inflicting myself upon a class of fourteen-year-olds would be doing anyone any favours - them, me, or the school.

 

So I went to the module meeting today to get the information but essentially to rule it out - and I have come back really, really enthusiastic and really, really wanting to do the module! Basically it's less directly vocational than I'd expected, and it turns out that while the Michaelmas term would involve lesson observation, it wouldn't be until Epiphany that we had the option of actual classroom assistanting - the alternative to assistanting would then be a 4000 word essay in which we would pick a 'real-life' topic and investigate how it could be used for teaching in schools. All in all it sounds fascinating, and it would be a chance to a) develop my Maths-communication skills, b) do some extended project work, something which appeals a lot more than my current diet of six bitty homeworks a week and c) write essays, which I have missed believe it or not!

 

So far, so good, but the problem is this: the module is capped, or to put that into English, they can only take forty students. Entry is judged by short essays (:'How would you explain the importance of proof to a sixth-form student?') which doesn't bother me too much, although that's my day gone tomorrow if I still want to meet the deadline. Fifty students have registered an interest so far. If I don't get into it, I don't get into it - but could I in all conscience take a place on that course if someone who is actively considering Maths teaching as a career got turned away? On a four year degree, I would simply have to pick another module, whereas BSc students would be forced to take Communicating Mathematics, a single dissertation-like module with a completely different emphasis that's not to everyone's taste.

 

Thoughts?

 

I have spent today getting out of Durham! What was needed, I think.

 

My Mum and my brother came to Newcastle for the day (long story) and while Peter went off with friends, Mum and I took the Metro out to South Shields and spent a very lovely afternoon exploring the town(?), eating our lunch on a picnic bench overlooking the harbour-mouth, and then walking along at the edge of the beach, listening to the gulls and breathing in the sea air.

 

On a map, Durham isn't that far from the sea - or from Newcastle, or from the Metro Centre at Gateshead, or from any number of attractions in the North-East. But term-times are so intensive that I have never explored any of these in great depth, and never out of these three weeks after exams in the summer term. People do go for nights out in Newcastle every so often, either on an organised coach visit or just by train - there are buses which can ferry us to the surrounding villages and there is even a car hire company which has its niche in providing for the student market. And yet there never seems to be time. Somehow lectures and homeworks and societies and socialising within Durham take every minute of every day, leaving us in a little puddle on the floor even at the thought of taking a day out to go somewhere further afield. My walking boots have yet to be christened with County Durham mud, which is a crying shame considering the relative accessibility of mud-patches when compared to at home. One of my goals for these weeks is to rectify that a bit!

 

So lovely to see the sea :-)

 

No-one with any sort of contact with money can have failed to notice the recession of late. Petrol prices and gas bills have soared. Food has gone up by 50% in some places. Clothes have increased in cost, tuition fees have risen above inflation, and an attempt to book train tickets down to St Albans has made me realise that my days of hopping about the country on a budget are long over.

 

Without going so far as to call myself a cheapskate, I've been brought up to be reasonably frugal with money - I will always make myself sarnies and fill a bottle from the tap rather than fork out for extortionate meal deals, that sort of thing. "If you can't afford it, don't buy it" has always stood my family and I in fairly good stead. But even I now feel that I have to watch it a bit more closely to avoid going into the red, and I find it very hard to tell whether that's paranoia on my part - I have not budgeted tightly for the past couple of years of managing my own (well, loan) money, simply because I haven't had to. 

 

Needless to say, the people worst hit will be the ones already struggling to keep their heads above water. While affluent Durham students with cars may be cutting down their driving to two times a week rather than three or four, I suspect that the children of the people that I worked in the pub with last summer may have had to stop learning to swim just so that they can still have school shoes. Sticks in your throat, somewhat, although I do realise that my housemate saving petrol money won't magically transfer it to the households of Longbridge.

 

Not wanting to provoke a political tit-for-tat (something which I can be lured in to pretty quickly and it generally doesn't end well!), can anyone here explain what the cause of this recession is? Yes, the government has upped tax on fuel, but that being a sole cause would imply a degree of control which I suspect isn't there - no chancellor/ PM in his right mind would deliberately drag the economy down at such an impressive rate. My economic knowledge, I fear, is sorely lacking..

