| Still hanging on to the world |
[Jan. 23rd, 2010|05:10 pm] |
Can't believe it's been seven weeks since I posted. *sigh* as you have probably gathered I'm still really busy.
Christmas was great, it took me two days to unwind. I did no PGCE work and only a bit of PhD reading in the two weeks. It was nice to be home and at peace for a bit.
I got my PGCE assignment in on time (actually a day early) and got it back yesterday. I got 62% which I'm very happy with. My thesis continues apace although due to major restructuring of the background chapter I'm on less words in the thesis document now but at least I'm sure they're all relavent. I have still got all the other words so I may ressurect them if needed. Some of my previous maths was about liquid polymers while I'm looking at polymer solutions.
I've just finished my third week of teaching and I'm really enjoying it so far. The first week was a little disrupted by snow my my school was open three days out of five so I did rather better than many of the other Exeter PGCE students, some of them lost the whole week. Friday was a seminar day so back to Lukes for the v. dull. Got to get all my paper work sorted this week. I've had a few organisational hiccups so far which resulted in a couple of wobbly lessons but new stationery and a lot of paper shuffling should put me on top of that now. |
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| Busy Busy Busy |
[Dec. 5th, 2009|02:56 pm] |
:) This is not going to be a particularly long or coherent post but I feel you all deserve a bit of an update.
Well I expect everyone who knows me knows that I'm mad enough to be studying a PGCE while trying to write up a PhD. It's all going pretty well. My PGCE lecturers seem to think I'm on the verge of some sort of nervous break but I'm trying not to let that bother me. My thesis currently stands at 26,157 words. I got over a thousand words done on Friday so I am quite pleased with myself there. Rather more pressing is the 5,000 word PGCE assignment that is due on Friday. It's currently a little over a fifth done and I am suffering from a severe motivation lack on doing any more to it, oh well, better get over that asap. The trouble is I'm not sure I understand the assignment, and even if I do I'm not sure I can write in the appropriet manner to fulfill it. *sigh*
I'm getting just under two weeks back home with my parents over Christmas. Assuming I survive until then... I get to play only kid again as my sister is spending most of that time with her fiance. I'm just looking forward to the break. I'm going to need it. |
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| Still Here |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|10:46 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  busy | ] |
Just a very quick note to say I haven't disappeared off the face of the Earth. I am however very busy studying a PGCE while writing up a PhD will do that to you. I actually have something resembling a life now that I have a regular shedule. I'm going up to Bristol this weekend for a Halloween night out so that should be fun especially as the costume is now sorted. I hope to have my thesis submitted by Christmas, about 9,000 words to go... |
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| Shouldn't I be more stressed? |
[Aug. 11th, 2009|10:20 am] |
It's now less than six weeks until my PGCE preliminary placements start and I'm no longer in the lab full time. Therefore all of my experiments have to be done by then. So far they aren't. I want to have a completed first draft to give my supervisor by then so far it's at 11,050 word and 60 pages (in page terms that's the longest thing I've ever written) and I guess that's a quarter to a third of the whole. Yet despite this I'm really not that stressed, my turkish delight consumption has gone up but I'm still not that stressed. I expected it to be worse than this.
Maybe I'm just swimming in an Egyptian river...
My real concern is that some of the data I still have to do involves repeating data I took about a year ago, now that was before the nasty incident with the trough and the MPPhys students and I really worried that it also will not work if it doesn't I really will have problems. *sigh* |
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| We are star stuff |
[Jul. 17th, 2009|09:44 am] |
The bus driver had radio two on as he was bringing us up top uni today and they were in the middle of Terry Wogan's 'thought for the day' bit (I do not get up early if I can help it). Anyway, the woman, I did not catch who she was, had apparently attended some sort of talk at which it was revealed that every carbon atom in our bodies was once in a star. This apparently nearly made her mind look like my icon and caused her to do a lot of thinking.
I just wonder what would have happened if she had been told that every carbon atom was once in a star, as was every other atom (with the exception of some hydrogen and helium, both of which might have been hanging about since the Big Bang) and every atom heavier than iron was once in a supernova...
PS: Do you think it's a sign of the British summer that a cyclist passed me this morning kitted out in a waterproof poncho, a wool hat (No helmet naughty naughty) and sunglasses?
