Midnight snowball fight anyone?

It’s been a busy few weeks since my last post. Two weeks ago I fulfilled a lifelong ambition to visit the Royal Albert Hall by going to see Cirque du Soleil (a very impressive show and fantastic seats for just £25 thanks to some haggling by a a friend) as a halls of residence trip. Last week I organised my own trip with fellow hall senior Aysha, taking over 20 students to The Comedy Store to see a hilarious improvisation show. And last week it snowed twice, triggering much childlike glee. (See photos below the rant)

As previously mentioned: we have deckchairs!

Holbein and Willis Jackson (HWJ) Halls of Residence have also started their yearly ritual of showing every Six Nations Rugby game on the projector in the common room, complete with deck chairs, free beers and snacks for all. There are some things I will definitely miss when I eventually leave HWJ.

In choir, Verdi’s magnificent Requiem is coming along nicely, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to a weekend away in Cambridge with fellow choristers for banter and rehearsing in 2 weeks time.

Oh, and memes have taken over facebook.

In the interests of balance, it’s also that time of the year when I’ve started to get a little jaded with physics work…

Reuben Rant

Feel free to skip the below (I’ve helpfully indicated where it ends, and added some editorial balance afterwards), it’s more therapeutic for me to feel like I’m feeding back to the department than anything else.

The physics department here is overall pretty good and we are clearly being taught to a high standard. In terms of work, they have piled it on: Extra work for labs has taken the usual exorbitant amount of time: there’s masses of data analysis to be done, things to be written up, and then at the end of the four week experiment, a mere 2 days to finish all analysis and write a four page report. Much as I appreciate that working to tight deadlines is an important skill to master, having to stay up until 7am to get a report done is a little over the top… but perhaps I’m too much of a perfectionist, 2-3am seems to be more the norm.

There has also been a big assessed problem sheet to work on (taking up much of a weeks worth of spare time set aside for working), and each lecture course (of which there are currently 4 running) provides 1 or 2 problem sheets to do each week. Then there are lectures and things to go to as well of course… I have friends that do nothing extracurricular, and even they are struggling to keep up, but we are all learning.

This is all well and good, I know from last year that all work can be caught up with once the Easter holidays start and there is much more free time to study. The problem is that academic tutors (one of mine in particular) seem to be blissfully ignorant to this, and consistently complain that we don’t do enough of the problem sheets, on top of the extra work that they set us to do anyway…  Of course, I understand why they press us. There are a huge number of people that simply do not do enough work, and will not endeavour to catch up. These are the people that barely pass their exams, or commonly find they have to retake. It’s just disheartening to have a tutor getting frustrated with me for not doing enough work, when I know that I do all the work I can.

End Rant – Positivity Below

And that’s enough of all that. I should remind the reader that I hold Imperial in high regard overall (as stated previously) and this is just a niggle. If the above were to become a serious problem, I know that I could go and talk to my personal tutor and he would do whatever he could to help (my personal tutor is really nice), or use one of the many other channels there are of feeding back to the department (which I might just do). To give an example of feedback in action: Last term, half the year had one day fewer to get the lab reports done and our excellent year reps managed to get us an extra day to make it fair.

Most of the time I don’t use this blog to complain, which should indicate to you that most of the time I’m fairly happy. Time for some pictures of snow!

Read the rest of this entry »

“SIIIIIILLLEEEENTTT NIIIIIGGGHHHT. HOOOOOOOLLLLLYYYYY NIIIIIIGGGHHHTTT.”

Picture the scene: 60 people on each side of the dance floor, some lolling about on chairs, some standing triumphantly. Suits and dresses are the attire, glasses of wine are in hand and Christmas hats sit atop heads. A bemused looking DJ watches as each group takes turns to shriek lines from a Christmas Carol at the other in a battle to be the loudest. It’s a carol sing off. Cover your ears! It must be the annual Holbein and Willis Jackson Hall Christmas Dinner!

Each year the Holiday Inn that towers over Kensington (which is less tacky than it sounds) greets a large group of students from my halls of residence, all keen to engorge themselves on as much Christmas food and wine as possible. A buffet was the order of the day. This catered perfectly for a range of needs: from those few who wished to eloquently enjoy a small plate of food to my rugby playing friend Sean who, like a good scientist, wished to investigate just how much protein and carbohydrate one can fit on a plate (he repeated this experiment several times).

Some were clearly a little tired.

Dinner was followed by games and awards. A joke telling competition was predictably varied: There were hall seniors joking about one another (what’s the difference between * hall senior name* and a brick? A brick gets laid. Ho ho ho.) that were received with good spirits and a middle finger, and one extremely long joke that had such a ridiculous punch line no-one quite realised it had hit. Awards included best dressed male/female, worst cook, messiest room… There were suitable awards for each.

