Foreign Perspectives

It generally takes a while to wind down after an OU summer school but this year I’ve a lot less time to do that than I usually have.

Top priority now is to complete an ECA which is due on Wednesday. I’ve most of it done but haven’t yet had a chance to finish the final section nor to check off a printed copy. For reasons which I don’t understand, I can generally pick out mistakes on a paper copy that don’t seem apparent onscreen.

After that, I must get back into the S204 reading which I’ve dropped a few weeks on. There’s the final chapter on plants and then I think it’s five chapters on animals. Then there’s the TMA5 coming up and I also need to get the experiment for TMA6 done. Oh, and there’s the SXR375 ECA to write too!

Very importantly, I’ve also to register for SXR376 and SXR344 tomorrow morning. Infectious disease (SXR376) is the final compulsory summer school for the Life Science degree and I’m hoping to get on the first run of it in July. Organic synthesis (SXR344) is effectively the chemistry counterpart of that and is a course that ordinarily I’d have done in a couple of years time as part of the normal sequence of chemistry/biochemistry courses that I’m doing but, sadly, next year is the final opportunity I have to do it. My plan is to do them back to back and thereby give myself a lot of time to write up the experiments. One problem with doing it is that SXR376 is in Nottingham and SXR344 is in York; I’m planning on doing the trek between them on the Friday afternoon and may need to go back that way at the end of the week.

One plus point is that I’ll only have a 30 point course running alongside the two residentials rather than having a 60 pointer and 10 pointer as I have this year. So, in principle, it should be an easier ride for me.

Oh, and there’s a fair amount of real-life things that need doing as well which’ll make for quite a busy week.