PPS: After many phone calls and one school that never did get back to me I have sorted out my preliminary placements. |
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| Getting on with stuff |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|01:50 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | The lab | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  happy | ] |
I'm still here and still buried under lots of stuff, now though it's PhD and PGCE stuff. I'm trying to organise a preliminary experience week at two schools one secondary and one primary. The primary school is all sorted out but so far none of the secondaries are getting back to me. There aren't that many in Exeter so I haven't got a lot of option.
Aside from all the work life is good my attic is just about fit for habitation and certainly fit for me to move my DnD book collection on to its new shelf. A few more bits need to be done so I won't be gaming up there just yet but it's well on the way. Going to position and fill a bookshelf tonight so that'll be nice. I always feel better when surrounded by books... Might get some of my desk stuff sorted out too, depends what time I escape the lab.
This week (Wed-Fri) is comm skills so while I keep an eye on the first years I should be able to do some major catching up on my journal reading. I have a pile of papers that I need to read thoroughly on the windowsill in front of my desk and it's over an inch thick. Also comm skills means I get to make bottle rockets on Friday, I mean of course that I get to help the first years make bottle rockets....
I'm having my annual birthday/cocktail party this weekend (YAY!! but also large amounts of tidying needed) and am also meeting up with one of my uni friends who I haven't seen in a while. I went back to Guildford last weekend to go to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) countertony / el_staplador 's wedding (and as a side bonus, see my parents) it was a wonderful wedding and I hope they are having too much fun on honeymoon to be reading livejournal. At the beginning of July I'm off to Cambridge for a week to do a load of experiments and then I shall come back here and do a load more (different) experiements. It would be very good if I am all experimented out by the end of July. - We shall see.
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| Things that have made me smile today |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|11:49 am] |
- Opening my bedroom curtains to see clear blue skies and sunshine
- Watching the swans on the river, there's a pair on nested on the footpath by the red cow bridges who have two fluffy cygnets who are taking swimming lessons.
- Noting that someone has tied two bunches of bananas together with a piece of string and hung them over one of the horse's ears on the Redvers Buller statue, so much more imaginative than a traffic cone.
- Handing in my notice to Sainsburys. |
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| Busy!!! |
[May. 5th, 2009|11:50 am] |
This is just a short update to inform everyone that I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. I am, however, working an average of 10 hours a day in the lab (hazard of being a final year student with a lot of data to retake) and will be doing so for the forseeable future. The future is still a big grey haze, as I don't know if I can get enough done to take up the PGCE place on time or if I'll have to defer.
Since I last posted I have got my aikido brown belt and am now considering taking a coaching course (sometime after phd) and been to a conference at Warwick Uni which was very interesting. It seems like I'm going to have to go back to Cambridge to redo the data I did there as well. Family visited at Easter work got done on house, new computer got bought (can you say splurge...), pengiuns got seen (sisters birthday treat) and I got sunburnt. Most of my extra ciricular stuff has fallen by the wayside of late, phd comes first, it IS going to get done. so from now on there will be a thesis update: 37 pages at present (mostly preamble and lit review) |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 17th, 2009|01:01 pm] |
Let's see... where to begin...
My interview went so so I thought one of the interviewers was a bit odd and really wasn't sure how it'd turn out. Still they gave me the place :) They actually informed me on Thursday so no keeping me hanging around. Now the problem becomes finishing the PhD in time to take up my PGCE place (I have no intention of trying to write a thesis and study for a PGCE - that's insanity even by my standards) so that puts my submission deadline at the second week of September at the latest. At the moment I have a feeling that I won't make that. If I don't then it'll mean deferring my PGCE entry for a year and finding some way to keep food on the table when my PhD funding runs out. Bearing in mind I all ready have a part-time job and can probably get a reasonable amount of demonstration work from the Uni (pays better than anything else) I'm not scared of this option. Also if I can get a Teaching Assistant job it'll help a lot with the future PGCE. I'll defer if I have to but it will mean me having been at uni for 11 years by the end...
My research isn't going to well at the moment but I am trying to remain upbeat. All the while the thought of treking to Warwick with a completely blank poster looms large in my mind. I'll be going to the conference anyway but I'd really like to have something to show for my work to this point.
