This is James' Journal for Ed Bellis's What Would You Do contest. It chronicles a week in the life of James during March of 2008.
March 12, 2008[]
Today…today’s been weird. Not altogether interesting either, I must say.
To put things in perspective, let me elaborate on the past couple of days. I’m a university student, and I’m currently in week nine of my second ten week term in my first year. At the end of each term, I have exams that are worth anywhere between 10-20% of my overall grade in each module. Obviously, since it’s near the end of this term, that means it’s one of many exam seasons for me (and yes, that does make this day’s challenge awfully inconvenient, thanks for noticing :p).
So yes, on Monday I had an exam on Principles of Modern Science. Not my favourite module, by a long way – this is a MATHS course, remember. Or Math course, or whatever. I’m British, so don’t be freaked by me pluralising it. Tuesday I had a Discrete Maths exam. For the uninformed, that’s logic – truth tables, proof by induction, sets and subsets, countability, all that jazz. P.O.M.S. (Principles of Modern Science) went pretty badly, although I was expecting it to do so, so I’m not too fussed; Discrete went stupendously well, there’s real potential for a 100% mark for the exam. Fun fact with the exams – due to my medical condition (which I won’t go into here, as I may need to mention it as a space-filler for a future day :p), I get permitted a time extension, if need be. P.O.M.S. was meant to be a one hour exam, but I was given an additional 15 minutes in case I needed it. I finished the entire exam in 13 minutes, which put me in the bizarre situation of having more time to spare at the end of the exam than almost anyone else even started it with! Thankfully you’re allowed to leave whenever you finish, or that could’ve been dull.
But yes, I’ve had exams the past couple of days. Which meant I had to revise non-stop. Which left me dog-tired. I got to bed at what I’d consider to be a relatively reasonable time last night – about 2am. However, for some strange reason that I can’t explain, I didn’t actually end up falling asleep until gone 3am. I’m distinctly aware of this because my DVD-recorder (like TiVo, I think) updates its schedule automatically at 3am, and it startled me out of near sleep -_-.
Now, I’m am world-famous (hyperbole alert!) for sleeping. I sleep often (at least once per day!) and generally for long periods of time. Yet, strangely, for a reason I can’t explain, I woke up at 9am. This is after I woke up for a reason I can explain, the fact that my TV is set up to turn itself onto BBC News 24 at 8am. But yeh, I was too tired, grabbed the remote and turned it off before rolling back to sleep, only to wake up an hour later. Here’s where I made the mistake – my alarm was set for 10am, on account of the fact that I had lectures from 11-1pm, and I wanted to allow myself an hour to wake up, have breakfast, shower, etc. Now, my alarm is a REALLY loud alarm. When I first got it and started using it, I honestly thought it was a fire alarm at first. It’s that god damn loud. Like, imagine if you had one of those bells you get in school to signal the start of the next period, only on your wall. It’s just very loud. And I like it that way, because it shocks me awake. Seriously, you just cannot fall back asleep after that alarm wakes you. And, since I was already awake, I made the decision to turn it off. A breakfast and a shower later, and I decided to lie down for a few seconds whilst I thought of something to do for the next hour. You can probably guess where this is going.
So when I woke up, it was 1pm. Right when my lecture would’ve finished >_<. And the thing is, I didn’t even wake up properly. I was woken up, by someone knocking on my door. Another thing I forgot – in addition to it being exam season, it was room inspection season.
The Uni’s pretty good with this sort of stuff. There’s one room inspection per term, and it’s basically to make sure you haven’t caused serious damage to the room (or are doing anything illegal <_<). Now, the former was a problem for me. There were three drawers attached to the underside of my desk. I say were, past tense, because I had a habit of pulling out the bottom drawer and using it as a foot rest. The result?
Pretty sure that counts as damage. And man did the inspector notice my discrepancy quickly. She was quick to tell me that it was simply an appalling offence. Here’s the picture again:
Wait, what? Yup, she didn’t even notice the chest of drawers not being attached to the desk anymore. But she had a problem with my innocent coke can pyramid. You’re not allowed them, apparently, because of the risk that you’ll FORGET ABOUT IT. Apparently it counts as litter. And yeh, I’m really likely to forget about a ****ing PYRAMID, aren’t I?! What a stupid rule.