 

You've dropped hints. You've asked nicely. You've explained your point (or you've thought you have, anyway). You've told nicely. You've become exasperated, and it's showed. You've started to sound like a nagging mother. You started to yell, broke down in tears and then had to postpone a full blown argument because of exams - which is fair enough but it has started to feel like even the argument has to be at their convenience. You've asked nicely again.

 

You're still ignored, and the message that you're not happy about things doesn't seem to have got through yet - after the better part of a year.

 

What exactly are you supposed to do, bearing in mind that this problem is with a housemate, close friend, and otherwise very lovely person who you are living with for another year? How exactly are you meant to make them listen and do something about it?

 

 

Exams finished almost a week ago, and for the first time in my two years at university, I packed a bag that night, went to the train station early the next morning and jumped on a train home, completely unplanned. It's a long but not particularly tortuous journey - the most difficult part in terms of effort is the half-hour walk to the station at this end - and I just needed to go home. Back in Durham, I slowly feel like I'm starting to recover from the five and a half weeks of hell, and last night saw the others properly (or most of them) for the second time this term. These weeks'll be some good 'uns :-)

 

One of the most stressful things about exam season is other people's stress. To an extent, it's good - there's a danger otherwise of becoming under-stressed, and I will admit to a teensy competitive streak when it comes to things like exams. Durham is not like Oxbridge in the respect that your raw mark counts for a lot more than where you come in the ranking for your course, but inevitably there is an aspect of moderation (if everyone does really well on a paper then the marks will be moderated down and vice versa). In something like Maths, the ability range tends to be, dare I say it, exponential - and this means that to do well on a paper you really can't afford to be banking on everyone screwing up because there are some people who will kick ass regardless.

 

Having said that, I reckon I've got my revision technique pretty much sorted. I know how I work best. That involves not getting up 'til 7:30am or 8am, because energy is good. That involves going for a walk straight after breakfast, because pain is bad and certainly does not aid concentration. That involves going back to basics on the material, really understanding it, and then distilling it on to revision cards before even attempting any past papers or the like.

 

So I have to try my hardest not to get phased by other people working by 7am, or by coursemates going through every question on the problem sheets as a way of revising. I know that I'm not good at learning things by rote, but it doesn't mean that I don't get worried when someone can reel off every last symbol in the proof for the Contraction Mapping Theorem; I don't even write essays, but I still start doing a mental tally of my work when my two arts housemates compare the number of plans that they wrote that day. One of the up-sides of not living with any mathematicians, I guess, is that I don't feel like I have to be constantly comparing myself to anyone - I can just get on with it. But I'm still wondering how everyone else is doing.

 

Numerical Analysis is hard. It's conceptually actually pretty easy when compared to AMV or something like that, but the questions are awkward and the first term in particular was not lectured well. Ironically, being good with Maple is almost a hindrance to doing the questions with pen and paper. But never mind. I'm getting on. Getting on. And trying to remember that I have another, as yet unrevised module on Tuesday...

 

Five days. Five days 'til freedom!

 

My possessions seem to be operating a one-in, one-out policy at the moment. About a week ago I lost my first-year Calculus revision cards and my hairbrush. Then I found the hairbrush and lost my doorkey. I have just found the Calculus cards (rather belatedly) and lost my campus card, my student identification and my sole means of access to the library.

 

On balance, the doorkey and the campus card would be nicer to have than the last year's revision cards and the hairbrush...

 

 

Numerical Analysis. Urgh. Roll on a week today.

 

I have about 14 hours to learn the entirety of Codes before tomorrow. Damn prioritising, always gets back at you when you're least expecting it. I can do it, right?

 

(Possibly yes, is the answer, if I can just concentrate. This morning hasn't been good distraction-wise, but I needed the break. Read the college magazine that was posted online - what I really need, it turns out, is to go visit a friend in Southampton :-P)

 

 

20:37 : My housemate told me to stop complaining about exam exhaustion earlier. Yes, everyone is working bloody hard, but yes, I have just had the same amount of exams in one week as the rest of them put together. It adds a whole new degree of intensity and stress. And yes, that count is literal (just about including Eleanor's two as well if you total the hours. Eleanor isn't in the house at the minute.).