Well... that's more than enough moaning so on to more fun stuff. I am writing at the moment, mostly working on my still untitled novella (I think) about Alyscia Du Val mercenary/bounty hunter of supernatural beasties. I am also doing bits here and there on my fantasy novel 'Portends from the Stars' orginally entitled Pathways but that turned out to be the series title (this was the story I lost a lot of when my bag was stolen last year). I am also writing a DnD campaign, at first I thought this was another fantasy world adding the the clutter all ready in my head but due to the lack of a main character I soon concluded that it had to be a campaign world. I ran an adventure for my family at Christamas which was brilliant fun and I hope to continued the adventure next time I'm back in Surrey for any length of time. I had great-axe weilding human barbarian (my dad), an archer forest warden (druid) with a very effective guard dog (my mum), and a fairy sorceress with a penguin familiar (my sister). Lots of the bad guys spent lots of time asleep as I could not make saves against the fairy's spells and the world's most embarrassing way for a goblin to die - it was killed by the penguin :) who criticalled and then did a victory dance.
My attic - I am really looking forward to having this as usable space and am very grateful that my dad is able to install stairs. It won't be completed then but the week after Easter should end with me having usable attic space. :) |
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| Catch Up once again |
[Mar. 9th, 2009|01:56 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | The lab | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | busy | ] |
It's been more than a month since I posted here and a crazy month it has been. Now despite the title of this journal being 'writings of a research student' I rarely go into much detail about my research here. That isn't going to change; thus a brief summary follows.
+ve: have had abstract accepted for conference in April, I have an interview for my PGCE on Wednesday, my kit is working, I think *crosses fingers* that I now know what was up with my previous data, plans for attic conversion continue, I'm writing quite frequently at the moment.
-ve: haven't been to aikido in a week (this has to change if I want to grade in April, which i do), I have to take loads of data before the conference or else my poster is going to be blank, I may have to take most of my data again to remedy what was wrong with it.
Also it appears I have missed a trick, was reading in The Sun (don't ask, it gets left in the canteen at work. No, I do not know why but the problems pages are hilarious...) that a woman whop works on the checkouts in a hypermarket in France has written a book called 'Confessions of a Checkout Girl' and apparently it's selling pretty well. I may have to start sharing some of my stories. Still, I'd rather write fiction. |
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| 25 Things |
[Feb. 5th, 2009|12:08 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | at work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | busy | ] |
I haven't posted on here in a while because things have been crazy in the lab but rather than go on about that I shall cross post a meme from my facebook. I have now lost track of how many times I've been tagged for this. I assume that most of my friends who are remotely interested have all ready done it. So 25 random things about me.
1. My middle name is Rosemary which unknown in the Exeter university admissions department is one word.
2. I only ever met one of my grandparents.
3. On my right index and middle fingers I can bend the top joint without bending the second joint.
4. I have owned two cars but never passed my driving test
5. Whilst I'm on the subject, I once failed a driving test due to hydroplaning. I am still rather irked by this.
6. I am rather scared on small children
7. Despite reading a lot and my love of writing stories I am a terrible speller.
8. The only film I've seen more than twice at the cinema is 'LotR - Return of the King'
9. I've wanted to be a scientist since I was 6 or 7
10. I can recite the alphabet backwards
11. I honestly never though I had a hope of getting on University Challenge
12. I am a compulsive fiddler particularly when I have a piece of paper to play with.
13. I asked for transformers for my sixth birthday
14. When the gameboy first came out I wanted one because I really enjoyed Tetris.
15. I have never owned a copy of Tetris
16. Part of me feels I was born 10-20 years too late given my favourite music and TV shows
17. I am not a great cook but I really enjoy reading recipe books
18. Actually I read quite a lot of things that aren't usually read all the way through.
19. This like all the other notes has been written while I am bored in the lab.
20. I was in a fight at secondary school, a bit one sided as I ended up ripping a lot of his hair out but he stopped picking on me after that
21. The only other times I've been in a fight I was sticking up for my sister.
22. My earliest memory is from when I was 2
23. Despite currently working in biophysics I know very little biophysics/biology
24. I've had a passport of my own since I was 3 months old
25. I turned a profit playing blackjack one holiday. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 19th, 2008|12:51 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | at work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  determined | ] |
It's the last day I'm going to be in the lab in 2008 today, going back home on Sunday to spend Christmas with my parents. Now as it's the last day you'd think I would be making all efforts to get a bit more data especially as I need a load more data to fill in the gaps identified by all my data analysis. However, as you can see/read, I'm typing on livejournal rather than getting data. My kit seems to be broken at the moment. *sigh* not getting anything sensible out of it at all; although I am still trying. Looks like it's going to have to be sent off to be repaired. I'm blaming the MPhys students, they seem to have done quite a bit of damage to things.
