Words of Wood

I've completed seven weeks of teacher training, and am starting a school placement on Monday. Hilariously, I feel way less prepared than I did in September -- the more I know, the more I know I don't know &etc.

It's been a good term. Really good. I mean, it's been endless seminars and trying to work out what the hell "reflective writing" actually MEANS to your tutor's mark scheme, and crying at midnight because of not having enough extended reading journal entries and drowning in acronyms and buzzwords and educational policy...

...but I'm good at it. This has actually surprised me. I am our group's mascot for nerdiness and tutors have stopped calling on me in maths and computing and science "to give someone else a turn." I've been told by several people in my group that they find me slightly terrifying (and I've given so many explanations to my coursemates of how academic papers work and how you put refs in writing and what the point of an abstract is), and my endless repertoire of Useless Facts are actually really useful in lesson planning and discussing curricula!

I'm bragging, yep. But I can't tell you guys how good it feels to be good at my work again. Oxford crushed me and made me feel stupid and inadequate all of the time and stopped me being able to read novels and I never really recovered. I started my Oxford degree seven years ago this week and right up until then my entire definition of self was tied up in being a bookworm, in being clever. I used to find learning so much fun and I adored school and Oxford stripped that all away and I had forgotten how much I missed it. Except now it's even better because there aren't looming exams and expectations and constant suffocating pressure and emotional abuse and I'm properly medicated for the depression that was grinding me down since adolescence. I still smash into walls of despair and awful, but I can climb them now. It's a hard-won skill.

I'm getting really emotional writing this.

It's just. I'm so grateful. I love Brookes, the university Oxford students sneered at for coexisting in their city (where the not good enough, the boring, normal students went). I love studying. I love my volunteering twice a week, with Brownies and Yellow Submarine, and I'm busy and so happy. I was so scared, before I started this course, that I was going to feel stupid all the time again and be overwhelmed and fall apart. But that's not happening. The opposite, in fact.

I'm going to be a teacher, and I'm going to rock.

My degree results come out tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

And first they make us go to the zoology department and have a year-group photo and then there is a reception "during which you will have the chance to chat to your Examiners and lecturers" and then we get our results. And then we go back to college and see our tutors. It's a little... sadistic.

I might not even attempt sleep tonight. Not sure it's going to happen.

Hello LJ. Let me share my exam paper from today with you, which I'm totally counting as #8 on my #100things list. (I would tell you to think of it as a birthday present, but I'm not quite that bad a friend.)

For context: You answer two questions in the three hours. This whole exam paper is brand-new: we're the lucky year who get to be guinea-pigs to see whether it works. As such, there were no mock papers, no one knew any guidelines, and we've been explicitely told that the examiners have no model answers to compare ours against. FUN.

1. Are all taxa successful?
2. What benefits will new technologies bring to our understanding of biology?
3. If life exists on other planets, what features would you expect it to share with life on Earth?
4. What is the most significant scientific challenge now facing biology, and why?
5. Will biology become more reductionist as knowledge increases?
6. What role do parasites and pathogens play in biology?
7. Is an understanding of statistical methods essential for biologists?
8. Are all species doomed to extinction?
9. How do organisms respond to stress and how are these responses similar across taxa?
10. Is homeostasis an essential attribute of living things?
11. Are organisms well-designed?
12. What is the evidence for evolution?

So yeah XD (I answered #4 and #8.)

Then I went and hung around in the botanic gardens with Conrad and Seb and Seb's brother where I did a lot less revision than they did and ate strawberries. So that was very nice and de-stressing :)

Only two days left. I CAN DO THIS.

Recs:

Legend of Korra: Masks on Empty Faces by loquaciousquark (Gen, 1200 words)
The boy has a different name for it, but Koh knows the place where Truth begins.

This is a possible origin story for Amon, and it's gorgeous. Probably useful to have background knowledge of Koh from AtLA, but I'd recommend it even if you don't.


