Spring has arrived!

Daffodils in St. James's Park. London.

These past couple of weeks have been pretty great.

Spring comes a little earlier here in the UK than back in the states, though so far the weather's been so much milder anyway. Lovin' the sunshine (or cloudless days). It makes waking up and walking to class much more bearable.

I've found that the attitude amongst students here is much more relaxed. Of course, I'm comparing it to CMU's. But it's really nice and refreshing to be around people who aren't completely stressed by their studies. Instead they take time out to enjoy life's finer things, or just to take a break. When asking my friends what they did over the weekend, or even since last class, I don't get replies along the lines of "Oh I was working all night on my Algebra problem set" or "I was revising for my Algebra midterm exam." Instead I get replies like "I was out drinking with my mates for St. Patty's" (mind you, St. Patty's fell on a Tuesday this year) or "I was out clubbing." I'm impressed by how laidback British students are, but I think the education system lends itself very well to letting students discover themselves on their own time, and pretty much just grow up with their true passions as their guide. Students at the most competitive colleges in the US are drowning in problem sets in classes they don't even like, in a major they also don't even like but would get them a decent job after graduation. Yes, those things are important, but it's important to pay attention to the self and what makes it happy. If you required every British and American student at a top university to keep a twitter and aggregated the tags, the most popular tag for the British would be "fun" whereas the American one would be "fml."

These were posted in the Maths building. This made me smile and love this school/study abroad experience slightly more. If you ignored the paragraph before this, this pretty much sums it up:


School aside, I've been doing some light traveling on some weekends. Last weekend I went to Cardiff, Wales. I have mixed feelings about Cardiff since it was just like any other British city I had visited already, but at least it had a very picturesque bay that we were lucky to visit on a sunny day.


All in all, Cardiff Bay reminded me very much of the Jersey Shore. In fact, there were so many swanky boutiques, small chocolate shops, and restaurants that I thought I was at Pier Village. Alas, it was still very relaxing to be near the water. I do quite miss the beach.

As if the spring-y weather and general laid back attitude here weren't enough to make my time here so much more enjoyable than if I were back at CMU, my two friends from high school decided to spend their spring break in the UK! I had a blast seeing them and I was quite flattered that they came to visit/go to the Dr. Who museum but that's irrelevant :P.

As a result I returned to London to hang out with them after classes finished on Wednesday (at 11am btw :) )

London Eye, as seen from St. James's Park. Disappointed that they drained the river/lake and the trees haven't regained their leaves yet, but still pretty.

Obligatory Big Ben picture.
Tower of London! Unfortunately it was closed by the time we arrived there.
The Tower Bridge. Even though it was twilight, there were still a ton of tourists snapping pictures on the bridge.
I'm currently less than a week from spring break ("Easter holiday" as they call it here), which also means I'm less than a week away from the crazy backpacking trip through Europe for 3 weeks. It's going to be intense and frankly it hasn't quite hit me yet. Of course, I have to get through two midterm exams before I leave. Boo. But the one nice thing about CMU is it has more than prepared me for the academic challenges here.

On Education and Meeting People in Academia

The British academic system differs significantly from the American system.

This was emphasized several times during various orientations. Mostly the fact that the British system expects students to figure out how to study independently instead of issuing homework to force them to learn. I was kind of scared by this. Also, this means that the semester final grade entirely rides on the midterm and the final exams. Mmm. OK, that's it for boring details.

I'm taking 4 math classes here. They each meet twice a week for lecture, and once a week for tutorial. Tutorial is the equivalent of recitation in the US, except they're run more like office hours in the US. Basically, you work on math problems in the classroom and if you're stuck, you raise your hand and either the professor (yes, the professor is present at tutorials!) or one of his TA-like grad students comes over to help you. Because of the nature of tutorials, they're sometimes referred to as examples classes. This is how the math courses roll here. Or should I say "modules"? Yea. Other notes:

• Module = Class/Course
• Course = Major
• Faculty = Department
  

I didn't know what to expect during my first few examples classes. I did not print out the handouts containing the problems, so I showed up to class unprepared (gasp!). I asked the grad student on duty what I should do, and she suggested I could review my notes or leave and go do something else. I then asked, "How about I look on with another [prepared] student?" She looked at me funny but then said OK. Odd. It would've been the first thing I suggested if I were her. So I looked on with another student. Some inferences from this experience: groupwork not explicitly encouraged in the UK.

This actually goes along with another observation: all the students in university housing have single bedrooms(!). Supposedly, this is standard across all universities in the UK. Another American student remarked that this is either the cause or effect of British students not knowing how to deal with other people in their space. I don't recall which, but both are plausible.

So everyone seems to be on their own. Funny, this goes against their beloved John Donne's saying "No man is an island."