(Note: I’m aware it’s a triangle not a pyramid, but Coke Pyramid sounds cooler somehow)
Since then in the afternoon, I’ve done, well…nothing, really. Nothing exciting, in any case. I did some revision, but otherwise I’ve pissed the day away. I finally started Case 4-3 on Apollo Justice (check out my opinions thus far in my AJ Playthrough topic!).
March 13, 2008[]
Today features another epic sleeping in and missing a lecture. This time it was intentional though, as I nobly took an attitude of “I really just cannot be bothered”. This was primarily due to the fact that I did not succumb to sleep until about 4:30am last night. Considering I had to get up around 8am for my 9am computer lab session that just didn’t seem like a worthy amount of sleeping time for me, so I turned off alarm last night before falling asleep. End result, I missed my only class of the day. Such the model student.
However, I still didn’t get much sleep, because I made a stupid mistake – I forgot that Thursdays are bathroom-cleaning day every other week. Including this week. So I was woken up by the cleaner about 9:20am anyway. New cleaner, for some reason. I don’t think there was a reason given; though there may have been, since I was practically asleep at the time and not really paying attention to much. I do recall her being impressed by the coke pyramid, though <_<.
So yes, she came in and did the cleaning before I promptly fell asleep again. HARDCORE. I woke up…hm, I can’t actually remember when, exactly. I think it was at about midday though. I had a shower and got dressed and stuff, then went outside for breakfast to find that one of my flatmates had just packed up and left, overnight. In the middle of an exam season, a week away from the end of term. Apparently her aunt’s very ill, and as she’s a Cypriot she can’t exactly only go and visit for the day or something. So she’s moving back to Cyprus to take care of her relative.
This…is actually better news than it sounds, as horrible as it is to say that. Obviously I feel awful for her and her aunt, but…well, as a flatmate, she’s not so good. This isn’t just me being a horrible person here either, my flatmates agreed that nothing having to have her as a flatmate is the upside to the whole scenario <_<. She’s a great girl, don’t get me wrong, but she’s noisy overnight (a couple of weeks back she woke up practically the entire building by having an incredibly loud argument with her boyfriend that resulted in him walking out at FOUR IN THE ****ING MORNING); she steals food; she hogs space in our communal freezer; she’s incredibly messy when cooking, and never bothers to clean up. When I wake up every morning, regardless of the state of the kitchen the night before, it’s a mess when I go in to go and get breakfast. So…yeh. I’m really sad to see her go, but I’m delighted that our flat will be much more liveable now. Plus I have slightly more fridge space!
SUCH the horrible person, I know :/. But I really am sad, even if it’s not come across particularly strongly here.
Since then my day’s been divided up rather strangely. I’ve not been feeling particularly great all day – a nasty headache’s been persisting, and I’m still very tired despite my not unreasonable sleep. I’ve played a LOT of Apollo Justice today, to the point where, whilst yesterday I’d only just started, today I’ve finished the whole case. It’s by far my favourite case of the game so far, probably my favourite case of all outside of the ‘big four’. So yeh, my day’s been filled with a lot of fun times, I guess. I’ve also been listening to a fair bit of music – in the last couple of days I’ve got four albums – “These Are The Good Times People” by Presidents of the United States of America, “Blackfield” by Blackfield, “Blackfield II” by Blackfield (I know what you’re thinking, inventive album names!) and Rockpalast by Porcupine Tree, a 2 CD Live set. So I’ve had those four albums on repeat all day, pretty much. Probably sounds a bit repetitive, but it’s 3.7 hours of music according to iTunes, so it’s kept me pretty occupied.
