Birmingham and back

My camera's working again!
The church opposite where I was waiting for LJ

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as back on track as I'd hoped. I overslept again and missed the first lecture of the morning, creeping into the computer class (unseen I think by the lecturer) quarter of an hour or so late.

There was a meeting about the sit-in after the class, in the Underground bar. We discussed what we would put on the posters, and what we would do in various scenarios. And I ended up volunteering (or getting volunteered) to do the leaflet for audience members. I knew it'd mean staying up all or most of the night, as I was busy today, but I thought it was worth it, both in terms of what it would achieve, and being able to be in control of making it audience-friendly, and in terms of how much I'd regret not taking up the challenge. CMCC promised to send me all the stuff I'd need to put in it.

Then Principles and Methods, where the lecturer got thinking about the exam in the break, and wrote up a sample question on the board. It asked in its first part 'What is MLE and why is it important?' Writing down what it was would be no problem (assuming I'd read and memorised the notes), but I looked through them carefully and couldn't find anywhere why it was important (that issue of missing out the interpretation again). I put up my hand and said that it might just be me, but I couldn't find it, and the lecturer said that we might not have got to that bit yet, and proceeded to explain why it was important, and I tried to get it all down but I couldn't write quickly enough- and that's all very well for MLE, but what about all the other things we've learned to calculate? The problem is that he thinks that the bookwork (memorising and recalling the notes) is easy and it's the calculation part that is hard, and since he wants everyone to pass will be weighting the bookwork more heavily. Normally that would be correct but in this case we have enough examples in the homework of the calculations that they won't be too bad compared to the bookwork, which really is going to be a problem as the notes are deficient. Not in terms of definitions, that'll be ok, but in terms of interpretation and understanding what the calculations tell us.

Back in halls, I worked on the leaflet- it took a long time as although CMCC emailed me basically all the stuff that was to go in, I wanted to rephrase a lot of the examples from BP's record to be more specific, and so needed to use his links to do quite a bit of research of my own. But I got it done in the end and was pleased with the result- as were CMCC and others, apparently, so that was nice. I had to stay up all night though- I didn't finish till five thirty, and as I had to leave at about quarter to 8, I thought I'd feel worse for going to sleep since it would be for such a short time. I had a shower, which is really unusual for me in the morning, since it's usually a few hours after I've woken before I can bear to get myself wet, but which was nice this time, changed my clothes, had breakfast, and went off to stand at the end of Brushfield St (off which the road with my halls in comes) to wait for a lift from LJ.

We were going to a statistics careers fair in Birmingham together. It meant missing more lectures (Time Series, for the second week running), but I thought it would be really usefull. I would have gone by train (more environmentally friendly and all that), but it was so expensive, and LJ offered to give me a lift as she had decided to drive. We navigated our way through London (past the Co-op I was recommended to a couple of weeks ago and the Waitrose where I found the good stuff), and onto the motorway. As we drove off, LJ was trying to read the printed out directions and drive at the same time so I quickly offered to do map reading. She also had a small portable GPS device that came in very handy once I'd found which of the ten or twelve batteries she had stashed in the car were working. To begin with, I was feeling fine and perfectly wide awake, but towards the end of the trip I nodded off several times. Before that though it was a good chance to have a nice chat with LJ- we normally only see each other in lectures. And it was nice to see open countryside again. There, as well as in some of the bits of London we passed through, there were real autumn colours which I was happy not to have missed though sad that I wouldn't have the time to really go and see them properly.

It was quite interesting being on the campus of Birmingham University- my dad used to be a lecturer there and I went in to work with him several times when I was small. It had been too big for me to get any sense of the way round it at that age though so it was no advantage. I could if I'd thought have told LJ that parking on it would be a real problem though. Arriving just about bang on time we drove round and round, at one point spotting a 'Visitors' Car Park' and buzzing to be let in only to be told that was for staff only... We were given some very bad directions, but eventually found the car park next to the rugby pitch that the security person was talking about, and then found our way on foot to where the careers day was, arriving about fifteen minutes late.

As LJ had told me on the way, it wasn't just a load of stalls, it was actually talks by various people as well. The first one we went to (having missed the actual first one) was about statistics in the pharmaceuticals industry, then there was a talk about the Government Statistical Service. This is what I spent a long time applying for last year. The talk clarified for me that I didn't want to try again this year- it resolved the point I was unsure about: there is indeed a lot of project and people management as well as statistics. I'm not interested in that. So if for no other reason, the careers day was usefull for me.

There were other talks by people in other areas, and what was most usefull was that they almost all described in quite a bit of detail what things they actually did in their job. I was able to see what other things I might consider besides being part of a research team at a university.
After the talks there was a free packed lunch (for vegetarians, an interesting take on the cheese and coleslaw sandwich (which I sometimes get in the Quad)- being Birmingham, this was a curried version), and a chance to look round the stands. I got a lot of leaflets, though there were actually no specific employers I wanted to talk to, as my list had consisted of the Government Statistical Service and the universities, and I now knew about the former, and it turned out that the latter were there to promote postgraduate study rather than jobs as research assistants (which should have been obvious, I don't know why I didn't realise before). I also collected a free bag (very nice blue, which will make a change from the white coloured free bags from freshers' week that I've been using so far), a free frisby, a free spiral bound notebook (with the info about the company on the first few pages- cunning) and even a free USB mouse, which I thought at first was a data stick shaped like a mouse as a gimmick (because it was so small and the cable was coiled up out of sight). Though I'm actually happy using the touch pad on my lap top. Maybe I can take it home and plug it into my brother's computer- his mouse is almost completely shot, due I think to his extensive use of the computer for computer games, and the left button will only click if you press it near the centre of the mouse, and I can't get it to do double clicks at all. As this is the computer we all use at home (except Dad who has a laptop that he wouldn't mind people using except that he's almost always using it himself, for his work), and as I haven't been taking my laptop home for just weekend visits (though I will bring it back over Christmas), it could be a real godsend.

There were more talks after lunch, but nothing that I really wanted to go to, and I wanted to get the 2.05 train in order to be back in time for the sit in. LJ was going to continue up to Manchester to go home for a few days. I fell asleep as soon as the train left New Street, woke briefly to give my ticket for inspection, and then woke again when we reached Euston- it didn't feel instantaneous, but the journey felt pretty quick that way, and it was like being transported from one spot to another without passing through any in between. From Euston I got a bus down to Aldwych- and it was quite a nostalgia trip, as it was the same bus stop and the first part of the same route as I used to use in Third year.

For the sit-in, see next post.