Two demos in one day

Albeit small ones.

I thought I was going to have lectures/ meeting solidly from 10 to 5 today, which would have been quite tough as although I was planning to last it out with a big breakfast of yoghurt, toast and scrambled eggs, I actually overslept and didn't have any breakfast at all, as well as being ten or fifteen minutes late for my lecture (Note this is the same one I missed totally last week due to oversleeping- I'm not quite sure what's going on there as I actually quite like the lecture- it's got to be better than Principles and Methods at least. Maybe I just have a thing about Tuesdays). Luckily, the chair of the meeting told us it was a misprint (though one that managed to appear on every bit of paper and email concerning it) and it would only take an hour or an hour and a half.

The meeting was the Consultative Forum for Taught Graduate Students*, and was scheduled to run from 12 to 3- so I had to miss the second half of the Computational Statistics computer class. I wasn't getting much work done anyway though- somehow I and LJ spent most of the hour I was there nattering, which we haven't before (well not in class, or not much)- I hasten to add that part of it was her telling me about a statistics careers day in Birmingham next Wednesday, and some of the rest of it was her explaining to me what the numbers we were getting out of the calculations actually meant (I was fed up of not knowing how to interpret stuff, especially when the notes were asking you to interpret it, so thought I'd ask her as she's done a fair bit of stats in her undergrad degree even though like me she did maths), or me working out why her computer wasn't doing what it was supposed to (mostly quite simple because I was a constant two or three lines ahead of her and had come up against most of the same problems myself a minute or so earlier, having made the same stupid mistakes, and so had already worked out where the problem was in most cases). So the time we spent discussing brothers/ sisters and plans for Christmas hardly counts...

I'm not sure how usefull the meeting was. A lot of it was people from the library, careers service etc going through reports on their services that we had a paper copy of anyway, and since it was just twenty or thirty course reps plus those library, careers, IT etc people, and the chair (the Dean of Graduate Studies), that was only twenty or thirty people who received the promotion- and I can't believe we're expected to pass it all on to the others on our courses- that would be a very inefficient way of doing things when they have emails, login message boxes, websites, posters etc etc. Maybe we're supposed to pick out what's relevant for our course and just promote/ inform about that? It was quite usefull to be able to ask them questions, and a fair few people took advantage of that- but it did seem to me that all the issues could as easily have been dealt with by emailing the person concerned or going to see them.

We did get to raise any points about our courses that might be generally relevant at the end and that was definitely usefull- we got to see whether issues applied to all students or just to a particular programme. But I was told that all the points I raised were departmental ones and I should talk to them about it (I suppose I should, though one of the problems was that while the lecturers at the Staff Student Liaison Committee were very sympathetic and listened to us and even agreed with us, the lecturers we actually had a problem with (mainly just one), who weren't the two taking the meeting, haven't really taken on board the points we raised- still I suppose it would be better to talk about it in the department first. Though as we've only got a few weeks left before that course finishes it hardly seems worth it- I may save it all for the feedback sheet in week 10 (apparently the lecturer won't be teaching the course next year (I think he may be retiring), but it would be good to have some points on record for the new person to bear in mind). In fact, one or two of the people who spoke after me did seem to have similar concerns, or at least they said their point was related to mine (in one case it didn't seem to be quite the same thing, but never mind). So it was probably worth raising the issues.

The meeting finished at 1.45, which was just right for joining the Living Wage Campaign demo, which I'd thought I'd have to miss (so hadn't brought in any cleaning supplies, as they asked us to if we could so we would make a visual impact). The demo was because the Academic Planning and Resources Committee were meeting and would decide on the document we handed them at the last demo, outside Council, so we wanted be there as the members went in to show them how much support there is for the Living Wage from students. I'm not sure any of them saw me- I was with a group who were on the balcony, since there were too many people already demonstrating downstairs to be clearly part of it and not just stuck behind them trying to get out, but none of the APRC people looked up as they went in- one of the people on the balcony was the chair of the Living Wage Campaign though so it wasn't just a misguided idea by a few people who hadn't thought it through properly.

After that, I finally got to eat- I went, guess where, to the Brunch Bowl where I had a vegetable and butterbean casserole which, while nice, was admittedly worthy of UCL's Refectory in its most inventive hour- maybe they're not that different after all. Then Principles and Methods- I sat next to LJ and copied down the bit I missed through being late to the morning's Computational Statistics, then occupied my mind with thoughts of what would go on the feedback form in week 10- I was feeling quite angry with how bad the lecturer is, and that he hasn't improved, or not noticeably, since the SSLC; he has a voice that's very hard to concentrate on listening to anyway even if that's your intention so whether I mean to or not I usually end up thinking about something else as I copy everything down; for some weeks it was CMCC (because I was thinking about him pretty much constantly anyway) but now something had inevitably to spring up to take his place.

There was a demo outside Downing St in the evening, about climate change (because the Queen's speech is tomorrow and people wanted to make sure a bill to introduce annual carbon emissions reduction targets is included). It wasn't an LSE thing, but was organised by the Campaign Against Climate Chaos (I think); I signed up to their email list at the George Monbiot event, but LSE Green Party also publicised the event, though no-one else from LSE went (that I saw). There were maybe 50 people there (though I'm not that good at estimating numbers)- it didn't feel like that many but I'm not sure what counts as a lot for that kind of demonstration. I wore my butterfly wings again. I got talking to a girl/ woman and we were having quite an interesting conversation, and as she turned out to be going to the Liverpool Street area afterwards for a juggling class (!) and wasn't quite sure of the buses, we ended up travelling together, and even swapping email addresses. I'll be sure to tell Cat about that- she claims people are unfriendly in London and it's really hard to meet new people and make friends!

*rather a mouthfull of a name that I kept having to concentrate very hard to remember whenever I mentioned it in conversation this past week...