Oh, the things people say about you...

So, there was some Exec Drama. Resignations potentially flying, communication breakdown until ours ears bled, lack of cohesion. So, one emergency exec meeting later, and some of the air has been cleared.

Ents are resigning (again). It's a shared position between two guys, and constitutionally, if one half resigns, they both resign, since we elected them on the basis they'd both be there. So, one half resigned, the other followed. They'll work until a replacement is found, sort out a handover, and then that'll be it.

Anyway, part of the meeting was a Snap Cup. I've never done this before! We wrote anoymously about everyone in the exec, what we liked about them, and what they can improve on.

I thought I'd share what people said about me with you. I found it really interesting, because I feel like I've grown as a person over the past couple of years, and it's nice to know what's working.

Here's the good stuff!

• Showing commitment by organising socials
• Pushing the sober socials ideas
• Saying good stuff in meetings.
• Contributing to the society
  
• Being nice to everyone
• My unique (and refreshing!) perspective on life
• Being affable and charismatic (I had to ask what affable meant!)
• Being generally amusing
• Being "blunt, honest, fair, women-focused". (I liked this one the best)

Here's the stuff people suggested I work on...

• Adhering to rules and regulations without thinking about the effects my remarks have
• Speaking up in exec meetings
• Not being present enough (I guess this would be socials)
• Accepting that everyone's in the society for different reasons
• Letting others help me.

It's interesting how a couple of the comments contradicted (like the meetings comments!), and I do disagree on some of the criticisms. For example, it's good to have some Rules Nuts on board, so that some sense of continuity can be preserved in the society in the form of written rules, that evolve to reflect the society's views. However, it was very interesting to see myself from that side.

I know that I'm not the same as the majority of students right now. I'm not clubbing anymore, I'm drinking much less, and I'm getting very sensible sleep right now (not just sensible amounts, but sensible times too!), so that does make my list of "Stuff I Like To Do" quite different from others. I would never say "No clubbing because I don't like it" because I'm not the whole society. But, I'd like to think that there were a few people a bit more like me, just wanting some chilled out activity fun sober socials.

To sum up, I have a quote from one of my favourite lecturers, Jose...

Life is as good as it can be.

So, where have you been?

I've been... around. Busy. Very busy.

Third year is supposed to be less busy, at least in terms of lectures. With 15 and 18 CATS per one-term module, instead of 12, hitting the same number of CATS as I did last year (give or take a couple) should mean I actually have more free time?

Well, not exactly. If your timetable includes four 9am starts, two days of 9am-6pm, and one until 5pm, it doesn't bring the biggest grin on your face. Luckily, my body's easily adjusted to "get to bed at 11, wake at 7:15", and the only side effect is that I wake up at about 8:30 at the weekends, instead of enjoying a lie in. Oh no, more productive weekends! :p

I've been really getting into doing Pride things. I've been to most of the Monday/Wednesday socials at the Duck, going to the Welcome Buffet, attending the OGM, and even putting in motions. We now have an Ethnic Minorities rep, and I've become That Person Who Actually Reads The Constitution, and it's always good to have one of those.

While the kitten's away, however, it seems that the mice have been playing - and not nicely, either. Thankfully, the threat of returning to a broken home has pretty much subsided, and the process of healing the rifts begins. M, D and Brother all went to Paris, and as far as I can tell, it went quite well.

At uni, there are freshers! Masses of them. Any time I see a cute one, I always get a twinge of "They look REALLY jailbaity", because most of them are just 18. I have some Maths kids, and I teach them how to converge sequences. I also have Pride kids, one of whom is on the exec already. My families tend to be quite exec-oriented; my last husband was Campaigns, my current hubby is Secretary, and out of my first brood came the current Bi Rep. Weird!

Generally, life is good. I've taken to being incredibly optimistic about pretty much everything. Even the stuff that's unjustifiably awful. The only thing that really gets me is the speed of the bloody internet. How fucking slow can it be? I've had dial-up that was faster than this!

I've decided to knit a sweater. The idea is that it will fit my skinny 14-year old brother (although, by the time it's actually done, he'd probably be my skinny 15-year old brother). It's a pretty shade of deep turquoise.

