I have lots of work to do

For some reason I have a lab due tomorrow, which means I have to write it up and get my results ready to hand in. However, I won't get the final results until tomorrow morning. Which means I have to spend the day frantically trying to finish my entire report between 8 AM and 4 PM tomorrow. Excellent planning on the part of the demonstrators, I think.

Anyway, here is a video I like to call GET OUT OF MY HEAD COLLEGEHUMOR:



I mean, the guy's name is apparently Mr. Barnes. WHAT THE FUCK.

You know that stupid rumor that Inuit peoples have 100 words for snow? If someone told me that the English had 100 words for rain I would have absolutely no trouble believing that, since I experienced at least 5 different varieties walking to class yesterday.

Incidentally, if you have some spare time today, I highly recommend this:

Vice Goes to North Korea

Some beardy dudes who look like huge potheads got into North Korea (god knows how) and basically videotaped everything they could without being arrested while confusing the fuck out of their hosts. It's 14 three-minute segmets, which is annoying, but highly worth it if you're interested in seeing what the DPRK is actually like (depressing).

Also, to celebrate my horrible addiction to graphjam as well as my sheer helplessness in lab, I made this breakdown of how my fellow students and I generally spend our time. Click for big

More observations + SCHOOL DEATH

Walking to class every morning, I have noticed something about students here: they're goddamn slobs. Now, I'm not trying to be a hypocrite-- I mean, every space that I occupy invariably turns into a giant laundry hamper several times a week and you'll have more luck trying to find something with a divining rod than looking systematically-- but at least when I drink, I clean up the cans / bottles / carnage when I'm done. I've actually started a Daily Foster's Can Tally (what is it with that beer that shit isn't even that good): the most I saw was 12 empty cans, just lying on the ground, and my walk doesn't even take me anywhere near a residence. Seriously. Also, I recently saw an empty bottle of wine half-hanging out of a hedge. I have no idea how it got there. Well, I know how it got there. I guess what I mean is, I have no idea WHY it was there. I mean, as environmentally conscious as the British seem to be, there's garbage ("rubbish") cans ("bins") all over the place. Is it really that hard to put the bottles in the recycling? I mean, how drunk do you have to be to think that a hedge is recycling?

Anyway, you may have noticed that a significant amount of time has elapsed between my last post and this one. That's because SCHOOL ATE ME. I actually had to pull an all-nighter for the first time in years (well ok, a year) and all I did was write up a lab and do a problem set. I mean... what? I took a photo of my desk after I finished because literally every inch was covered in papers, textbooks, calculators, etc.:

And the mess continued for another two feet. Great.

...Fucking seriously?

Okay, quick poll. Which of the following did I learn in Numerical Methods today?

a) How to find the determinant of an n x n matrix
b) Basic integration
c) Factoring, i.e. (a + b)(c + d) = ac + ad + bc + bd
d) e^(i*pi) = -1
e) ?????
f) Profit!

Sadly, the answer is actually c). I wish I was kidding. Oh god.

Yes. Today, I sat in a UNIVERSITY LECTURE for an hour LEARNING HOW TO FACTOR. I'M A SCIENCE MAJOR. I WAS SURROUNDED BY SCIENCE MAJORS. THE CLASS WAS FOR SCIENCE MAJORS. DOES NOT COMPUTE (lol see what I did there)

So I went to my advisor and, in a very calm and reasonable manner, slapped him with a paperweight and screamed "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?!" (Actually I was very polite about it. There was no screaming and very few injuries.) After he recovered from his paperweight injuries, he explained: apparently in the UK, you can stop taking math at age 16. Fair enough, I guess in the States you can stop taking math as soon as you've done geometry and algebra, and quite a few people do... but... those people typically don't go on to pursue B.Scs. In fact, most of them usually don't even go on to pursue anything more ambitious than their next dimebag behind the Industrial Arts building. You might think I'm happy to have a math class I can pass by dipping my forehead in a puddle of ink and banging it on the exam sheet, but actually I'm really angry. See, I like math. I want to do more advanced math. I want to do differential equations and linear algebra and even, god willing, group theory. But no. I cannot do these things. Instead, I am stuck in a class where I am being taught that x * x = x^2 and (1/5)x = x/5. Sigh.

