The Half-way Mark (ish)
I arrived in Coventry six months ago today, wide-eyed, nervous, and excited. I am still wide-eyed, nervous, and excited, just in smaller doses...and not every day. I don't honestly have much to say about this momentous occasion, but I figured I'd mark it with a blog post. Today, I am only panicking a little concerning the several assignments I must finish in the next couple of weeks. I have just completed my sixth module, (don't make me explain the strangeness of the class distribution for this degree) marking that I have only two left before embarking on my thesis research! (don't tell anyone, but I've already started)
This most recent module, I'm sad to say, marks one of the most boring and seemingly pointless weeks in my academic career. Well, it may not be true, but when classes are squeezed into a five day period, the boring parts are more obvious.
The high point of the week was a good old fashioned field trip to London to help the London Fire Brigade coordinate a disaster exercise involving all 33 boroughs of the city. (33 boroughs, take that NYC) 'Exercise safer city' (if I'm allowed to disclose that,) marked by a lame name, a 0430 wake up call, and the prospect of going to London without doing anything terribly interesting, had the class boarding a bus as hired help. Did I say hired? I mean voluntary. I did it again! I mean uncompensated labor. Well, there was free lunch.
We were each assigned to a borough and then called their emergency office over and over making their lives more annoying by supplying 'injects' or problems for the office to solve throughout this flood based emergency. These were things like, fallen trees blocking the road, a half a meter of water stopping traffic, evacuees from flooded tube stations, etc. My favorite one, that I felt particularly guilty for delivering, was that a evacuee rest center urgently needed supplies for making tea. Urgently! I gave my borough, Kensington and Chelsea, over 80 injects in five hours, and they performed admirably; always pleasant and understanding, which was unfortunately not the experience some of my classmates had.
Other than that I played with a toy firetruck in public, downloaded itunes (what?!), and didn't set off the fire alarm.
This most recent module, I'm sad to say, marks one of the most boring and seemingly pointless weeks in my academic career. Well, it may not be true, but when classes are squeezed into a five day period, the boring parts are more obvious.
The high point of the week was a good old fashioned field trip to London to help the London Fire Brigade coordinate a disaster exercise involving all 33 boroughs of the city. (33 boroughs, take that NYC) 'Exercise safer city' (if I'm allowed to disclose that,) marked by a lame name, a 0430 wake up call, and the prospect of going to London without doing anything terribly interesting, had the class boarding a bus as hired help. Did I say hired? I mean voluntary. I did it again! I mean uncompensated labor. Well, there was free lunch.
We were each assigned to a borough and then called their emergency office over and over making their lives more annoying by supplying 'injects' or problems for the office to solve throughout this flood based emergency. These were things like, fallen trees blocking the road, a half a meter of water stopping traffic, evacuees from flooded tube stations, etc. My favorite one, that I felt particularly guilty for delivering, was that a evacuee rest center urgently needed supplies for making tea. Urgently! I gave my borough, Kensington and Chelsea, over 80 injects in five hours, and they performed admirably; always pleasant and understanding, which was unfortunately not the experience some of my classmates had.
Other than that I played with a toy firetruck in public, downloaded itunes (what?!), and didn't set off the fire alarm.
Comments
Would you send me an email? I don't think I have your address and I have a question for you.
Thanks!
Jen, jjchambers at gmail dot com