After the carol singing competition ended the games (I think nothing could quite top the sheer absurdity of it) the dance floor was hit with aplomb.  People drunkenly hugged at the end; one person managing to pull a small group to the floor with his overzealous cuddle. Overall a good time was had by all, and several carols were massacred.

-          Reuben

The other hall seniors and I pose for a photo - December 2011

“Oooh!” “Ahhh!” “I liked that one.”

Being in London for big events like Halloween, new years eve and Guy Fawkes night (for the uninitiated, this is the evening that English people choose to let off lots of fireworks and light a bonfire) is a real treat.

One can tell when it is approximately Guy Fawkes night. Loud bangs (rather unusual noises for Chelsea and Kensington) become frequent. The posh family that live in the house opposite my Halls of residence turn their immaculate garden into a pyrotechnics showground for children who really should be standing further back from the burning show (in spite of their parents’ protests).

Thousands of people line the river to watch the fireworks - November 2011

The Holbein and Willis Jackson hall seniors decided to take keen residents to the nearby (and usually rather spectacular) Battersea Park fireworks display. I was meant to be taking more money conscious residents to watch the display with thousands of people from across the river. A series of unfortunate events meant I lost everyone, so I was left with myself, my music, tens of thousands of happy people and my thoughts.

The fireworks were indeed spectacular.

I then went to my friend’s house in white city (seeing BBC television centre on the way – I’d never been so close to the blue peter garden!) got rather drunk and had lots of silly conversations.

Student life!

- Reuben

The work I have to do is looking ominous, so here’s something I wrote earlier.

Below is how I got this blog. It’s the (rather longer than usual) post I wrote as part of my application. Hopefully it will give you some idea of what the first few weeks at imperial can be like.

I think I’m just about starting to recover.

The beginning of my second year studying physics at imperial was very different to my first. Last year I applied and was accepted as a hall senior in Holbein and Willis Jackson (HWJ) halls. This means that this year, it’s my job to ensure a brand spanking new group of students settle in to London life, and generally have a great time.

As a first year, I remember the week before the start of term being filled with nervous anxiety, excitement and uncertainty about what I was about to embark on. As a second year hall senior, the week before the start of term was filled with endlessly putting things in each of the 100+ rooms in the hall, staining garden furniture (normally a punishment for naughty students, but it needed doing), getting to know my new hall senior pals and planning the events we would be throwing during the welcome fortnight. There was barely time for such frivolous emotions as anxiety. Not that there would be: that left after the first week at imperial, replaced with thoughts such as “oh, I could try rowing!” and “am I sleeping enough?”

But I digress, what I thought was the second most tiring week of my life was followed by the actual second most tiring week of my life (the most tiring week is a story for another day). Saturday the 1^st of October rolled around and lots of parent and luggage baring new students overcame nerves and horrendous traffic to enter their new home. And what a home greeted them: Banners! Balloons! Room keys! Refreshments! Conversation! And (most importantly): helpful hall seniors carrying luggage to rooms! A 4 floor hall with no lifts ensured that no visit to the gym was required on that day.

The inevitable "orange segment smile" with a fellow hall senior at the end of the hall's annual Chinese Feast, from the end of Welcome week

Free food is always a great way to gather students. An open bar is even better. Thankfully HWJ had both for the opening weekend: pizza and responsibly distributed pints drew crowds that were then ushered to a boat party on the Thames.

The new students were perhaps slightly reluctant to hit the dance floor, choosing instead to take challenges from the wardens to win free drinks (“find the names of all 3 zoologists”, “tell me something I don’t know about Boston” and especially for me, “go find a random fresher and tell them your most embarrassing story”). The other hall seniors were anything but reluctant, breaking out the shuffling (a kind of dance) we had honed during the week previously. We enticed others to join in and I taught a crowd a silly dance as we sailed under Tower Bridge. Once in a lifetime I suppose.

The rest of welcome week was great fun. On Sunday came a champagne breakfast, barbecue and The Mingle (a chance for freshers from different halls to meet one another at a music filled night at the union). On Monday I presided over a non-alcoholic but sugar filled evening of “speed meeting”, which was meant to be like speed dating but without the immediate romantic side. In reality people chatted and laughed whilst drinking coke floats and non-alcoholic cocktails. I occasionally shouted at them to “CHANGE PARTNER” with a megaphone.

Glowing eyebrows at the union UV rave

A blur of tiring nights-out to union events and clubbing followed, as well as actually studying physics. Fresher looking-after-duties even broke my personal “sequential going out record” by doing 4 nights in a row. This previously stood at one, because I value sleep.

Any recovery from the knackering first fortnight may be short-lived. The freshers still need a friendly face to talk to and events to go to. Us seniors will rub the sleep from our eyes and make sure it’s a fantastic year.

- Reuben