I still have the same boyfriend. We went on holiday to London. We ate dinner together on the bed, and watched The Truman Show. At some point, I gained a tractor beam (don't ask). I still think he's wonderful.

What more is to be said? I could say more, but I'll leave that to another post. Until next time, faithful reader.

Relationships.

Aren't they horrendously complicated? Not to mention messy, painful, and rather more like childbirth that one would like to admit (except you'd hope a relationship's length isn't measured in hours!)

Two of my friends are in a relationship, L and A. I knew they were long before today's Facebook status alerted me to the official happy news. They never told me, even went as far to obscure certain details so I wouldn't know, but somehow I just knew. Perhaps it's some hidden Girl Instinct I didn't know about.

I am happy for them. If there's anyone that can handle A, it's L (and vice versa). They're both emotionally fragile (in different ways), so hopefully they will look after each other.

However, L frequently blogs about A. Not just the kind of crap I write, about how I still have a partner who I love or want to bone, but the kind of stuff you ought to be telling your partner first, not the internet and all your friends. Shortcomings and whatnot. I assume that this means A doesn't have the address to the blog. This is fine, you're entitled to hide whatever you want or need to in a relationship. But... I just hope that L isn't scared to say to A that there are something things that could be improved on, and isn't just going to blog about them forever.

~~~

In other news, back at uni, and the summer holiday, once again, seems to have simply not existed. I feel slightly disconnected from debating, and I suppose getting back into the pattern might make me feel something again, but... I dunno. I don't go out drinking with them, and I am definitely not interested in pub crawls, and I feel like if I'm not in the exec, I'm not really an integral part of the society. I also feel like I'm at the fringes of Pride, despite being on the exec. Again, don't drink a lot, don't like clubs and dark places. I just like to sit, chat, and get to know a person's story. Given that most outgoing people at uni do love their drink, it's a little hard sometimes. I just don't want to drink as much as I used to. It's expensive, you lose hours of your memory, and I don't even need to go on.

Time to go downstairs, make some tasteh tasteh food!

Thank you, Professor Jones.

He was my favourite lecturer in second year (combination of actually being interested in what he taught, and just liking him). In the lectures he would do, he'd write quite swiftly, and as a result, often misplace the bars of t's. So, we spent a good deal of time studying "integralion". Which I enjoyed immensely, since lions are one of my favourite types of catcat.

Every now and again, we'd be looking at "partilions". I actually drew pictures of a partilion in the margins of my notes. They'd often look like this:



You can tell he is a partilion because of his long brightly coloured hair, and dancing shoes.

Sometimes, we'd be seeing quite a lot of funclions.


The step funclion is going for an 80's vibe here. You can't really do a step class without legwarmers. And, the regulated funclion just looks groovy and cool.

There are many more lions in maths than the university prospectuses would like you to think.

Online punctuation.

When you are speaking, you don't think about punctuation much. You pause at the end of sentences. You pause in between items of a list or between phrases, but for a shorter time. You pause between words, so that you can tell what's being said. You raise your voice in certain patterns for excitement, puzzlement or questioning. It's instinctive for most, and you don't even think about it. That's why it's so hard for a lot of people to use punctuation properly when it comes to writing.

We have spaces, commas, fullstops, colons, semi-colons, hyphens, dashes, brackets and all sorts for written communication. When I say written, I mean formally written. Letters to your mother, essays for your tutor, resignations from your job as Head Fry Chef in Floppy Burger. In this context, you can't rely on instinctively knowing how long your pause should be, or what tone you want to convey. You have to select which punctuation mark is appropriate. It's usually pretty easy. Full stops for long pauses between sentences, commas for shorter ones in between phrases and items in a list. Question mark are for questions; exclamation marks are for exclamations.

When you write online, it's different again. You have the same rules as a written letter, except you have the instant conversation factor. It's the half-way house between a letter and a phone call. Unfortunately, it's instant like a phone, and impersonal like a letter - try raising your eyebrows with punctuation. So, punctuation becomes your sole medium for conveying tones and emotions, and with the instant receipt of your message, every dot counts.