Other than what I’ve already described, I’ve not really been up to much. I had a pizza for lunch, earlier – cheese and tomato, plain. Used the time it was cooking to do my washing up for the past few days, so now I possess many sparkling clean cutlery, plates and bowls. So yeh, it’s been a pretty boring day, overall. It was important in that my flatmate moved out, possibly for good; otherwise, nothing really happened. My apologies, hopefully tomorrow will bring new and exciting adventures to correspond for your viewing pleasure!
March 14, 2008[]
So, I woke up in the morning, around 10am or so. Had a shower, had breakfast, got dressed (not in that order), then got cracking on work. I had two problem sheets due to be written up, one for Further Calculus and one for Statistics. Problem being I missed lectures on Wednesday (as I explained at the time) for both those subjects, so I was kinda lost on some of the questions. However, I looked the stuff up and hopefully got it all sorted out, so, “fun”.
Got everything done around midday. I spent pretty much the entire next two hours playing Tetris DS. I swear, I can get lost in that game for hours – as I did today. Damn you, Endless mode! I started on Lv. 20, ended up on Lv. 265 with a score of almost nine million points. For those who can’t figure it out, that means I cleared somewhere between 2450 and 2459 lines before losing. And I only lost in the end because I got really arrogant and let it all build up down one side so I could own it with I-Blocks, only to subsequently have the game slip out of my hands at a crucial moment ;_;.
Proof of the awesome score:
Sorry, bit of a tangent there. So yes, I wasted a couple of hours doing that, then went to classes, which I had between 2pm and 4pm. On the way back I checked by the Maths Department, ‘cause I’d received an email earlier that the results from my exam on Tuesday (mentioned in previous entries!) had come through already. 87%, which is pretty good. I was still expecting higher though, even though it’s my best result to date outside of a few Computing projects.
So yes, I came back from my classes, and as I entered my room the phone started ringing – like, literally as I turned the handle. I know you’re scared, but read on. It was my friend Chris, inviting me to play a few rounds of pool with him.
Pool’s pretty much my favourite hobby. I’m a member of the Pool Society (PooSoc!) at Essex, which means that on Wednesdays and Sundays I can play for free, instead of the 70p-per-frame charge there normally is – of course, this being a Friday, that money-saver wasn’t available to me. Still, I’m quite happy to waste tons of money <_<.
Got down the pool hall about 4:15pm, and played until about 6 o’clock. Had some REALLY intense games of pool, and a few comedic ones too. The basic problem is, my game is generally based around really mean safeties that leave the other person with nothing on – I focus on positioning, set-ups, etc., then clear the entire table at once when the moment’s opportune. My friend, on the other hand, is excellent at potting balls when you think nothing’s on, where as his positioning is awful. So whenever we play it’s always a real effort to play the way I want, because it pretty much plays into his hands. Usually I have to wait until he only has a ball or two left on the table to fight back into it, and then if there’s a mistake made by me, he’ll win. I can beat him, and overall I’d say we split our matches 50-50, but it largely depends on his form, and he was definitely on today. Beat me 8 frames to 3.
After my crushing loss I returned for dinner, which was a sumptuous pasta dish with garlic bread and a Bolognese sauce. I actually managed to do a competent job with the garlic bread and the pasta, but I managed to mess up the bol – I defrosted it, but forgot to heat it properly until after I’d already spread it all over the pasta. Indeed, I didn’t realise I’d messed it up until my first mouthful >_>. So that was quite surreal, eating warm pasta and cold Bolognese. If I’m sick tomorrow, I’ll certainly know why.
This evening’s been fairly standard, on the whole. I went round my friend’s earlier where we played Pro Evo, Halo 3 and Call of Duty for a while, then started watching random youtube videos. I introduced him and the two other guys there to the magic of Stephen Colbert, showing them his Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner speech from 2006. Awesome stuff. They were smoking weed (though I did not partake myself), and as a result I inhaled a fair amount of the fumes and am currently slightly buzzy – which is why I said my eyes were weird at the start. Lots of unnecessary staring, so I’m having to blink a lot. Since I got back I’ve been playing Mafia. Fun.