The Hunger Games: There's Another River on the Other Side by Mithrigil (Gen, 10,000 words, Warning for graphic violence)
District 11 wins the 74th Games. The rest is history.

spoiler or warning hereThis is an AU where Katniss dies instead of Rue, and goes on from there. It's beautiful. I adore how Rue is characterised here, and how all the consequences play out.

---

I had a good May Morning. A bunch of us from Tolksoc stayed up all night in Helen's room. There was food and good company, (and, surprisingly, no one banned me and helle_d from talking about fandom at great length...) and J showed up around 5 incredibly drunk to provide more entertainment. Then we watched the choir sing from the top of Magdalen Tower in the rain to welcome in summer, and went out for breakfast. We also went to find morris dancers first, because J told us earnestly (in a 'pirate' accent) that ze didn't believe in them. Then I went to sleep all day. That was fun.

Oh, semi-relatedly, Helen is now planning on actually using her LJ account, of_a_thousand. If you're from Tolksoc or otherwise know her, add her! *Pokes her to write posts*

Guess who's got to hand in her extended essay in twelve-and-a-half hours and still has ~3000 words to go? :D

On the plus side, I have way more than 3000 words of notes to use. Apparently Helen and I are able to make each other work by some strange occult magic or something. (Perhaps it's because when I'm working in her room I a. feel guilty if I'm not working and she is (apparently this works in reverse), and b. can't mess around on the internet. Also she is very reassuring when I start panicking. Yay!)

On this topic, here is my next quote-thing for 100things:

GUESS WHAT MY ESSAY'S ON. Well, at least the bobtail squid in my icon is actually relevant for once. Well, more so than the "science is awesome, yay!" that I generally use it for...

(In related news, this is why I'm behind on answering comments. And now my break's over and I must go back to wooooork...)

Protest report!

( Lots of words and several pictures! )

/flops.

It's the first day of Spring. I woke up to fog, but then it melted away and there was just sunshine.

Fran and I were sitting on the top of the fire escape and I suggested we go down to the field at the end of the road. So we took mugs of tea and a packet of biscuits and set up on the grass on my picnic blanket, with non-work books and notepads. It was a good celebration of the end of winter.

( A couple of photos I took. Because sunshine! )

Someone (or several someones) last night put paper masks over all the red traffic lights at the crossroads at the end of Holywell street.

- I have dyed my hair purple. Specifically, violet. I think it looks rather good. Currently it's still rather dark, but it will brighten and then it will be wonderful.

- I JUST HANDED IN SOME WORK FUCK YES. This is a pathetically big deal. I'm feeling rather guilty over how nice all my tutors are being to me, so this is good. Especially as I spent the last week metaphorically curled into a ball.

- I was ridiculously amused by the TolkSoc practice quiz (for our match against Cambridge) last Friday. Especially as Team Skyrim beat Team Second Best (they came up with their name first, even!) by about double the points, even with Andrew the quizmaster penalising us for bad jokes and also tactical gambles. We are really not a society to take ourselves seriously.

(Andrew: Which direction did the second gate of Monas Tirith face?
Me: Do you mean Minas?
Andrew: It says Monas on my bit of paper. So that's the question.
Graham: Is the correct answer that it doesn't exist?
Andrew: No. I'm in charge.
Other team: West.
Our team: South.
Andrew: South-west. You both lose.)

Judging by my facebook and flist, today seems to be the day for moving back from wherever people were over Christmas! I am back in Oxford and it is LOVELY. Unfortunately I still need to unpack, and I've also remembered how when I was tidying up for Helen to stay I shoved all the clothes that were on the floor into the bottom of my warderobe. So I need to sort them out too if I ever want to find anything again.

Although I would have to get off my computer first. I MISSED IT SO MUCH. All the keys work! And the internet is reliable! And it can load more than five firefox tabs at once without freezing up! And the speakers play music which doesn't sound like tin cans in a washing machine! Although LJ did something strange when I tried to load the internet and I lost all of the open LJ tabs, ie about 20 fics I had lined up to read. MY LIFE IS HARD YOU GUYS.

Now I'm debating what to do. Unpack vs writing fic vs Skyrim vs doing something sensible like reading "The Anaylsis of Biological Data"...