Friday the what?

Totally lost track of the date. Why? I've had to move my calendar into the kitchen, because I haven't been able to find a convenient place to hang it in the living room - something has got to be done about that. I'm used to it being somewhere where I can easily keep track of it and what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm in one of those dreadful half organised states - I'm trying to make this study area, and it's only half done. I feel like it should have been fully done some time ago, all ready for me to start work, but what with one thing and another it hasn't been, and this has not been the week to get it finished off.

Well, it all kicked off on Wednesday for me - I arrived at uni to find that freshers week was in full swing. Amazing the energy these people have, dressed up and handing out leaflets and stuff - the first place I went to was Hunter Halls, where registration happens. In my first time round this was called Matriculation, but in keeping with the change from terms to semesters, it seems it's now called registration. It's an oddly American change of terms, and the university itself doesn't seem to have fully adjusted to it, because in a few of the notices I've seen about it, it appears as "Registration (Matriculation)"! Anyhow as some of you know I was supposed to go and get registered at half past three, which clashed with the induction meeting for History MLits and MSc's, so I figured I'd just go along and see if I could get through early. Which I did, with no problems, I was expecting a bit of resistance to the idea, but no one seemed to blink an eyelid at it.

Hunter Hall is a place I know reasonably well - I've had many exams there in the past. It's quite an interesting place - a very big room, with pillars in it, painted pink with gold stars. It has large paintings of elderly men in academic dress, who I can only presume are past professors and masters of the university - mid exam when your brain has temporarily dried up this can be really quite alarming, as they all seem to be frowning down at the very idea of you, yes, you, sitting there when you clearly haven't done enough work, and well, what are you doing there in the first place, but when you go to register, they seem to reflect your own sense of total bewilderment at what's happening under their painterly gaze. It's queue, after queue after queue - first you queue to get into the room, then you queue to be assigned to the right queue to be processed. Heaven help you if you forget your registration letter - I assume you'd be dispatched off to get it. After this has been examined by a member of the registry staff, they ask you how you're going to pay your fees - yes indeed, a very pertinent question, and then you get to the queue to do this - one for cheques, one for credit cards, etc! These are much better queues than they used to be when I was an undergraduate - now there are rows of chairs laid out, and you bounce along moving from chair to chair - my neighbour and I had a bit of a chat about whether or not they should have provided music. And as an absolutely extraordinary diversion, in the quad outside someone had set up a hot dog stall, and the smell of the frying onions made me so, so very hungry! The quads had been taken over by the freshers fair, with stalls for groups and societies - the sword fighting lot are still going strong, very handsome young men in kilts and rugby shirts, swinging broadswords around with what I was going to describe as gay abandon, but frankly I don't think the term is at all appropriate. Back in the way back when, they used to do this on the lawns outside the reading room, but on this instance they'd roped themselves off for health and safety I presume! The big poster sale is still going strong, and I'd swear that the posters haven't changed very much. Pulp Fiction still reigns strong.

Anyhow with a quick break for a fag between payment and photography, I emerged in about under an hour (somewhat of an improvement, way to go registry!) as a matriculated post grad student. I'm sorry to report though that my photograph this time round is truly awful, whereas in the past I had been quite lucky and got a good one, now it seems to resemble an OAP's bus pass. Dear God, time will have it's evil way with you.

Anyhow on to the post grad induction meeting - this first week is awful, because of the endless waiting in between doing things. You hang around, feeling oddly out of it, because you don't know anyone, with nothing to do because you've got no work as yet,thinking I daren't go off and do something useful because then I'll be late for X or Y. I did meet John for lunch which was great - I felt like shouting out loud, see I do know someone!!! I also ran into one of my old tutors outside the library which was nice. But for the most part I felt very odd at times!!!

