Year 1, Term 2, Week 4: (hopefully) downhill after the hectic week
Week 4 has passed, and so I am more than halfway through this term, and so more than halfway through my first year. (This time next year, I’ll be halfway through my course. Scary.) Thankfully, this term has gone much better than last term, and I’m really understanding and feel like I’m taking a lot more in this term compared to last term. Go me!
Tuesday of this week saw us give our history of maths talks – they were arranged in chronological order, so I had to go last, with my presentation on Alan Turing. (Damn it, why didn’t I pick stone age mathematics? It would have been short, easy and I’d have gotten it over and done with!) But all in all, I think it went quite well, and I enjoyed listening to the others talk about their subjects too. Overall, we seemed better prepared than the 2nd years do with their talks, which is good to know. 
The snow has all gone now, and thankfully the slippery ice has too. It’s quite an amusing sight to see people slipping all over the road on the way to a computing practical. (Incidentally, the 2 hours actually spent doing the practical are far less amusing.) So now Oxford is beginning to look a bit more like spring and less like winter, but probably won’t be going out and about in a t-shirt and shorts yet.
This week I was able to (somehow) get out a bit more often – went to Park End on Wednesday, and then went to see The Philadelphia Story in the theatre on Thursday. It’s quite nice to take a bit of time away from work to just relax and enjoy a show. Or whatever. Damn, that sounded cheesy.
Thursday of this week also happened to be what seems like the busiest day of the term – 3 lectures from 10am to 1pm, a break for lunch and copying up a problem sheet neatly, 2pm – 4pm for a computing practical and 4.15pm – 6pm for a linear algebra tutorial. But I got through it, and having Friday with only one lecture (and that looks like how it’s going to be for the rest of the term too!), I think it’s a day where I can get started on problem sheets etc early, so will be less rushed / stressed on Saturday and Sunday to finish everything.
And speaking of the weekend… Saturday was Valentine’s Day, so spent the day with Charlotte – we exchanged presents (my presents included a lavender-smelling dinosaur – you can apparently heat it up and use as a water bottle type thing – she has not it named as of yet, but that shall change soon) and went for a walk, then out for dinner, then watched a movie. Planned to do work on Sunday, but that turned into a more relaxing day than work day as well. Oops. Although, I had a lot of my work done already so that wasn’t too bad.
Changes this week include linear algebra being replaced by “An Introduction to Groups, Rings and Fields”, which sounds vaguely… um… well, I’m not quite sure how it sounds, I’ll see how it goes I suppose.
A last thing to note is that – after 20 year of broadcasting, The Simpsons have changed their title sequence! I’m not sure how long it will take for the episode to appear in the UK, but here’s the (extended) new title sequence.
I’m not particularly liking it, but it’ll have to do I suppose. But then really, who watches new episodes of The Simpsons nowadays anyway?
Lastly, some time this week I’m hoping to transfer all of last term’s posts over to this website, so they’ll all be in the same place. They may not all appear at once, and I’d appreciate it if you contacted me if you find any broken links.
His name is Finn
FANTASTIC!