March 15, 2008[]
I woke up today around 2pm, at a guess. Late, I know, but I had no reason to get up earlier and I didn’t end up falling asleep until 6am last night, so I’m not too bothered by it. Got breakfast (or lunch, or whatever), then had a shower. In the middle of the shower, my phone rang. That was pretty damn inconvient. I ended up rushing the shower and inadequately drying myself so I could return the call before he went out or whatever <_<. Turned out he just wanted to play pool again.
Just realised I didn’t specify before – we have phones in our rooms that can phone any other phone on the uni (non-mobile) for free. Only one of my friends ever actually bothers using it, so whenever I miss a call I know it was him <_<.
So yes, we went out and played pool. You know how yesterday I said it largely depended on how he was playing as to what the score was? Well, today he wasn’t playing so well – not terribly, don’t get me wrong, just not as well as yesterday. So naturally I lost 5-2.
…Damnit.
In my defense, on one of those games I pulled off an incredible cut to pot the black, but then the white bounced off three cushions before going into the middle-pocket -_-. Another one we both agreed that he had no right winning. So morally, I won 4-3 >_>. Really though, the main reason I lost so badly is that I played appallingly today. My long-pots were atrocious and my positioning was constantly off.
I got back at the flat at…um…not sure when. About 3pm, maybe? I then spent the next couple of hours primarily doing revision for Statistics, which I have an exam for next Thursday. This was not fun, and doesn’t provide much of a talking point here, either :/. It was pretty necessary though, both my Statistics lectures are early morning so I have a habit of missing them.
At 5:15pm, my primary source of entertainment for the day started – namely, Arsenal Vs Middlesbrough. For Americans, sorry, this is soccer :/. I’m a massive Middlesbrough fan, have been for 12 years now. At the moment though we’re kind of in a slump. Still in the top league, don’t get me wrong, but not looking to challenge the top half of the table and not too clear from the relegation zone (though I highly doubt we go down). Arsenal, on the other hand, are one of the few teams non-soccer fans might’ve heard of; if only from ExTha <_<. They were, before today, top of the league, and only needed to beat us to reclaim the position.
So naturally we took the lead in the 32nd minute :). The goal-scorer was Jeremie Aliadiere, a former Arsenal player. Sometimes things are just too perfect.
Sadly, this was one of those times. After holding on doggedly (and deservedly) for much of the game, we were undone five minutes from the end by an equaliser. Then, to add to the annoyance, our Egyptian Striker Mido was sent off, which means that we once again are down a striker (Aliadiere only just returned from the most ridiculous four game suspension you will ever see in your life).
Afterwards I had dinner, and then JOY!, back to the Statistics revision. Lots and lots of Statistics revision. Because that’s what I love to do with my Saturdays. Yup.
I hate exams.
About 10pm I went round my friend’s flat (same one again), where I hung out with him and his flatmates for about 30 minutes or so, after which we headed on down to Campus – more specifically the venue “Level 2”, where every Saturday it’s the “Lost Disco” – aka, indie music night. Well, not really indie; more the sort of stuff that you read about in NME <_<. Anyway, we go occasionally, but we went for a specific reason this week, namely that our friend was DJing for the first 45 minutes. Sadly, the first 45 minutes is the ‘graveyard shift’ where most people aren’t actually there yet and those that are there are not yet drunk enough to partake in dancing. So for her ENTIRE 45 minute set, there wasn’t a single person dancing. Not even one solitary person. Frankly though, I’m not sure she minded – she was pretty nervous about doing the set before. It was a valuable experience and she learned all the necessary ropes.
As a side-note – sign you’ve been revising too much Statistics #2584: you go out to an indie rock club and spend half the time there thinking about Poisson Distributions.
I got back sometime around midnight (early, I know – I’m not the only one with exams and/or essays though, we all wanted a reasonable night and our friend had already done her set by then). Since then I’ve been pissing about on the computer. My friend sent me the video of Jake Shimabukuro playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps on the Ukelele, and I’ve been mesmerised by it ever since, playing it over and over. Seriously, I can’t stress how awesome it is. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9mEKMz2Pvo&feature=related
So yes, that. Now I’ve written this, and at 4:44am I’m off to bed. ‘Night!
