Exams, Visits, and Other Adventures

Wow. The last few months have really gotten away from me. Don't worry though, I'm planning on doing better. For this month at least.

I can't believe the second term of my degree is over. Or that I had my birthday. Or that my time here is more than halfway done.

Having exams here was maybe the strangest part of the switch from the US to England model of testing. I haven't had exams that asked me what I learned in September since the AP exams in 2008 (was that really 6 years ago??) and I had a study guide for those. So I was both extremely out of practice and completely out of my depth (four weeks to just... study? More like four weeks to hone my procrastination skills) when last Monday rolled around. But I think I got enough down on paper to pass. I hope! Otherwise it will be a very expensive ticket to do a very not fun thing. And who knows anyone who wants to hire someone who failed their exams?

During the four weeks off I celebrated my birthday, took a trip to the English coast with my wonderful friends A and W (hahahahaha no they don't have any root beer), had a week long visit full of London adventures with my friend L and acquired some alpaca yarn for a cardigan I'm knitting myself. And I studied.

While L was here, I also got a new sketchbook and pen, so I've been doing some doodles of the places we visited, like this one from the British Museum:

And this one from when we went to see Once in the West End (which, by the way, was fabulous and I highly recommend):

I'm really excited for Term 3 to start this week! I'll be taking two practical modules, one on documentary and the other on web design and content management. I'm particularly looking forward to doing some coding in the latter. I miss the logic problems that have answers! Working on finding a career that balances the two. We'll see. Anyway, at the very least I'll gain some PhotoShop and Final Cut skills, so I expect my YouTube videos should see some improvement. I'm also hoping to be posting some more science content, as a result, so keep an eye out for that.

Until next Monday!

Late Night Delusions (and other things)

It's 2 AM so clearly it's the perfect time to be blogging.

I have come down with some sort of cold/lethargy thing and while I attempt to down some heavily sugared Lemsip (how do you Brits DRINK this stuff?? I think mine needs like 3 tablespoons of honey...), I decided it was the perfect time to face my own lack of action and write something on here.

It's nearly halfway through my second term here in London and the weather has been grey, miserable, and quite chilly for entirely too long (although I am very much enjoying the days getting longer, hurrah Earth!) I'm fairly certain I mentioned in my last post that I got a retail job at the large mall near me to help with paying for the Tube - which I'm taking a lot more these days since it's rather miserable to walk in the cold rain for an hour, and also I like sleeping in.

This term has me running the facebook for I, Science, which is a sort of collection of blogs and journalism pieces centered around science, and generally just being exhausted. We've started group projects, we're supposed to be coming up with our dissertation topics, and I've got an assignment for my Science and Display course due next Monday. So now is obviously the perfect time to blog

I have made more time in my schedule for exercising (I did 1.6 30 day challenges - I'm still working on the darn squat challenge, 200 squats just seems excessive... and I'm swimming once a week most weeks) which I think has helped with both my energy and my general mood. I've also gotten to explore some more of London - a trip to several museums including the Grant Museum, which is responsible for the amazing selfie below. All of the yellow tiles are actually slides of microorganisms.

I also decided to switch my Thursdays to the knitting society this term instead of choir and tried my hand at a spinning wheel last week! I'm on the last sleeve of my jumper, so expect an update on that sometime... in the future... maybe.

I hope all of you are having a lovely 2014, and, as always, I'll try to keep you updated with snippets of my life.