(This is obviously only applicable to those who would use punctuation in the first place, and not the type of internet user who strips words of vowels and meaning, abuse exclamation and question marks, and generally make me want to ban them from using technology with keyboard-like facilities until they learn to follow the goshdarn rules. Grammar Nazi? Only a little.)

For example, I greet a friend on Facebook chat: "Hi!"

I use the exclamation mark to convey that I am pleased to see her online, as we haven't chatted in a very long time. She tells me she is busy, and she hopes to talk to me soon. I begin writing the "Okay" in response, but I hesitate before hitting Enter. What do I put after? A full stop is rather final. It might imply that I'm in a strop with her for being too busy. An exclamation mark is even worse. A question mark is confusing and inappropriate.

This is starting to become worse than trying to decide what to wear to work today if you're my mother. She could easily spend two hours before bed, and one hour in the morning, deciding.

So, I opt for nothing. I send the message, "Okay", with nothing at the end. Crisis averted.

In fact, the general etiquette of my friends is to either fully capitalise, punctuate and write formally, or drop the capitals and use punctuation for effect. So, the full stop instead of a blank, question mark instead of a comma, it's all a new type of grammar in itself.

Phew. Isn't it tough going sometimes?

Gym-tacular!

I woke up yesterday morning at 9 am, to enjoy my first day off work with nothing planned to do. Since it was a Monday morning, that meant that by noon, I was supposed to be thinking of getting ready to go to they gym for 1 pm.

By 11:30 am, I had finished watched America's Next Top Model, and was lying in bed, lazily watching what was up next, checking out Spotify, practically falling asleep.

I was still in bed at 12:30, just lazing. I managed to get myself out of bed eventually, and made it to the gym by 1:30, which was good.

No gym on Wednesday, I don't think. I'm working (12-3), and I'll be too tired.

I have work today. Hooray! On the "this is what you'll be paid" sheet, I was missing five hours, so I need to check that out with the manager. I have... ten hours of work this week. So, it's not dire, but it's not great either. Such is the lot of a part-time worker earning more than £3.50.

Why Harry is both wrong and right.

In one of my favourite films, When Harry Met Sally, Harry proclaims firmly that men and women can never be friends, because the sexual tension that inevitably arises ruins the friendship.

I think that, in terms of sexual tension, I don't think I've ever had a close friendship with a man that didn't have some element of attraction in it. I'm not talking about the casual friend, the colleague, the old schoolmate - I mean the type of friendship where you talk frequently (more than once or twice a week under normal circumstances), you share intimacies, moments, injokes.

I don't have many close friends. You see, I have circles of emotional/friendship intimacy, which are rather different in structure to my circles of physical intimacy. I have the Inner Core, the handful of people who are very special to me - I would want to have these people around me if I was upset. There's the Outer Core, people who I enjoy having around me but maybe wouldn't call on them first to sit with me if I was sad, but I'd still be not uncomfortable with them seeing me in a state. In the Cores, I have around seven people. Sadly, a lot of people I interact with very warmly and affectionately are not in my Cores. It's not because I do not love them, it's just a more detached form of love.

Now, I have a friend, T. Over the course of the two years I've been at university, he's transitioned from outer circles to Outer Core, maybe even Inner Core. It's strange. When I first knew him, I was attracted to him, in the way that a interior decorator is attracted to an undecorated room. After some while, events and drama, we arrived at this summer, and we spent night after night talking into the small hours about anything and everything. My life, family, friends, lovers, and the same for him. We became very close very quickly. And, the initial attraction I had for him faded and merged into my growing respect and interest in him.

Then he went away. He's in a place with no internet, and he's been there for several weeks now, and I missed him. And, he missed me. He wrote me a letter, and it was enjoyable to read. I'm going to begin to write a reply before I head to bed.

So, what am I trying to say? Well, here I have a close male friend, whom I am not sexually attracted to. I was attracted to him before, but not now. I don't know how long our friendship will last in its present state. I imagine it fading to someone I like to talk to on occasion, but not with the same intensity and frequency. Still pretty intimate, maybe, but not quite as often.

Still, it's nice to have several people who don't mind being on the receiving end of my rants. It means that it's not just one poor person who's inundated with details of my not-so-interesting life/opinion.