Review: September 2018

Yoooo it's been a busy month, and I'm writing this on the 10th of October because the busyness has continued.

FRESHERS WEEK: College started back up, with Freshers' Week on the 3rd, 2-3 weeks earlier than last year. I was super busy in Freshers' Week with about 40 hours of volunteering between helping out the Science Course Office for orientation, and (wo)manning the stands for Netsoc and Physoc, as well as two and a half days devoted to attending and volunteering at the Schrodinger at 75: What is Life? conference.

SCHRODINGER CONFERENCE: I was a student rapporteur at the Schrodinger at 75 conference, so basically I volunteered at a nice poetry-reading and Long-Room-touring event the night before and then attended the two days of the conference. I found the first day wasn't great on the whole (though there were some good speakers), but the second day was amazing. I was also to shadow a speaker and then do a presentation on their talk a month later, but I'll save that for the October post.

RENTING HELL: Ended up paying double rent this month because we're too far away to easily find housemates, which was a nightmare. In the October post we shall see that thankfully that seems to be turning out okay in the end but it was certainly not pleasant.

GENETICS:  I've been loving my course so far. Currently I have four modules running:

- Evolutionary Genetics (6 lectures per week for 5 weeks) - love (well, the Molecular Evolution and Population Genetics submodules. We had 4 lectures on Mutations and those sucked.)
- Genomics (6 lectures per week for 5 weeks) - like a lot (very inquiry-based, at least with the main lecturer, and a third of it is bioinformatics which is computer-based.)
- Eukaryotic Molecular Genetics (3 lectures a week for 10 weeks) - find boring except the Cell Cycle lectures which are very cool. I think it's because a lot of the other stuff is like 'here are the steps in this process' whereas I like things that say 'here's the evidence, here's what was drawn from it' and generally proceed in an inquiry-based way.
- Molecular Genetics Lab (2 labs a week) - hard work and tiring but quite interesting and valuable. And I love the lab director/lecturer/whatever.
- The Prison System (2 lectures a week for 10 weeks) - this is my Broad Curriculum module and it's actually very interesting and thought-provoking. I didn't realise there was so much scholarship in this area. I do have one big complaint though; for my end-of-term report I'm trying to do a quantitative project so WHY IS THERE NOT QUANTITATIVE DATA ON PRISON CONDITIONS ANYWHERE? 

I did find the workload difficult in September - things were piling up much faster than I could properly study them, and the content seemed to have taken a definite jump from last year, and started rapidly covering  and far exceeding all the extra learning I did for Schols.

On the other hand, I'm experiencing this weird feeling of being back in school again because I'm asking/answering too many questions and having to try restrain myself, which kinda sucks. I'm OK with not answering questions but I don't like it when lecturers draw attention to it because I don't want to be singled out like that.

I'm in a new class this year since we've just specialised, so I'm just gradually getting to know everyone and they seem pretty cool. It's been difficult figuring out how to spend time socialising while also getting some work done - in first year I socialised but didn't study, in second year I studied all the time but didn't socialise, and so now in third year I'm trying to strike a balance between the two. I went to Anastasija's party, the first party I'd been to in ages since I didn't go out at all last year as far as I recall, and it was pretty fun.

LAIDLAW: Early enough in September I had to meet one of the Laidlaw co-ordinators to talk about my progress and give feedback. I was nervous because I thought I had to have this whole personal development plan done, but it was fine and Orla is great and we had a nice, productive chat. 

I also had to make a video summarising my development over the summer by October 1st, which was a bit of a pain to make.

SOCIETIES: Apart from Freshers' Week, I've been involved as a committee member in Physoc and Netsoc, and as an ordinary member in KnitSoc, which is cool because I'm actually making (slow) progress in learning how to knit! Woooo.

READING: I read Mistborn Book 3 (disappointing end to an amazing trilogy), the Mistborn 3.5 novella, A Crack in Creation by Jennifer Doudna and Sam Sternberg (book about CRISPR), and started reading a book about the secret life of trees but have been paused for ages just because I haven't been reading even though it's quite good.

LEON: Went to Mooch regularly etc, which was great.

In summary, I was very busy on an everyday level settling into 3rd year of college and getting to know my new class in September.