Resuming…

Resuming where we left off

The second year, so far, has been interesting. A cliche, but true.

First, I must take a slightly more serious tone than the whimsical one that I normally use. The past couple of months have been quite difficult for myself. The stress of coming back to university, a troubling personal development, and mental health issues have all conspired to do generically evil and mean things.

Lucky for me, I had a large amount of support, from the School’s staff, to a number of friends who I know I can truly rely on.[1] It is nice to know that the school actually has systems in place when things seem difficult and tiresome.

Also, ECS Reception keeps giving me food. I think it’s because they don’t think I eat enough.[3]

However, starting the second semester, after a number of “interesting” examinations, one of which divided the year into two groups. Those who had no idea what the deuce was going on, and the other filling pages and pages of their answer booklets.

Oh yeah, exams. Sitting in those large or small halls with the rest of your year around you, the only sounds the whisper of papers being turned, pencils sharpened[5], and pens chewed nervously. Like a large number of people, I found that revision groups actually help things, and I know I would have done significantly worse had I not had a strong group of revision buddies.

Now we find ourselves in Yr2,Sem2, doing marvellous things like the Software Design Project[6], and Compiler Engineering[7].

The school is ticking over, I’m working with friend on a number of projects, including maintaining the “alt” library in cslib[8]. It passes the time, and we have developed a new level of… emotions towards the version of glibc on the Red Hat lab machines. It passes the time.

[1] You know who you are.[2]
[2] Can I have chocolate for being nice to you, now?
[3] Utter ridiculousness. Who ever heard of a computer scientist unable to take care of himself?[4] Don’t answer that.
[5] Not to be used, because that would be against exam regulations.
[6] Teaching you more than you wanted to know about Airport Lighting systems.
[7] Did you like Theory of Computing? Then you’ll love this!
[8] See cslib.org.uk, if it’s been updated recently.