March 17, 2008[]
I missed out yesterday due to a combination of laziness and, well, it just not being a particularly exciting day – revision dominated, once more. Today, however, I’m back in the saddle! …Urgh, what an awful phrase…
I woke up at about 7:30am, which anyone who knows me will know is ridiculously early. Normally when I have a 9am lecture, I’ll wake up at about 8:45am if I wake up in time at all. This was a pleasant surprise. Began the day as usual, shower (the shower’s not working properly, irritatingly), get dressed, breakfast, etc., and even though I took my time over all this I found I had a fair amount of time before my first lecture (9am). As it happens, I ended up watching a couple of episodes of Frasier (end of season three, the Focus Group and the flashback episode). Having then finished the season I stuck it in my bag, along with phone, keys, wallet, etc., then went to my first lecture – Principles of Modern Science. With the exception of three revision classes next term, this was my last ever P.o.M.S. class, and…meh, wasn’t anything special really. After that it was Statistics (one of the two subjects I have an exam for on Thursday), but because of time constraints we didn’t actually do any revision, we instead learned stuff that won’t actually be on the exam. Helpful!
After that I had a second breakfast at the Student Union Bar (they make sausages like you wouldn’t believe! …Awful bacon, though) with a few friends. We’d arranged to meet up as we had a project due Thursday (same day as exams, go figure) that we really needed to make progress on. After the breakfast we headed over to the Maths Computer Lab, loaded up Maple (a mathematical program which is basically an incredibly advanced calculator) and got to it. That took me from about 11:15am to about 3pm. We didn’t finish it, but we made as much progress as we could without asking our professor for advice, and since he wasn’t there we figured there was little point in hanging around. On the way back I stopped by the campus shop and bought some mini jam doughnuts and some hula hoops (aww yeah and aww yeah, respectively). After that I went to go back, but was distracted by a bunch of my French friends (I have…uh, probably more French friends than English friends. So quite a lot). They were doing a seminar-thing as part of the International Culture Society, or some such thing. Not going to pretend I paid much attention <_<. They’re my friends, but that doesn’t mean I have to give a toss about their culture!
So yeah, I chatted to them for a while about random stuff, then headed over to my other friend’s flat (pool buddy), who I returned the Frasier DVD I’d been borrowing. He gave me Season Four, which I’ve not started yet. Might find that I mention watching it tomorrow, though <_<.
Since then…eh, I’ve not really done a tremendous deal, to be honest. I watched a couple of episodes of Top Gear as well as last Thursday’s “That Mitchell And Webb Look”. Almost fell asleep, but didn’t quite. After that I mainly revised, occasionally stopping to mess about on the computer for a while.
In the evening, it was Birmingham Vs Newcastle (sorry, soccer again). I listened to it on the Radio, hoping for a Birmingham win – four years ago I predicted that Newcastle would be relegated within five seasons, and this season might be the season they go down. Unfortunately they scraped a draw, though they’re now only 4 points above the drop zone (and, more importantly, they’re below Middlesbrough in the league table – I neglected to mention previously that they’re also our local rivals!).
Pretty much dead on the final whistle a couple of my friends knocked on the door, inviting me round to partake in a few rounds of Call of Duty (I forget which one). I actually won one of the games for the first time ever! …I also lost the other five we played, but screw that, focus on the good times baby ^_^. Afterwards we played Halo 3 – three games of it, won one each. We all suck pretty badly though <_<. But hey, it doesn’t matter, we suck equally so it balances out and we still have fun. If one of us was awesome it’d mess up the whole balance. Finally we finished off with some Pro Evo 2008 – me and one friend Vs the other. We won 2-0 in a really even match after I got lucky with a header and he got unlucky with an own goal :p. After that I finally got around to having a meal at about 11pm, namely some pasta, garlic bread and Bolognese sauce. Good stuff. Went back to my friend’s room where we watched a couple of episodes of South Park, then I came back here where amongst other things I typed up this super special awesome journal entry ^_^.
