vervet_monkey

Conservation Resi went off almost without hitch, barring the almost not having of a bus... But I am now so so tired. They are always tiring, turns out when you're in charge and do all the cooking they are a lot more tiring!

Life post!

Still pretty much living at library. Have also somewhat accidentally got into the routine of getting up at 6.30 every morning (went to bed really early one night, so then got up early, was really tired etc....) so am getting to library for 8am every morning! Don't feel particularly stressed by it, although I did wake up this morning with skin that would look more at home on a 14 year old, so maybe I am and just haven't realised it... ah well...

Work is going well though. Am waiting for my supervisor to get back to me on my almost final draft of dissertation, he only gets an outline but it should be quite useful. Am behind on other reading, but not hugely so, and on top of other coursework, so it's good overall.

Have just had SUCV AGM so as of 3 weeks time I will no longer be president. Am quite glad tbh, not that I haven't enjoyed it, but it will be nice not to have to be the one to do all the organising, and I will not miss having to lug 6 litres of water up to uni every sunday, and then washing all the cups up afterwards. Got a mostly good committee. This year hasn't been as good as the last I don't feel, but that might be because all the people I started with haven't really bothered to turn up, hopefully next year will continue to be awesome, because that society really did give me my home at uni.

I'm pretty crap at this thing atm hey. I still read a lot, just the actual posting that is eluding me.

So, my life...

Back at uni for the third and (sort of) final year. Far to scary for my liking, and its going far to quickly for my liking. Already half way through semester one. That's scary! Modules are Applied Ecology, Conservation and Biodiversity and Population and the Environment. In general all interesting, although I'm finding ecology harder to get into than the others, but that might have something to do with the last section being on micro-biological control, and anything that's too small to see tends to bore me. Conservation and Biodiversity I actually love and is very easy to get lost in for a very long time. It's exactly what I want to be doing and possibly what I will go on to do a masters in next year (hence the sort of last year). Population is a demographics module. Therefore a social science. Which is fine, if you're a social scientist. So it's very interesting, but occasionally we sit there going 'Ummm, what? You're classifying that as accurate?' But then that's because we get to do actual experiments, not rely on documents that are hundreds of years old. It makes life more difficult I feel. 

Other than that is the Dissertation, which I'm not bored of just yet! Still really enjoying it, had an actually amazing day this week getting the mapping software to work that put me in such a good mood (that's a bit sad isn't it...) and all my data is now in the country, just waiting to pick it up. Lit review is a bit of a pain, but just plugging away at it bit by bit and it's getting there. I want all except the discussion (and possibly some of the results depending on how quickly people get stuff done for me) done in rough by Christmas.

Conservation is fun, although stressful. But people are coming along still and barring someone stepping on a nail last week we haven't had any major issues. Only one is peoples inability to decide what they're doing by Friday evening. If I say you have to sign up by Friday so I can sort transport I do actually mean Friday. And if you are said transport it would be really useful if you could tell me any limitations by Friday, not after I've sent out the e-mail telling people what, when and where. People can be infuriating! 

House is still standing. Although very much missing an Amy. As much as I love the boys, they can be exhausting when they're together. I miss someone I can sit and chat too, and I know I'm withdrawing from them but I just don't have the energy. 

On the other hand Belize means lots of coursemates now which is awesome, and gives me some release during the day when I'm buried in work, which is definitely needed.

As for next year... masters or conservation work. I don't know. I kinda feel like I only want to do a Masters so I don't have to panic about the fact that what I want to do no-one will pay me for for another year. And if I don't do it now Uni funding is only going to get worse so prices are only going to become impossible. But at the same time going out into the world with no money would be scary, where as at the moment I can go with at least £9000 as a bit of a cushion without relying on my parents, which I hate. 

Going to see Jessica in a few weeks. Which has me so very excited. I haven't seen her since before Belize and I miss her so much. 

Riding is OK, although Sally is no longer teaching us which is a shame. Sarah's OK but not Sally. Have been getting actual horses though, including the new one today! Very unfit but once she is I think she'll be awesome. And she's a piebald so just looks so cute.

( Long explanation of my life, probably quite boring, but never mind! Cut for length )

Wow, that kind of turned into an essay! Time at the moment is filled with uni work (or procrastinating), riding, conservation and far too much boyzone/ronan listening too. New boyzone album is amazing (and didn't make me cry!) and Ro's show this week was equally so (but did make me cry). Just looking forward to Easter, and having at least one week at home in which no work is too be done! 

First week of Uni over and done with! That was a little to quick for my liking...

Courses are pretty much as I expected, although not liking the volume of maths we're being put through. Quantative Methods looks boring and hard, which is not fun. I have one of my fav lecturers for it atm and he can't make it interesting. As the rest of the course is being run by Mr 'Must-not-interact-with-students" I'm not holding out much hope. Having said that it is a MATHS module. Maths has acutal answers, not essay, subjective type answers, but actual difinative answers, therefore IF I can keep myself interested enough to learn the stuff, possibility for nice big marks with comparatively less effort. So must pay attention!!