Incidentally, I had another "oh god I am going to die" moment a few days ago. I was sitting in Intro to Structure and Bonding, which is a neat inorganic-y sort of class, and the professor (who also happens to be my advisor! he's a really cool guy. his name is dr. lawless. he is not, as far as I know, a bond villain. unfortunately. derail over) was explaining how putting energy into hydrogen results in not a single continuous spectrum of excited electrons, but thin bands at distinct frequencies, and how that caused classical physics to shit itself and lead to the development of quantum mechanics. Now, this is a fairly basic concept. Electrons in hydrogen can absorb ONLY certain frequencies of light. They are ALWAYS the same. That's why quantum mechanics EXISTS.
However, there's always one guy (hereafter referred to as That Guy) who wants to have a Movie Moment. You know, the moment where, in a lecture of some sort, the Old Guard Professor will be explaining something and he'll say something like "It's always like this because that is how it is and it will never change because I am old." And then the Young Genius will raise his hand and say "But what if it's like this instead?" because he's young and has a fresh perspective and is also a genius, and the class falls silent and the professor stares at him, and then the bell rings (colleges always have bells to signal the end of class durrr) and everybody files out, and the Old Guard Professor asks the Young Genius to stay behind so he figure out where he came from. (For further examples, see pretty much any academic movie made in the last 20 years). Unfortunately, unless you're Russell Crowe or Matt Damon, it usually doesn't work out like that in real life, and it sure as fuck didn't here.
So back to the story. The professor has just explained the monumentally complicated concept of "bands here, not there, always like that" and this dude in the front sort of half-raises his hand. Like a total douchebag.
Professor: Yes?
Douche: You can't say the bands are ALWAYS there.
Professor: (lost for words) Uh... but it's been experimentally proven. It's the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Douche: But still, they might be somewhere else. It might not always be like that.
Professor: (clearly resisting urge to say "Yes it is, also you're an idiot") Uhhh... but... experimentally proven... I mean... uhhh...
Douche: You can't say that there's NO EXPERIMENT where the lines are different.
Professor: Um. Why don't we talk about this later.

It took serious effort not to slam my head into the desk.

Suddenly I understand

Looking out the window today, I suddenly get why all the music that came out of Manchester in the 80's was so ridiculously mopey. I mean, look at this:



Ew. Even the cows won't stand for this.

But yeah... as that one dude, the one with the ugly hair, from Pulp Fiction, said: It's the little differences. All in all, England's not so different from the States that I do a double-take every time I go outside the dorms... in fact, some of the dorms here could double for McMansions. But there are little things: the beer cans scattered around campus are Foster's; Burger King is more popular than McDonald's (so no Royale with Cheese yet); and even the exhaust from the bus I just missed smells different as it spews in my face, laughing at my hapless attempts to chase it down. (Probably because they have actual pollution controls here (except on food (ba-zing!))).

So... more clouds are rolling in off the horizon. This is a pretty shitty beach town, people.

Oops.

Okay, so more on the snafu I mentioned in my last post. Because if you're reading this, you're probably one of my parents, and if you're one of my parents, you care about this sort of thing.

See, when I got here, lost and confused, I was given a list of events for V&E (Visiting and Exchange) students to go to on the first week. Being that I am a good girl who is absolutely not hungover or strung out on coffee 90% of the time I'm awake (hi Mom), I went to every single one of them. That's right, even the ones at 9AM. Anyway, because of my diligence, I was rewarded with a schedule of events I needed to attend for my program, one of which was a list of introductory lectures for various courses. Only one of them was for a class I'm actually in, but oh well, I decided, and skipped merrily off to class (10 minutes late-- I overslept because my suitemates stayed up until 3am playing loud music and being drunk, which tends to preclude good sleep, but that's a different story).

You can probably guess where I'm going with this. Yes, I showed up late, to the wrong class. Awesome start, I know. And I would have continued in this awesome vein had Dr. Turner not been giving the next lecture, caught me after the first lecture, and said "Why are you here? You're not supposed to be in this class!"

Oh shit.

Yeah, I missed all the introductory lectures I was SUPPOSED to go to, went to one I didn't need, and caused everybody to think I'm a complete braindead moron. Pretty good for the first week, huh?

P.s. Mom, if this post worries you as I know it will, go lie down and repeat to yourself that it has all been worked out and everything is fine. In fact, you know what, you might wanna make that a mantra for the next little while.

Hi, my name is Sietske

I recently arrived in England to study chemistry at the University of Sussex. Watch my adventures as I try to puzzle out what people are saying to me! (People from the North actually say shit like 'sumfin'!) Admire my openmindedness as I accept alcohols from all different backgrounds! Laugh as I eventually succumb to end-stage scurvy because nobody has invented vitamin-enriched fish and chips!

So yeah, I haven't even been here a week (well, a few hours short of a week) and already I have picked up on the fact that if there's three things the English love, it's drinking, discussing each other's accents, and drinking. Oh, and messing up my course schedule because they can't be bothered to realize that I am not a pre-med student. Yeah.

Further bulletins as events warrant.