March 18, 2008[]
oday was pretty standard, on the whole. An epic combination of revision, work and lectures ;_;.
Began the day with my alarm at 9am. Woke up, had shower, got dressed, had breakfast – utterly usual fare. Except then I fell back to sleep >_>. I ended up waking up at around about 10:55am, with my lecture at 11am thank goodness. Raced to get there, made it just in time, and in the process sweated like a pig to basically completely nullify the shower. It’s the basic flaw with showers – I took longer to get clean than I did to get sweaty again -_-.
Anyway, lecture. It was Further Calculus, one of the two subjects I have an exam for on Thursday. We finished the course with about 10 minutes to spare, and as a result we began on a past-exam paper. Answered a couple of questions, which was helpful, and we’re doing the rest in the lecture tomorrow. After that it was the final Discrete lecture. However, there are two basic problems with Discrete lectures – firstly, we already had the exam last week (though not the final exam – that obviously comes in the summer); secondly, we have really good lecture notes. Like, seriously good. I barely turned up to a single lecture this term, yet I got 87% in the recent exam (highest in the class ^_^) just by reading through the lecture notes. When I do go to the lectures, I end up getting bored and just doing doodles. For instance, today was truth tables, and I managed to turn a couple of them into pretty decent forts. Another one was halfway through being eaten by a zombie pacman.
An example of my handiwork: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/TheBagofTricks/DCP01900.jpg
Not the best (wittiest) example, but meh. I like the philosophical guy at the top pondering why they’re forming an orderly queue to die.
So yeh, after that me and a few of my maths-friends went to the SU bar to get lunch. I had a hamburger with ketchup and a couple of sausages. They were tasty. Sorry, it’s hard to make this sound interesting <_<. I learned that, last night, it being St. Patrick’s night, a few of them had gone out (something I was able to confirm when I checked my facebook inbox later >_<). In the process, one of my friends, Thom, had told another, Sam, that he loved her. Multiple times. Even though most of us are pretty sure he has some sort of crush on me <_<. It was pretty funny (and a bit of a relief!) to hear, regardless. Also, another of my friends made out with a guy, and neither of them could remember it the next morning. He also punched a wall. Man spittle in his mouth and a bruised fist, not a great way to wake up <_<.
After that me and two of the group got to work on out Computing project for a bit. Didn’t accomplish too much due to not really knowing how to proceed too well. Also checked our grades for P.o.M.S. whilst we were up there – I got an almighty 57%! Sounds awful I know, but honestly I’m happy with it <_<. I was expecting to do far worse. P.o.M.S is not my strongest subject (to rephrase: it’s my weakest subject) due to the epic combination of it being about science not maths and it being mainly essay-based. Plus I only have about half the notes <_<.
But yeh, did all that work, then got back to my room at about 3pm. I promptly did some statistics revision, before falling asleep again >_<. I woke up at about 4pm – this time not soon enough to catch my 4pm class where we were going to continue going over the Further Calculus exam, which is pretty annoying. I really needed the help with that one. Having failed majestically to make the class, I just worked through the exam paper by myself – and didn’t fare too well. I’m not looking forward to that exam, I get the feeling it’s going to quite badly. Though I’ll hopefully have finished this diary by then, so you won’t hear about the catastrophic failure :p.
This evening, revision aside, I had dinner (pizza!), then went to Tesco’s. I don’t think you Americanish people have Tesco’s, do you? It’s a supermarket. Like, uh, probably Walmart. If only I knew what Walmart was like <_<. I didn’t get too much there because we end the term on Thursday. However, I had run out of snacks and was running low on drinks. I picked up a couple of magazines, a 6-pack of coke and a pack of 20 mini-sausage rolls (AWESOME microwaveable snack that I’d heartily recommend to anyone).
After that I came back to the room and had a relatively relaxing evening. Did some writing, a bit more revision. Sadly I’ve stayed up far too late though (damn you mafiaaaaaa!), so tomorrow will be an effort to get up for lectures. More tomorrow, or, if I end up sleeping most of tomorrow, more Thursday!
