Who let it be September, already?
Actually, it's seemed rather Septemberal for a while. Yesterday was the late August bank holiday, and it never seemed to get very bright here in Guildford, with the sky overcast all day, and drizzle falling for much of it. The picture attached to this post is from my holiday last week, showing a typical scene (though it had stopped raining for the picture itself).
September means back-to-school time, but only kids -- at my University, at least, the students don't come back until 5th October, with new starters coming for the week leading up to that date. Freshers' week is usually a busy time for me. At least, it has been over the last several years, as I've been a Warden on campus. This means I live on campus, in the student accommodation blocks, and act as a kind of hybrid between a policeman, a headmaster, and a social worker. It's been an interesting job. Sometimes enjoyable, sometimes not so much, but doing a second job for seven years and having free accommodation have enabled me to buy a place to live in Guildford, which is no mean feat. So -- September means moving house for me. I remember from previous occasions of doing it that moving house is not a particularly pleasurable experience... but it will be nice to be in a home of my own.
Shortly after moving, I'm going to conference #2 of the summer. It's called COMEX5, which abbreviation stands for Collective Motion in Exotic Nuclei Under Extreme Conditions. I'm looking forward to that. It's in Krakow, Poland, which is a nice place to spend a week, and I'm sure to get a bunch of interesting ideas from the talks (excepting my own). After I get back, there'll be a final week of undergraduates not being here, followed by the arrival of the new students. Exciting! It looks like we've got another bumper year in terms of student intake, and that ~120 is our new norm
No comments:
Post a Comment