I received an email from Newcastle University recently about the tickets they have allocated for my graduation. I was hoping to receive my basic allocation, plus the two seats in the TV relay room they advised we should apply for. This email told me that they have received more applications for these TV relay tickets than expected, and that they will offer me… none. This angered me: they have not set aside tickets equally for their students. So I complained, but to little avail.
Dad rang this evening, to talk about the graduation amongst other things. He seems all sorted and he will be coming. Mum doesn’t like it (at all) but thankfully she is overlooking that fact to come. However, the remaining problem was that of my maternal grandparents. My original plan was to give them the two seats I had been expecting to receive for the relay room. However, not being given these tickets meant that they would not be able to come at all. After I had spoken to Dad, Mum decided it would be the best to inform my grandparents of the news.
I’d wanted to invite them to thank them for the help they gave me in my first year. However it had always been their intention for me to show a greater gratitude by turning my father away and inviting my grandad instead. On receiving the news from Mum that Dad would be coming, I am now excommunicated from the family in their eyes, and Mum’s position isn’t all to rosy either. Even had I got those tickets, they made it clear they would have refused to come. They have made some childish threats and have effectively sought to make Mum choose between ties with me and her ties with them.
Oh… and wish me luck for my exam tomorrow.
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I have returned — I have fixed the problem I was having, which seemed more to do with my host than WordPress itself. A lot has happened since my last post.
I’ve been told that I have been rejected a place on the PGCE course, to my extreme annoyance. It seems the reason for declining my application was because I am not a teacher. The feedback suggested I ought to get experience teaching for a length of time before applying again. However, getting a decent run at teaching a class of secondary school pupils is hard to obtain: you need a teaching qualification. For much of the PGCE course, this is exactly the experience you get. So it feels like I can’t do the course because I haven’t done the course before. It’s a shame.
I guess I am a fool for applying to Newcastle University again. It seems a ridiculous reason to turn away what would have been a committed and enthusiastic student and a talented teacher. I suppose it also serves me right for chasing after a position doing a thankless task. It used to be medicine. Perhaps I ought to chase after self-glory, easy wealth and the supposed lure of the City. There seem plenty faceless, ruthlessly competitive financial jobs there, but they just don’t interest me, and as for London…
I suppose I’m too picky. I want a job with pressure I can handle; I want to be creative and to be able to apply all the skills I have collected from a wide variety of disciplines; I want to be an important member of an organisation so I can feel committed and settled. These are few and far between.
We get the Evening Chronicle every Thursday for jobs: the number of jobs available is getting lower to the tune of around 100 a week. There were less than 500 this week. Most of those were either teaching jobs or those that request a ridiculous amount of experience for the wage they offer. They aren’t even willing to buy experience; they just expect it. Every receptionist job going wants three years experience "in a similar environment". Why bother? I may as well look into self-employment.
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Applying for a place on a PGCE course isn’t as simple as just completing an application form then popping in for an interview, as I found out this week. The application process is controlled by an arm of UCAS, the university admissions service. As such, it costs £5 just to enquire. Furthermore, any correspondence you make to any universities you apply to must pass through their hands first. That is just the first obstacle.
I was invited for an interview on Wednesday (yesterday). However, this “interview” would last from 11am until 4pm. The actual interview lasted half an hour at the end of the day. Beforehand, we were asked to present a small presentation on some rather appalling “stimuli” for starter activities for a lesson; discussed the worst piece of television journalism ever created to support private schools in the developing world; and finally writing an essay on how labelling children as problems based on their welfare is bound to inhibit their self-esteem. Two sides of A4…
That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything: the interview was rather useful. The head of maths in the education department pointed out my errors when attempting to answer his classroom-based questions. And I committed a few errors. I’m not so sure I shall get a place on this course, so I was rather hopeless (in more way than one) until today.
Today was the deadline of my written project. It’s funny, most people were very reluctant to hand it in. They were talking about asking the secretary to pull hard on the file to prise the object from the author’s hands. I’m not so sure why that is. Perhaps it is a fear of the impending scrutinising of the work inside. Perhaps it is the fact that they have spent the best part of a year working on it, and continually changing it and never truly reaching satisfaction. I was quite pleased to hand it in in the end. It isn’t perfect. I would have liked to have added more, particularly proving that the simplicial homology groups of a space make a topological invariant. But it’s not bad either.
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I’m writing this article a different person to yesterday. I received an unexpected email from my stepmother. I should be thankful really, as it made me realise a few things.
On reading its contents my mind switched swiftly to my graduation. I had made up my mind as to who I would invite: just not how to approach it. I discussed this dilemma with a friend, and he said something rather profound:
I’d say the right decision is the one you want, and not the decision that makes things easy. Whatever comes of it is then the next problem to solve. And if people make it your problem, and make you the antagonist, they probably aren’t worth listening to anyway.
Yesterday, I was going to invite the people I really wanted to be there, and nothing more. After the email, I wanted to use the email to thank those that have been around and gave me help rather than wait for it to be asked of them, and punish those that I feel have let me down. Now having spoken to my friend, who also said that the graduation should be my day rather than just to thank people for their support, I have no clue who to invite.
