Foreign Perspectives

With the change to FlyBE this year, it was well after 12 before I reached the Nottingham campus. There’s only the level 3 summer schools running this year so it was quiet the whole day.

Surprisingly the taxi was the same price as the last two years (Lenton on 0115 9 781 781 do the airport pickups for £19.50, just over half the price of the airport taxis; it’s best to arrange for them to collect you at the petrol station just outside the airport parking area as otherwise they charge for the airport parking.

Registration runs on ’til after 3pm with the introductory lecture in the biology building just after 4pm so I took the time to stock up on a few nibbles at the hospital shops (the campus shops are closed over the weekend).

It was a blue dot this year signifying that I’m in SXR376 rather than the green dot of the SXR375 people.

The introductory spiel from the admin people, learning advisor, OUSA and the course director was a joint one for both SXR375 and SXR376 kicking off just after 4pm and running on to almost 5pm. That was immediately followed by the course specific stuff in our respective laboratories. Just one lab for the course again this year as there are only about 30 of us but we’ve been split up into two groups to do the experiments over the next two days, which we’ll be doing in groups of three. For a change, we actually did some lab work this evening to get us back into the swing of pipetting.

In the room is a phone (free internal calls), wired internet connection (you need a cable for this which you can get (free) in the Cripps security office; the wifi varies from poor to non-existent in the rooms), desk, tea/coffee tray with kettle, sink, wardrobe, towels (with soap & shampoos) and a single bed. The shower-room and toilet is shared  by about half a dozen rooms. No Internet worth talking about this year as there’s some network problem that can’t be fixed until the computer people return on Monday.