After an abysmal start to the week, I've finally finished all of my work. I wasn't too happy at the beginning of the week, largely due to frustration at not learning anything new. Think back to the angry six year old who didn't want to repeat already-known material. Luckily, yesterday was much better (even if I did spend 12 hours on campus, eight of which were in lessons).
Today I've managed to re-write large sections of my coursework, type up all of my notes and begin other aspects of my coursework. So far, I've not managed to get going with my PhD cover letter, but I still have a few more weeks to think about it. All in all, it's been a fairly mixed week.
Yesterday was an incredibly long day. A meeting with my supervisor, then straight into one lecture, a short break, then two lectures and a two-hour French class all without a break. I managed to get home some time around 9, and had tea and biscuits for dinner...
I was quite surprised at myself yesterday. I'm not exactly renowned for speaking up in classes, preferring to keep my answers to myself, but I actually managed to lead a group discussion. This is so rare for me, I'm not quite sure what came over me! In addition, I managed to spot some clever methodological observation that nobody else had seen - not even the lecturer - and when the lecturer asked me to explain I did so in front of a class of 90 people without any problem. Don't get me wrong, I don't get anxious about speaking in front of people - I'm no longer shy (as perhaps I was when I was younger), but I rarely contribute in such situations. I'm confident in my own answers, I don't often share them. Yesterday though was different for some reason. I think to be honest a lot of this is down to my placement. I seem to have approached these things with a different attitude, and yesterday I managed to surprise myself.
Most of the other classes yesterday were fairly standard. Lecturers droning on for two hours about what they thought and so on. While at times this could be moderately interesting, if it didn't have neurons, brains in general, or some other connection to neuroscience, I wasn't overly excited.
After my last lecture finished, I had to run to my French class. I have never taken a language class in my life, but I started learning French over the summer, and figured it was about time I take a proper course. I have to admit, the class I was in was going a bit too fast for my liking. I could understand most of what was going on - I even answered questions and spoke in front of the whole class again (in French this time too!) - but it was difficult to keep up. I was pretty pleased though with how much I understood, and how much I spoke. The tutor was pretty strict on pronunciation (someone who was speaking without many problems [god knows what he was doing in the class] was still being pulled up on his pronunciation), but apparently I didn't have any problems at all. Whether she was humouring me or not was another story, but still, I felt pleased with myself. To make things a little easier, I'll be joining a different class. This time, it's on another day (so I won't feel like my brain has melted when I get there) and it's at a slower pace, so I'm hoping I'll be able to make real progress and actually learn something this year!
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