 

Stress and tiredness and achyness together don't add to my nice-person vibes. But I'm still annoyed.

 

 

22:40 : My gums hurt where my wisdom teeth are trying to come through. My very first word was 'teeth' because I had teething pain as a toddler and I was appealing to my Mummy to put some Bonjela on to soothe it. I could do with some Bonjela now...

 

 

23:15 : I've managed to get Tippex on my chin that isn't rubbing off. I don't really want to use nail varnish remover (acetone) on my face though, so it may have to stay there for a bit.

 

 

23:20 : Coffee is clearly less caffeine-rich than Coke. So, so tired! On the plus side, drinking it doesn't make my stomach feel like its attacking itself from the inside, which was less than pleasant during my Algebra exam. Codes, dammit.

 

 

23:54 : Onto the last chapter of summary notes, the one with the massively-long, massively-pointless algorithm to learn. BCH decoding ftw! In reponse to Hannah's lovely comment - thank you, I agree, although I am probably wallowing in it a bit. And I'm not a big tea person, but honey on toast is good.

 

 

00:41 : BCH decoding algorithm written out and gone through. Sure, I can work through it, but will I really be able to remember the ins and outs of 's's and 't's and 'A's and 'B's and 'alpha inverse's in t'exam? *sigh* Only burst errors to go now (is it just me or do they sound a bit like abscesses?) but it's a very short topic that we have barely covered and I'll work through a question in the morning. Sleep is more important now, probably, especially given my not-being-good-on-little-sleep metabolism. My gums still hurt, in the same irritating sort of way as a patch of eczema, and I still have Tippex on my chin. This is the rock 'n' roll student lifestyle, eh?

 

I just typed 'roll 'n' rock'. I'm going to bed!

 

In the words of Facebook, "Lucy is going to be sitting today's exam on way too little sleep, way too much sugar and caffeine, and a way too sketchy knowledge of parts of the course."

 

Passing's overrated, yeh?

 

Back at Easter, while bemoaning the lack of course spirit on my degree and the lack of fellow Durham students (or more in particular, the lack of fellow Durham mathematicians) in Birmingham, I created some Facebook revision groups to see if people would use them to, dare I say it, communicate with and help each other. The question that I posted to kick start things got answered, admittedly by someone I'm friends with anyway; I answered a couple of questions for someone else, and there was a comment posted on the wall for Complex Analysis that it should be renamed 'Complex Anal'. Lots of people subsequently came up to me and said, "Lucy, those groups were a really good idea!!", and I don't think that they were just being polite - but when it has come to it, no-one has really used them. Ah well. Some you win, some you lose.

 

But I'm glad that I tried. If I hadn't made a big effort to speak to new people this year, I wouldn't be friends with a lot of the people that I now spend time with. I wouldn't have the group of Maths girlies in the area in which I live (not the main student area) with whom I can go for drinks, and discuss men, housemates, and lecturers in equal measure without worrying that we're going to be treading on mutual friends' toes, and without feeling stupid ranting about inept lecturers to someone who doesn't even know what differentiation is. If I didn't know many other mathematicians, I might think I was the only one with 3-hour, 100%-weighted exams in quick succession - as it is, we lump it together. If I hadn't made an effort to help people, I wouldn't feel the right to ask to be helped on occasion.

 

I may not always have got it right, but hell, I've tried.

 

 

I've been leading a pretty narrow existence of late. Since lectures stopped, I've basically seen my four housemates, Caroline, and no-one else (I'm back in the 'special room' for exams, so I won't even be seeing coursemates then). I did pass Helen about to go into a translation exam this afternoon - but that's possibly the third time I've seen her in four weeks, which given how close our friendship group is says something. Everyone is working stupidly hard, basically. All the time. Student slackers? Ha.

 

One down, six to go. I'm going to bed. In my exam today I drew a freehand circle that Mr Oakley would have been proud of!