There aren’t many people in the group that I have been told should be invited that haven’t let me down at some point. However, I’m torn between those I want to invite, those I’m expected to invite, and those that would make my life more awkward if I hadn’t invited them.
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I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned, not least in my mathematical ability and my job prospects.
My most recent annoyance concerns one of the modules I am taking. I had some homework due in for Friday, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t catch the deadline and was given the impression the lecturer wasn’t taking it in. Fortunately she has allowed me to hand it in on Monday. It annoys me that other people were aware that the deadline was for Friday, and appear to know it purely because those lectures are the only ones they turn up for. What’s worse is that it was exactly the same last semester for a similar module, and they also got better exam marks.
It leads me to wonder why I go. I already feel my understanding of these subjects isn’t as good as it should be.
A lecturer did concede to me during the week that his understanding of certain modules while an undergraduate wasn’t the best, but this didn’t prevent him from being able to answer exam questions on the subject. It should reassure me. But this is supposed to be my specialist subject, and what’s more is that I’m beginning to hate it. It is very technical and rather unforgiving when it comes to a lack of detail or making small mistakes.
Can’t wait ’til the Easter holiday!
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It has been a pretty bad week to be honest. It feels like it has just been a succession of kicks in the teeth. It started last Friday with my exam results.
I got a 52 and a 66 for the two modules I sat exams for in January. I wasn’t too happy about the 66 in Modern Bayesian Inference, but that wasn’t so much of a disaster. The 52 however I was quite annoyed with. No-one felt confident leaving the exam room, and after having asked a couple of people the results they achieved, I thought it might have been worthwhile talking it over with my personal tutor. However, since he was inaccessible for much of the early part of this week, I didn’t. That perhaps was no bad thing, since having spoken to others it seems it was just my performance in the exam that was to blame for the poor mark.
As a note, it isn’t just exam performance that earns you a good mark for a module. It also depends on the performance of the rest of the class. The intended result is that if an exam is "too hard" or "too easy" the marks are adjusted to suit. However, this lends itself in turn to create a competitive environment in the leading weeks to the exam. For the most part, they are your friends and colleagues (and arguably victims), but come the exam period they are the nemesis, for their performance has a bearing on your results.
That was just the first knock to my confidence. I had been waiting for results from GCHQ to arrive this week, and yesterday I received the dreaded email informing me that I had been unsuccessful in achieving an interview. That was a real shame, because that was my dream job. I would be playing about with computers and codes, doing some analysis and using some maths in my job. Furthermore, work stays at work: due to the sensitive and secretive nature of the work, I couldn’t take things home and I couldn’t discuss it. That would have been ideal.
When I told Mum she immediately came and hugged me. It wasn’t really what I wanted to be honest — I didn’t really want a reminder that I should be disappointed. But she could clearly see how important it was for me. It’s left me a bit stumped to be honest. I had really pinned my hopes on it and hadn’t considered any other career direction, so I am at a loss. I also feel I have no real direction now and feel a little disillusioned.
And they say they come in threes. And they do. I also found out today that I have not been accepted onto the Great North Run. That was a substantial knock too. This additional setback means I am not going to achieve any of my goals this year. It’s only February.
I don’t even know what it is now I need. A direction would help; a goal even better. But right now I feel that everything I have been working for was in vain. Bugger.
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It feels like 2008 should be the most exciting year of my life thus far. It hasn’t really disappointed so far — not necessarily for the good in the main it must be said — but I anticipate a lot to happen in the coming months.
I should be graduating this year; perhaps moving out and getting a job. I don’t feel scared as such, but I don’t feel that excited either. Is that a bad thing? Am I underestimating the change in front of me? It really feels like doing my A Levels again… everything is hard, and there is the prospect of having to move away. Indeed, I’m approaching my final months in education with a narrow-minded approach, anticipating one outcome and not even contemplating an alternative. That could be a problem this time round: if I don’t have a backup plan, my 2008 will prove to be a bit of a stutter.
This week could make or break my year.
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One could be forgiven for being nervous before an exam: going through everything in your mind ensuring you haven’t forgotten anything you need. However, when you walk into the exam room and sit down ready to start your exam, you should be given an automatic fail if you fail to notice that you are sitting at a desk with a different exam to the one you should be taking.
Thankfully she moved, or else I might have ended up taking some other exam. What the hell is "River Management" anyway? No-one stands on a riverbank with a projector discussing annual appraisals to tadpoles. River Management seems to be a misnomer anyway: I should think it would be unethical to manipulate a river. Rather, rivers are sites of conservation. I suggest its naming was more about self-indulgence rather than prescribing the content of the course.
Anyway, back to the exam. I did fine, I feel. In fact I did quite well, considering for the most part I couldn’t be bothered with revision. That is particularly the case when you have a group full of people whom you have never met that need you to be on the Internet at a certain time in order for them to see to their own ends. That is what World Of Warcraft: you pay for the compulsion to help others and accumulate that responsibility to these fellows in the game.
I have another exam next Friday — and it is going to be hard.
Lesson of the Day
If X follows a Rayleigh(θ) distribution, then Y = X² follows an Exponential distribution with parameter θ.
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