Population ecology looks like its going to be dissapointing. The lecturer is the above mentioned non-interactor guy, so not much fun, and its very maths and stats heavy, plus he doesn't really explain himself very well... so I've been struggling with the first bit of maths all weekend and thats an east bit.

Animal behaviour is... animal behaviour. I think its going to live up to its expectations, any course with a practical call 'Kitten play behaviour' has got to be good right?!

Environmental pollution is going to be alot of work. But is so interesting. Not a huge amount of biology in it directly, as is an external module, but all has biological connections. The lecturer is really good and engaging. There aren't many envs students and unlike the zoologists they get some courses too themselves, so the envs lecturers know them and it makes interaction between the too alot easier. for some reason this course is an extra 5 credit points as well, which is a little bit random and has no real benefit other than 5 random points left at the end of the year... but oh well...

The house is so much fun. The kitchen, bathroom and hallway are all under 2 years old, so even though its a victorian terrace, its really nice and acutally works! Myroom is a nice size, the only issue being that it isn'y double glazed so i get condensation on the window in the mornings. Loving my housemates too, we've had many random converssations and are all cooking together which is really nice. As we have the same social group to it means we all go out together and generaly have a good time. Paul, of the the other SUCV people, has also been staying quite often as he graduated last year and doesn't have a house in Soton anymore, which just makes it a nice happy house with lots of nice happy people. :)

Conservation tomorrow, did some on wednesday but ended up coming home early due to rather alot of rain (first time a task has had to end due to rain!!)

My laptop is still revolting against sonic stage, so I have no music still. I do however have the radio. Which means that has been on almost constantly.

And therefore i have been getting quite excited over the Kilamanjaro climb (plus, Ronan, thats always good) Roriama wasn't as high as they have gone, so we didn't have altitude sickness to contend with. But it is just reminding me so much of our trip. The absolute drugery of walking and walking and walking one foot in front of the other, crawling on hands and knees to get up the slope without toppling off sideways. Climbing into tents that you don't really fit 3 people in and trying to sleep(although watching their videos they have a tent about as big as we did for 3 people each!), but the ground being so rocky that by the time you wake up you are covered in bruises. Now we did have to carry all our stuff on our backs and cook for ourselves and put up and take down our own tents at the begining and end of each day, which they don't, but it doesn't make it any (well, much) easier. And remembering when they ar speaking about how good it is to be there, but actually, they've had a bad day and really would like to stop now.

Tbh when we climbed the top wasn't all that exciting. It was cold, it was wet, we did get a day off at the top which was wonderful, but you do then just haveto climb down again. BUT I have this vivid memory of getting to the end to this weird little gateway village thing and dumping our bags in a pile, sat on my bag facing the mountain with Gemma (I think) sat next to me. I just remember looking over at her as these park rangers are searching our bags and both of us just collapsing into giggles. We were so pleased to be down and absolutely filthy and exhausted but we just sat there giggling and hyper. And by the next day, we all wanted to be back there again. Even if just for that ending (although the day after we did look really strange trying to climb up and down the stairs with legs that were aching so much!)

So yes, that is what my week has consisted of. And being glad that I've managed to find a good group of people here, that I am acutally going out 2/3 nights a week (although I am generally back by midnight...) And a group that as far as I can tell is nice and stable and isn't going to be as manic and stressful as my last group of friends was (not that I don't love them, but a bit lass drama is very nice) AND that when we go out we go and sit in the pub and TALK TO EACH OTHER which is always good. Oh, AND we're going to the llama farm!

*smiles*

Semester 2 starts tomorrow! Yay! Although I do only have one lecture tomorrow and its called 'Introduction to Blackboard' that being the system that is used to convey EVERY peice of information for every course, to set asignments, take exams, hand in assignments, registar for courses, basically it is the university in online form. So quite how they think we are going to have managed to get through semester 1 and still need it expalining I don't know...

Riding yesturday was great fun, although not really a lesson. For some reason they put the intermediates and the beginners together, the beginners being people that have only just started riding... and the other intermediate in the lesson is not quite intermediate tbh, but slightly better than beginner. So we started by walking round, then trotting together. At which point we were going so slowly as the girl on lead couldn't keep her horse in trot so I was basically troting on the spot. The instructor was one I hadn' had before, but the normal one had left a note saying to give me Monty, a green 6 year old (So only a baby really), obivously not a beginners horse. So that coupled with the fact that I could obivously ride quite well led to her telling me that he needed to work on his right bend and just to do what I liked. So i rode for an hour while they had  lesson to see what I could get out of him. The instructor was very appologetic about it but it wasn't her fault they decided to mox the lessons, and she at least noticed I was going to be tearing my hair out. She did also say maybe I should ride with the advanced, but they ride on a sundday, when I am busy, and I'm not quite up to that standard for tanglewood, so I'd feel like I was getting in the way...