Anyway, on to rather more positive topics... The school visit went well although it has made me wonder how cushy my school experience was. Now I went to a non-selective comprehensive, admittedly in a good area of Surrey. I did not have a good time at school but the students generally behaved well in class and got on with what they were supposed to. And I had quite a bit of homework, I'd guess an hour a night in year 7 rising to 2-3 hours a night by the time I was in sixth form. Anyway, this school there was much more chaos in the classes than I was expecting, no one older than 14 seemed to want to be there (which I consider really sad). They were teaching the 21st Century Science curriculum which I had always felt wasn't a good thing to introduce; now I really believe it wasn't these students seemed a long way behind where I would have thought they should be. Also there was very little/ no homework set. The one class I saw with homework (year 11s with a practise paper) only 3 out of the class had done it. I don't know that this was truly a problem with the course though.
In short I found the amount of apathy exhibited by the students to be a little frightening and disturbing. I cannot understand people who prize ignorance and stupidity. I still want to be a teacher but this has taught me some home truths. People have told me that secondary school kids have changed in the last 5-10 years, now I know what that means. I may however decide to gravitate towards maths rather than physics (most schools do not let you teach both) as I feel that subject has been messed around with less. Part of why I want to become a teacher is that I feel maths and science and a basic understanding of each is a necessity for anyone to have an informed opinion of pretty much anything. However, we seem to be developing a lot of people who for some reason that I can't fathom think it is 'cool' to be stupid. They're dragging a lot of other students with them who deserve better than that.
I guess that wasn't much more positive, was it? I am looking forward to going home for Christmas. I'm gonna run a DnD game for my family, I hope they like it. I've also had another DnD campaign world pop into my head (it's pretty noisy in there most of the time) and I think it may well survive turning into an actual game setting. Been kinda fiddling with it, might be ready to inflict on some players about the time one of the games I'm currently playing in finishes. :)
I've also decided I want to convert my attic into useable space. At the moment I'm thinking study/martial arts practise space in one half (the ceiling's high enough) and library/reading room/gaming room/crafting space in the other half. I'm pretty excited about it. It's obviously going to take me a while to get everything done but it is good to have plans. :) |
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| Back (I think) |
[Dec. 1st, 2008|12:17 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | busy | ] |
Today is the submission deadline for the journal special edition I was hoping to submit my paper to. It isn't going to happen. I will be getting this paper published but I don't know when at the moment. I had a chat with my supervisor on Friday and he said that the results and discussion section of my paper really need a lot of work (hardly surprising as I have lots of new results - as an result of all the analysis I have been doing lately - that I haven't really had a chance to discuss with anyone yet.). I also have draft of my paper that my second supervisor has gone over so I have a few dozen alterations to make. This is my first paper so it is taking forever. I have to get the experiments done first.
My experiments have really slowed down of late. Mostly because of all the data analysis I have been doing (something I have been finding it hard to stay motivated for) and also because we now have a couple of MPhys students who are using the same set up as me on Mondays and Fridays. *sigh* Stil I am getting on and feel like I am getting somewhere useful and interesting on this project.
Other news: I'm visiting a school for a couple of days at the start of next week, so my plans for the future are coming along quite well. :) I am still planning on starting on a PGCE next year.
I have no idea where November has gone, it sorta disappeared in a haze of paper writing and data analysis.... I am heading home to spend Christmas week with my family and most of my undergrad friends are heading home before me. I am thus stressing a little a about christmas shopping but that is far more fun that stressing about writing a paper. |
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| Surfacing Slowly |
[Oct. 29th, 2008|10:10 am] |
Still doing the data analysis (three weeks now) *sigh*, I am getting there though. As many of you are aware I am hoping to become a secondary school teacher (yes, I know I am insane) and I am hoping (thesis permitting) to start PGCE next academic year. I am currently trying to organise an observation day, however I didn't realise it was half-term so I'll have to wait until next week for a response on that.
On an unrelated note does anyone find it rather worrying that two of my second year problems class group thought that Sodium Chloride was a good example of a covalently bonded material? |
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| I'm still here |
[Oct. 17th, 2008|11:56 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | busy | ] |
I know I've sadly neglected my journal of late. Life has been hectic. Very good but hectic.I am currently swimming through approximately two tonnes of data analysis and I am not sure when I'll surface. Longer and more detailed post coming when I do. |
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| Busy and Writing |
[Aug. 14th, 2008|01:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  confused | ] |
I'm at work and have a lot to do so naturally my subconscious has been doing its own thing. What follows is what I came up with this morning. Comments and encouragement much appreciated.
