You're a what?

I haven't written on this for AGES... 

Well, "from a final year to the world" is this blog's tagline, and I'm going to have to change that, because I am now officially a graduand. What's that? Umm, Google...? Its a person who's finished their degree, but has not actually graduated. So I will be a graduand for a matter of days, I'm going to enjoy it!

The good news is that I have a 2:1, and the other good news is that I've now moved to Newcastle for a job up here. 

For people reading this who are not British (or indeed, know only the south of England...), Newcastle is nearly 300 miles from London, and on the River Tyne. It is famous for its football team (recently relegated), its ale, coal, and recent rejuvenation. 

Its a great place, and this blog I'm sure will soon be full of the differences between my former home of Whitstable and Newcastle. 

The exam term, and unique uni goings on

At the University of Kent we have this weird 6 week exam term at the end of each year. The other terms are 12 weeks, so this one always feels very short.

And with everyone doing exams, different people are counting down to when they finish all the time. It's quite strange, we say things like - "only 6 days left", or "1 down, 3 [exams] to go". So everyone is counting down to when they no longer have exams to do. Its all a bit odd - we're rather taken up with what is to come, and what's over the horizon, and not what is happening now.

This is just one of the things that is really strange about uni, and one of the things that I'll probably forget when I leave - which is why I wanted to write it down now.

One of the other things that is strange about uni is the village atmosphere. Being on a campus with 15,000 people, you tend to get to recognise a lot of them by face if not by name as well. But what is really odd is that I go for weeks without seeing someone and then I see them 3 times in a week! I don't have that in the town I live in when I'm not at uni, it's a very particular oddity of university.

And another thing...

I've gone through my 3 years at University and I've seen how people have changed so much over that time. I have changed loads, so I've noticed it in me as well, but there are a lot of people who seem very different from that first September in 2006 of my first year.

Generally I notice the ones I don't know very well as I can be more detached from them. Some people have put on lots of weight over the three years, some have taken up smoking, others have got deeply involved in religious societies, others taken up sports clubs. You could say, "well that's just life", well yes, but in the microcosm of University, its much more noticeable, as we live in close proximity to each other, we're not separated by work/life boundaries or the miles of distance of a large city.

We live our lives in the full view of 15,000 people!

Blogs to come

North Korea, its launch, and the Western media,

the final inQuire,

friends,

and leaving University.

Blogs to be written and posted soon...

24 hours

I thought about something I would share with the world recently...

Life sometimes seems SO busy that I worry about the future, and the past.

Especially at the moment, with my degree nearly at an end; I am looking for a job and want to finish my degree well with the essays I hand in.

So it was with these thoughts in mind, that a new, more postive thought came to me: the brilliance of the 24 hour day.

I say Praise God that He invented the day as 24 hours.

We cannot affect the time outside of these 24 hours, it is only these hours we have each day, and that is all we need worry about.

There's a lot I don't know (part 2)

We started the journey in an eventful fashion. I was trying to finish the inQuire news section together and it was taking a while.

The sun was shining brightly outside and my two companions were waiting to go.

When I finished in the office, I walked downstairs and set the alarm off because everyone else had gone, and put the alarm on without realising that I was still in there!

We had a real laugh on the way up - stopping at a Burger King somewhere between Canterbury and Durham, I asked for a large burger meal of some description. It was TINY!!!

But, not to be deterred, in full Wylie and Harvey fashion I picked myself up, and said "I'm not satisfied with this, please can I have another burger and some more chips?". They tried to take the burger away and give me a replacement one, but that would have been the same TINY size, so I had both, and some more chips, and felt thoroughly happy with my British complaint.

We thought about saying the Burger King people that we'd travelled five hours just to get to this Burger King and were there for a special 18th birthday meal...

My new phone arrived in the post yesterday!

The Samsung Tocco - its pretty cool - with a touch screen and something called smile recognition! It knows when people are smiling and only takes a picture then. :-) picture :-( no picture.

And I have just filled in the National Student Survey. This is the survey of final year students in the UK about what we think of our course. Last year a lot of people did it - about 200,000 - but it was open to abuse, abuse which was documented in some cases. This year my university was offering a £5 reward to people who completed it.

Why? Well, so we would spend five minutes of our lives answering questions about the last three years of our lives.

The questions were slightly odd, well the answers really. I was given the choice of strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree and strongly disagree. Now - the results last year were portrayed as "students love our degree and our university". Is that because lots of people wrote strongly agree? But for which questions? And what about all those people - and I'm sure there were lots that answered "neither agree or disagree"?

Today an extraordinary thing happened

11th February saw something amazing happen on campus. So amazing, this correspondent felt compelled to write about it on his blog.

Students were actually involved in something other than themselves! Four separate events on campus were going on and people were stopping, listening and thinking about what was happening!

For many, this news would not come as a surprise. Students, many think, are very politically minded, and will often stand up and make a noise about things they do or don't like - look at Nelson Mandela and Nestle, and the campaigns around them in previous years.

However, whether it is the 21st century, or whether it is just the University of Kent, people just don't seem to bother here. 320 people attended the recent AGM, less than 3,000 voted in the Union elections, 'Varsity' - the local sporting derby between Kent and ChristChurch university is unknown to most. Over 15,000 students are part of this university, but many appear not to want to be too much a part of it.

But, today that was not the case. On one part of campus stood the Fruit and Veg stall. This was booming with customers. It is situated in a good part of campus, unlike its former site, in the depths of the Venue. A popular innovation liked by all.

But a little further along was a large white marquee with the words 'have your say' above, and the smell of burgers to the side. This marquee was part of Kent Union's attempt to hear from students about the direction of the Union for the next five years - their strategic plan for 2009-2013.

And people were in the marquee, reading the notice boards, writing down suggestions, and eating the burgers. It was a success - around 100 people had been through only a couple of hours after it was set up! Yes the free food was helping, but just to get people through the doors was good.

Thirdly (and a bit of a plug) inQuire! Woohoo, my own newspaper (well, I'm one of the section editors). I had great fun handing these out today, and people looked interested when I gave them one and started talking about the story on the front page. Again, people interested in what is going on at their Uni.

And finally, a table set up outside Essentials, advertising a Pro Evo Soccer competition in aid of a Gaza society. People here too were stopping, listening and signing up.

So, a normal Wednesday afternoon, but not normal activities, its so good to see people involved in what is going on around them, I like that a lot, and sitting here in the library, the world looks a happy place.