March 20, 2008[]
So tired right now.
So, first of all a brief summation of Wednesday – I’m only doing this because it’s relevant to what happened today.
I spent most of Wednesday afternoon and evening working on a computer program called Maple you may not have heard of, and another you probably have heard of called Powerpoint. Basically, for my Introduction to Computing module this year, we had to get into groups of four, then each group look at a real life function that involves a differential equation of some sort. After that, piss about on Maple to turn it into a standard equation, then use that equation to solve real world problems. After you’ve done that sufficiently, we then had to do a 10 minute presentation on the differential equation we used and just explain what we did, basically.
Note: Yes, I’m aware I’m switching between first and second-person a lot. It’s ‘cause I’m TIRED.
So yes, out of my group of four, one of them was deathly ill yesterday – seriously, he went to the hospital and found out that something was damn near eroding his stomach, and had it been any worse he would have had to have his stomach pumped. A wonderful experience, I’m sure you’ll agree. Another member of the group couldn’t make it due to it being the day that the Pool Society was electing its committee members for next year. So it ended up just being me and one other person in the group, and we still had about half the main project (75% of the marks) as well as almost all of the powerpoint presentation (25%) to do. All by ourselves. With two more exams the next day. So we spent about 7 hours doing that, finished the presentation at about 8pm.
Coming into today, I woke up at 7:30am (which anyone who knows me will be aware is ridiculously early by my standards). Shower, dressed, NO breakfast because I’ve run out of food. I’d buy more, but I’m going home for four weeks tomorrow (yay for a long spring break), and I don’t want to go on the thirty minute walk to the supermarket for a day’s worth of stuff. So yeh, no breakfast. Got down the computer lab at about 8:15am where I was soon joined by the two people who couldn’t be there yesterday. I spent the next 30 minutes or so trying to teach them their parts of the presentation, which wasn’t made easy by the fact that they didn’t know half of what we were talking about due to not having been there when we were doing it >_<. It also meant I had very little time to practice my own part of the presentation; fortunately I’m the master of ad-libbing. I once had to do a ten minute presentation with a friend where we had to split it five minutes each, talking about the conservative party (this was a politics class) – he asked to go first, I said yeh sure, and he promptly used up everything I’d intended to say in the first five minutes. I then managed to get the highest mark in the class by ad-libbing and making stuff up <_<.
So yeh, had to do the presentation. I handled the bulk of the project itself (the maths part), whilst the others talked primarily about the theory behind it. It ended up working shockingly well, far better than it had any right to, and hopefully we’ll get really high marks for the presentation.
After that, no time for celebration – the computer lab/presentation session finished at 10:30am. I quickly got some breakfast down at the SU Bar, then back to my room to revise. I had two exams this afternoon, Further Calculus and Statistics. I was relatively confident on Further Calculus (though in a cautious, uneasy sort of way), so I dedicated the bulk of my effort towards revising statistics (oh, and obviously I didn’t have any lunch).
Cometh exam time. Further Calculus first, I thought it went pretty well. Not superbly, but very well. Probably about 70%, at a guess. Statistics…well, this is the conversation I had with one of my friends coming out of it.
Him: How do you think you did? Me: How much of our overall mark was that test worth? Him: 20% Me: I just lost 20% of my overall mark.
Seriously, could not have gone worse. Now, avid readers (“lol”) of my diary stuff will note that I’ve spent a stupidly large amount of time revising statistics over the past week or so. I’ve barely revised Further Calculus at all and probably suffered in that exam slightly, solely to work on Statistics. I left half an entire project until the day before it was due in, solely so I could put more time aside for Statistics. To do as awfully as I did was really depressing.
This evening, uh, I did something I’m not proud of and then spent the rest of the time relaxing, ordered a pizza, ate it, played mafia for a bit (or hosted mafia to be more specific), etc.. I’d go into details over the something I’m not proud of, but I’d rather not, and besides I’m already past the limit for the day!