Anyhow the induction kicked off in the lecture room in Modern History - if I tell you 2 University Gardens it will mean nothing to most of you, but the History department is based in a string of houses over the road from the main university building. There seemed to be between 20 to 25 of us (no I didn't actually count!) and they'd provided tea and coffee which was very ok. Biscuits too. I'm a bit more used to where you turn up in a large lecture theatre, get loaded with paper and bombarded with information. Well, that hadn't actually changed, but the tea/coffee bit was new, and very welcome. Apparently next week (I think, I have to consult my notes) we're to be bombarded with more information accompanied by wine this time. I'd best steer clear of that, or the aforesaid information will be in one ear and out of the other.

Anyway we had to do the stand up and say who we were bit, which always freaks me out a bit. I start off positively enough then by about the second phrase think I'm babbling, and sort of dry up by the third. Ghastly. Anyway I did establish that I'm the longest person to have been away and returned - I'll get to that later - but there are other's who've been off for a few years and returned. There are lots of eager lads there to do war studies - their convenor promised them a trip to the armoury at Edinburgh with real guns to handle - yes. Yes, I'll need to think about that. The words boys and toys spring immediately to mind. Anyhow we had at least one American, and a Canadian too, and somewhat alarmingly, it appears only one other medievalist. This is truly alarming as you need a certain number of people to ensure that your courses run, but - yep, more of this later. Anyhow this was more about things like core courses, (RRSH, Research and Resourse Skills for Historians), various other meetings, arranging meetings, logging on to Moodle - Moodle is an interactive online information system as near as I can make out, where you get lots of the things that years ago used to be on paper. I did get to meet some people, which was very good, I'm no longer so - not alone, but you know what I mean. I now know other people doing the same thing. Chief among these is a girl called Aimee, who is interested in Highland culture and the role of bagpipes in war. She works as a volunteer in the Highland Infantry Museum I think it is - I've seen this from the outside, but never been in, which I think perhaps I should - but we've hung out together over yesterday, which was great. So much better to be with others than on one's own. She has a much better memory for faces than I do, and thus we've bumped into others from our group - we met Andrew, who's the American chap on our way into the Reading Room - stunningly this no longer has books in it, and is now a sort of circular nest of computers.

Anyhow that was like the first day - we did get ourselves into a bit of mix-up over the Arts Faculty Induction meeting, which according to Moodle was supposed to be on Weds evening, but this turns out to be a total mix up which if we'd have read our handouts properly we would never have made. Turns out this is in October!!! Yes, it would have been a long wait!

Yesterday had to go and get my courses approved - I'm still mixed up over my Latin, but I now have a plan, so I'm going to Latin on Monday morning, this is Basic Latin, and I'm going to Medieval Latin on Weds, and the same professor is running both so I shall talk to her, and arrive at some sort of a decision on this. Apparently they are both supposed to be good for beginners. I must admit over the last week, I'm suddenly thinking if I did basic Latin, which is a more modern form of latin than Medieval, I could get awfully confused between the two. Maybe I should stick to the medieval. Anyhow we'll see. In the afternoon we went to a library induction - I know the library pretty well, but a lot's changed in the past decade, so I thought this was a good idea - the view from the 8th floor is still pretty spectacular and I'll get round to taking a few photo's at some point. Apparently there's now a gallery on the 12th floor you can go out on to to get a better view. I'm not sure I'll make that, what with the vertigo and all, but it's certainly a view and a half.

Anyhow we have no meetings or anything scheduled for today and I'm quite pleased about that - both days I've got home absolutely shattered. Yet I've done nothing! I mean what are a few meetings here and there, it's all the newness of it all. I suppose. It's oddly disconcerting being somewhere you know well, yet there are all these subtle changes to the place. It's not the buildings - there are a few new one's around, but by and large they haven't changed, but departments have moved and you have to get your head around that - it's just been oddly tiring doing all this. Physically demanding too for an old unfit hag like myself too - all those stairs to be up and downing!!! I'd say it's gone well, I've not made a total fool of myself anywhere, and the people I've met have been so nice and friendly. It's been fun, but as this friend of Aimee's said yesterday, it all starts in anger on Monday!!!