Conservation volunteers today also. Which was good fun, if slightly odd. we were working at the uni, as we have many times before, cutting ivy this time and rakeing. But we were also joined by the environment and ethics society so theyre were quite a few people. (And quite a few who thought our random convrsations were a little odd, but hey...) Then it got to 1 o'clock and rather than stopping for our normal packed lunch, (sandwiches at uni, potatoes if we're somewhere with a fire) we packed up and walked up to the staff centre, covere head to toe in mud. Including obivouly our boots so we took them off outside and went in, in our socks and muddy old clothes, mud in hair etc. And they're were waiters in ties and white table cloths and we went to get what we expected to be sandwichs but were given either steak, salmon or bean something, new potatoes and salad. And sat at tables with polished cutlery and napkins. And the waiters came round with drinks and to check on our meals and then they borught us cheesecale with strawberries. It was very strange, a little more than our normal lunches! We decided that we should team up with the environment and ethics society more often, if this is what they can get!

Resi this weekend rocked! We had lots and lots of fun and chopped trees and chatted and played lots of cards and built fires and it was fun! We even had beds, which was a nice surprise... no heating however so you can imagine how cold we were, esp as it was basically a shed, so there would have been no way to keep heat in! But it was really good to get away and not have to worry about work, just be outside mucking about. AND i felled a really big tree! It was exciting, iy made a satifying creak-crash! Sound.

I am however now paying for a weekend of fun outside in the cold. Not only do I have mountains of work to do coz i didn't do any all weekend, but also a monster cold to prevent any from getting done. Not good really. I'm just kinda snifffling and drinking tea. Plus I had a resps lecture today and the lecturer always picks up on people yawning and coughing and sneezing and i was doing all 3... I even braved the back of the theatre in the hopes he would leave me alone but he didn't, I became the expriment for the hour...

Think I'm off riding tomorrow but i haven't had an e-mail about it... Ack, although i haven't emptied my in box in a while... maybe thats why!!

Ugh, OK, bioinformatics!

Oh I hate it when its nearly the end of term but its not quite the end of term and everyone starts getting bouncy about the end of term but it takes sooooo long to get here!

Spent my evening today playing battle ships over the radio. Twas quite good fun! We actully spent much of the evening working out a radio friendly way of saying 'fire' that wouldn't make people think we were terrorists... we ruled out 'fire' 'attack' 'bomb' 'missile'... slightly pointless evening but all good fun (This was an SJA excercise btw... i'm not that sad!!) Oh, and i learnt that the reason we're FB on our radios at home is cozwe're buckinghamshire, where FD in hampshire... this intetested me, i didn't know why we were FB... ok, maybe i am that sad...

Got assignment today aswell that looks like it might be a little scary. All about protein sequences, we have to key them into the computor and then get info out and match it and write up reports all on this section of letters... it doesn't look that hard but i think it will be time consuming and repetative.

Isle of Wight this weekend. Yayness. Tree chopping and socialising. Was going to go out tonight with conservation people also but the mean buses stop at 10.30 so i would be there about 20mins beofre having to leave... seemed kinda pointless!

Looking at placements for nixt summer. Thinking I'm going to have about 6 weeks at VMF and 4 weeks somewhere else. Found a school type place in Hoedspruit, about 2 hours from VMF that takes kids for a week and they do all sorts of conservation work,. I think they have animals there and take them out into the bush and teach them why not to just destroy it all. From what i can tell they are the working class schools, not the posh South Africanones. It was saying there is normally 160+ in there classes at school, but they take 14 at a time to the conservation place. Don't know but i figure that kind of education would be good to have experience in, espcially if it is conservation i end up in.

*Smiles and nearly but not quite end of term sparkles*

Kayla :)

I should really be doing my Arthropod write up. I've been doing it for nearly 2 hours and have done half a page... as well as filled in my riding form, write a check for riding, worked out what time i have to get a train on saturday, downloaded from BBC iPlayer, taken my washing down, moved my washing from the washer to dryer and collected my washing... I think it may be a lsot cause tonight? Its just so tedious! Chliceratae have a chlicera (hence the name) 8 legs, pedipalps, cephalothorax, book lung or gills... see, thats just a little bit of one. There are 13(?) arthropod phyla. Thats lots and I'm bored now!

Had a v good night last night. The fireworks were good in a non-attacking way and the ship is really really big!! There was music and firethrowers and lots and lots of people. We went to the pub then where there was jazz music, which was quite cool. All good fun!!

Riding today was cool. We're jumping next week! Hopefully I will therefore have Muffin again coz he rocks and is well behavied. But I am getting sick of the ponies. Just once in a while I'd like a horse please, that stretches me a little bit... not that the ponies don't. It does take alot of work to get real work from a pony coz in general they're lazy and ridden by kids. But something with a bit of spark wouldn't go amiss (just not next week coz jumps and spark and kayla don't go together) Oh, but we got cantering circles!! That was good! A little strange though, we were ment to have a group of 7, which is quite a big ride... but only 3 of us acutally turned up. Don't really know why, tis rather odd. Suited us that did ride well coz 3 is better than 7, but still...

Tate miss bexy!!!!!!!!!