UOC Week 2 - The intro bit

A new week, and I was raring to go and couldn’t wait to get started on my modules – which is something I’m fairly sure I’d never be thinking while still at Trent.

But hold your horses, Matt.

After a relatively peaceful Monday morning of no work whatsoever, I went to my very first university lecture that was actually part of a module. And the module was “Expedition Planning and Skills.” I was all for this one, because it’s no good to know how to film all this stuff without knowing how to organise the trip or get to the area you need or survive the wilderness. And indeed, it does look like we’ll be doing these things in the not too distant future. We get to plan a specific over the course of the next two years that we will actually then go and do close to the end of the second year. How awesome is that? Only problem is, you aren’t allowed to go on your own, so I’ll have to find a bunch of people with similar interests to me.

Fortunately, I have found a good bunch of people on my course. I am particularly becoming friends with Patrick, Paul and another Dan. That’s not to say I’m not friends with all the others. It’s quite a bizarre feeling to be here, because I have yet to meet a single unpleasant person, which is, sadly, more than I can say for Trent, where I picked on for the first five years of my life there.

Monday was possibly my most interesting day, because I saw my first ever Brown Hare outside my window, sniffing curiously at a bike. Naturally I whipped out the camera and got some nice videos of it haring all over the place. And that was not intended to be a pun, but it is an adequate description of what happened.

Tuesday rolled around and after another free morning, I had my first biodiversity lecture (another intro one) and practical, where we split into pairs and tried to use a key (as in the kind with lots of descriptions) to identify three species of plants we were given. I am pleased to say that Patrick and I got all three correct – a bilberry, a bell heather and a ling heather. Nice. I was, however, concerned by the question in the key that said “Is it palatable when chewed?” WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT? THE DAMN THING COULD BE TOXIC!!!!

Wednesday – nothing. Laaaaaazzzzzyyyyyyy day.

Thursday – busy. First practice session with a Nixon D90 camera, although we weren’t taking any pictures of animals just yet – just each other so we could get a feel for it and learn what all the buttons did before we broke the thing in the field. Sorry, Conor, but I stole your hand-on-chin pose for the picture of me which is going on the University website. Don’t kill me.

Following this was what was supposed to be an ecology lecture, but it was two more hours on REFERENCING!!!!!!! I HAD ENOUGH OF THAT DURING FRESHER’S WEEK THANKS!!!!!!
Friday rolled around and since I had nothing on then either, and no weekend activities, I decided to pop home for the weekend. This would be quite important, because I’d never travelled such long distances alone before and it was the first time I’d be taking a bike with me. However, everything worked out fine and I cycled to the station, got on the train at Penrith, played Pokemon Platinum all the way to Crewe, got off, ate a panini, got on another train, played Platinum again all the way to Derby and was picked up there.

Then, I had a nice weekend, watched Merlin with everyone else and returned back to uni today.

One other interesting thing that did happen this week, is that my building is now in possession of a pair of goldfish that we keep in a tank in the kitchen. They are two males and we have named the bigger one Kurt and the smaller one Pikachu. And no, Pikachu was not my idea. It was Harry’s, although he pronounced it Pick-achu.

And that’s about it from me, so Matt Leiper, signing off.