Which leads me to the main point of this. It has been a challenge for me to meet British people in my math classes.

Of course, I can't blame it all on the ~(No man is an island) -ism of the British students. Most/all of my reader(s) are aware of my general personality. Therefore, double whammy. Of course, I had to start changing things about my SOP, because that's easier. Besides, I have a wonderful excuse if they look at me funny for striking up conversation during examples classes -- I'm an American, therefore I don't know better. Disturbingly, this increases my confidence. But hey, whatever works.

In case you're wondering, I've made a small handful of friends here, the vast majority of whom are American. As for non-Americans, they are Asians and also study abroad students. So really, I haven't been getting a British perspective on things, unless you count my British flatmates, though I don't see them very often.

Coming up on 4 weeks

And here I will attempt a real update.

This Monday, I will have been in England for 4 weeks. Not bad. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I certainly feel like I have been here longer, but at the same time, nothing's second nature to me yet. Like a normal human being, I do miss home sometimes, but I surprisingly have not felt miserable here (yet?). We'll see.

I've had classes for two weeks now, certainly enough time to form some first impressions:

• Intro to Financial Mathematics: Scary Russian prof. Not sure what's going on in this class, but the work hasn't been difficult.
• Numerical Analysis: SO MUCH BETTER THAN NU METH. zomg.
  
• Statistical Methods: Prof is lazier than Vlachos (prof for Intro to Prob Stat I at CMU), but everything's been review so far.
• Random Models: Excellent prof. Reminds me of Dr. Eng from high school in appearance, but is much nicer and personable. Material also not difficult at time of writing this.
• Culture of Cities (Geography): This feels like a joke.
• Brain and Behavior (Psychology): Shoot me now.

Yea, pretty run of the mill. As usual, there's a class that's painful for me (psych), a class that feels like a joke (geography), and a class that makes sense (all math classes except math finance).

Speaking of school, I've been paying attention to the names of the cafés in each of the academic buildings where I have class. Try to match the name with the academic building (answers at the bottom).

Café Name	Academic Building
a. Pi in the Sky	1. Schuster (Physics, Mathematics)
b. Byte Café	2. University Place (Manchester's version of the UC)
c. CaFe2O4	3. Alan Turing (Math)
d. The Error Bar	4. Chemistry (Chemistry)
e. EATS	5. Stopford (Psychology)
f. Rock Café	6. Kilburn (Computer Science)
g. Medical	7. Renold (Interdisciplinary)

In other news, I have been to Liverpool twice within the past week. I found the city to be much more aesthetically pleasing than Manchester, which, come to think of it, is not difficult. Liverpool is somewhere between London and Manchester in terms of the modernity of the buildings. At least measures were taken to preserve many of Liverpool's historic buildings, though Liverpool did not feel it had to get stuck in history like London did. There are many places that are all touristed-up, like the docks (oh yea, a cool thing about Liverpool: IT IS NEXT TO THE OCEAN). The docks are nothing like California docks or anything, but I like that they tried anyway. There's a Beatles museum on the Albert dock (which, despite having been to L-Pool twice I STILL have not visited it), the Tate Museum, and small cafes.

Why have I been to Liverpool twice in one week? The first time I went was with the Arcadia peoples. The highlight of the trip was the Everton vs Bolton football game, so the tour of Liverpool was quite short. The game, however, was amazing. For one thing, it was the first professional sporting event that I've ever attended! (My dad never succeeded in getting me to go to a Mets game) I was unsure about how enjoyable this would be, considering I don't like watching field sports like soccer or baseball or American football etc on television. But I had a great time. I had a great seat in the Lower Bullens. The crowd was really into it, which is not something to expect at a Man Utd game because those games are full of people who are going because they're overrated (people generally liken this to going to a Yankees game in the US). Everton was the home team and, per advice from Arsenal fans at CMU, I was instructed to root for them. I wish I had looked up the chants before the game so I could fully participate, but I managed to learn the chant that just repeats "Everton! Everton!" four times. Good enough.
Some notes about a football match:

• Meat pies, instead of hot dogs/hamburgers/whatever they serve in US sporting events of the like, are served. Things resembling pot pies seem to be popular in the UK.
  
• Since neither Everton nor Bolton are hugely popular like Arsenal or Man Utd, the crowd was quite civilized.
• For the same reason in the above point, the fans actually knew the chants.
• If you're obese, you can't enter the stadium. Seriously, the entrance for our section of the stadium was about 1.5 feet wide.

Why did I go back to Liverpool again? I shall continue in my next post... (in other words, I'm going to sleep). Tally ho!

(Answers: a-3, b-6, c-4, d-1, e-2, f-7, g-5)