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University of Southampton Life, Page 20

Start Appreciating Boredom

Boredom Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines boredom as ā€œthe state of being weary and restless through lack of interestā€. This is naturally a bad thing and many people spend their entire lives trying to find ways to not be bored. Yet I find that we need to start appreciating boredom for what it is and what it gives us. Of all the emotions we have, boredom is one of the most calming; often allowing people to catch up on sleep at what some may call inopportune times i.e. a class or meeting. Continue reading →

PhD Straight After Undergraduate

Doing a PhD straight after an undergraduate degree brings both good and bad connotations about yourself. Particularly in Malaysia, jumping straight from a BSc to PhD is fairly unheard of, thus they automatically assume that you're some intelligent overachieving prodigy. On the flip side, grad school has been famously caricatured as a way to put off getting a job - or joining the real world, so to speak. When I first thought about doing a PhD, I wasn't really sure about what it involved. Continue reading →

Its All Go. Job, Exams and Coursework

Okay, it's 00:34, and I've just finished revising for a module test tomorrow. Suddenly the nice slow paced start to life at university has sped up to a run, and things are starting to take off. I've got a job (that was advertised through an email to ECS students), and I've just applied for another job as well. Exams are just around the corner, and coursework marks from last term are imminent. Continue reading →

Graduation Ceremony, Christmas and New Years Eve

"We hope you will not forget us....pause.....and If you become rich or very rich...Pause.... we will not forget you." This was the sentence said by the Chancellor of the University of Southampton at the graduation ceremony on 17th Dec 2008, which provoked laughter in the audience. The graduation ceremony went well (though unexpectedly...:)), due to a number of factors which made it an awesome event of my life. First of all the weather was very sunny (Thank GOD no more freezing cold). Continue reading →

A Very Fiendish Technical Report

Merry Christmas Everyone! With my last lectures of term out of the way this morning Iā€™m now truly free to join in with the Christmas spirit! We have Slade blaring away in the background and Iā€™m about to wrap presents for my flatā€™s party tonight. Weā€™re hopefully going ice-skating in the town centre this afternoon too, which Iā€™m really looking forward to! Fast forward to tomorrow and Iā€™ll be back enjoying the creature comforts of home, though Iā€™m going to really miss being here. Continue reading →

Time Flies

Next week will be the last week of term before the Christmas Break. It's amazing how fast the time has flown by and also how much seems to have been packed into such a short space of time. I'm looking forward to digging deeper into a few of the forthcoming subjects. Last Friday, I attended a lecture on Computer Systems and Applications where a brief overview of AI was presented. Continue reading →

Not Too Long Now Until Christmas

#2 ā€“ Not long now This is weird. Itā€™s nearly the Christmas holidays, and Iā€™ve handed in a few pieces of coursework, finished my Electronics labs, and am now into the final stretch, as it were, with one more coursework due before we leave, and then just a few maths tests left. On the subject of maths, if you did what I did, took a gap year and never did further maths, this stuff becomes HARD. Continue reading →

Sports at Southampton

Itā€™s been a while since I last posted a blog, but the amount of work set in the second year, even from the start of the first semester, has meant that there have been other distractions (although admittedly, not all of them are work related). Looking back on my last few blogs, Iā€™ve realised that my workload around the end of the second semester of my first year was not too bad at all, really, and that I should have saved some of my moaning for this semester. Continue reading →

Infinity and Beyond

Getting to grips with this university lark, I think. Having being told by various former work colleagues that, despite the best attempts of universities to convince otherwise, studying at undergraduate life involves attending a few lectures and not much else, I would like to know to which establishments of higher education they were referring. It bears no reflection to how much work that I've been putting in. Continue reading →