Everyone makes mistakes, the trick is to come back from those mistake and keep on going even when those mistakes keep coming back to bite you. Incidentally your late teenage years are a very good, or bad, time to make the sort of mistakes that can haunt you for a long time after;. All the angst and hormones, it marks your psyche anyway, a few mistakes on top can be nasty. I should know; the year between my 16th and 17th birthdays was filled with a lot of mistakes: murder, death, chaos and bloodshed. More than a decade later I'm still paying the piper. I probably will be for the rest of my life. |
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| Busy busy busy |
[Aug. 6th, 2008|09:45 am] |
As you may have gathered from my facebook statuses I have been rather busy of late. In fact I am still busy and shouldn't really be sparing the time to write this but I felt that I had neglected my blog for too long anyway. :) My good week did work out. I have some really good images of lipid films being effected by elastin (the protein my phd is based around). I was really busy last week as I was trying to produce a talk for a group meeting and finish editing a paper and take more data.
As it worked out I pulled some fairly late nights and got the talk done. It was pretty good, made me produce some illustrations that will be useful for my thesis and think about a lot of the motivations behind the project. The paper was pretty nearly done when one of my supervisors suggested that I should do another experiment, now I did most of the data gathering for this paper last year and he has seen it before .... never mind. So that set of experiments is what I am working on now. Basically we looked at alkaline conditions because there is some literature that says that interesting things happen there. I did not do any experiments under acidic conditions. Now though I am doing them on acid....
So the paper is on hold as a result of this but in case I didn't have enough to do we got some new furniture for the office. We have been waiting a while for the this stuff. Health and Safety had a few things to say about this office and as on open days everyone walks past the door to see the teaching labs it's kinda on show. 11 postgrads plus a summer student are sharing this office at the moment. We spent two days hauling furniture around: 12 desks, cupboards, battered chairs and lots of other stuff out; 14 desks (which needed assembly), 14 desk units (some assembly), 4 bookcases (lots of assembly) in. Not to mention all the dusting sweeping and rewiring that went along with all of this. Needless to say not much experimental got done on Thursday or Friday last week. All of this was complicated by 5 of the occupants of the office being away and one having a bad back. It was a crazy couple of days.
Still I am busy but i have a nice new desk and a nice new chair and everything is pretty much tidy. We'll see how long that lasts :) |
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| Things are going well |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|12:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
Last week I had a major issue when I found out that I had been making a methodological mistake in my experiments. This mean that the data I had acquired didn't have sufficient resolution for me to do anything with it. Now though my mistake has been fixed and I have data. If things go well then by the end of today I should be back where I thought I was at the end of last week. *BOUNCE BOUNCE* :) |
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| 10 things meme |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|04:52 pm] |
Okay have gaked this meme from:
steviesun ( 1 on her list) and
el_staplador (none on her list). So here is my list of 10 things that I have done that I don't think anyone else reading this has done.
1. Climbed around one of the engines of a 747
2. Been a cockpit passenger in a tristar under tow at Heathrow
3. Owned two cars before having my driving license.
4. Had the battery pulled out of a stopwatch I was using by an 8T magnet
5. Had a broken finger squashed in a car electric window
6. Eaten crocodile meat.
7. Eaten a five course breakfast
8. Had drinks with Jeremy Paxman
9. Been bitten/pecked by a penguin
10. Heard 'We are the champions' played by a steel band on a caribbean beach |
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| Falling Apart and putting myself back together |
[Jun. 10th, 2008|10:06 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
It's been rather weird of late, in the last month I have suffered from a string of joint pains. Most recently it's been my left knee. The really annoying thing is that none of the injury/pains have had any obvious trauma as a cause (my knee went when I stepped on to a bus) so I don't really know what happened to any of them. I've been away from aikido as a result as I didn't want to risk further injuries. I seem tio be all back in one piece now so that is something. Actually my aikido attendence this year has been pretty bad for one reason and another.
I am looking forward to the rest of June, there are a lot of parties / celebrations coming up and I hope to make them all (may need to take July off to recover though :)). I am planning on having a birthday party this year so that is something to look forward to. Thinking of taking time off my parents are in Exeter on Thursday so I having that day off, hopefully this will give us a chance to finally sort out the pulling in my bathroom, there's nothing wrong with it in the sense that it works, it's just very awkward and untidy. |
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