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 :-)