It’s been ages since I last posted so I’ll make a big catch up post and then start talking about some of the things I’m mentioning here in more detail in later posts. The last time I posted was back in March before the spring break. During the spring break my mother came to visit again and we went to Cambridge and Oxford which I really enjoyed, we got to see the Bodleian library (if you’re a Harry Potter fan, Hogwart’s library is a tiny section of the Bodleian library) which was amazing as was Blackwell’s bookstore. I think it’s not fair for me compare Cambridge and Oxford because I didn’t get to see the library or any colleges at Cambridge but I did love Oxford despite it raining the entire time we were there, and I loved seeing lots of things from my favourite books in person (mainly His Dark Materials). After my mother came to visit I spent 2 weeks in London doing a spring internship at Goldman Sachs. We got assigned a project and had some organised sessions for us to learn about the firm as well as some technical skills and we presented our projects on the last day, it was a lot of fun and I definitely hope to be back at some point. Around the same time I also had to apply for extenuating circumstances to delay two of my in semester tests which was stressful but more straightforward than I expected, in the end I had to take the tests during the exam period alongside my finals which meant I had to take 7 exams instead of 4 but it was definitely the best option and I’m glad I did apply. I spent the rest of the semester busy with personal things as well as catching up on my modules and studying for finals, which finished on the 15th. After that I moved out of campus accommodation, got a cute new friend (an African pigmy hedgehog) and started a summer research project titled Computing multi-pulse interactions in the Complex Ginzburg Landau equation which is being supervised by two lecturers and funded by the maths department and will be keeping me busy for the next 10 weeks. Then yesterday I turned 20, I went up to London with my girlfriend and we went to Chilango which sells amazing burritos, tacos and quesadillas and they even had Mexican music and a shrine for la virgen de guadalupe which was nice to see, then we got ice cream and went to Foyles and Hatchards which are two huge bookstores. In addition to the summer research project I’m doing I’m also going to be working for the Young Carer Summer School at the university which should be fun (albeit exhausting) and I got a bursary to attend Trans Super Camp organized by gendered intelligence so I’ll be spending about a week camping with lots of young trans people. Also next week I’ll be going to pride with the LGBT society and marching on the actual parade. It’ll be my first pride and honestly I’m a little anxious because I’m afraid the amount of people and the noise etc will be too overwhelming for me but I guess I won’t know until I do it and I’d rather find out I hate it than regret not doing it. It’s kinda hard to believe I’m already halfway through my degree and that I’ve been living in the UK for two years, hopefully the next two will be slightly less hectic but either way, I’m excited for this summer and for my classes next year.
I’ll be making a more in depth post about the extenuating circumstances process and my experiences with it but if you have any questions feel free to shoot us an email and if there’s anything else from the last few months that you want me to cover in more detail also let me know 🙂
