The exam!

Monday began with breakfast and then Part I of the general exam. My strategy was to begin with the group of problems that looked most difficult after a quick glance, so I began with group II. An hour in (the appropriate amount of time to solve a group of problems - five hours, five groups), I had solved one of the four to my satisfaction, and got nowhere near solutions of the others, so I was feeling rather disheartened. Fortunately things really picked up from there, and I was reasonably happy with the next three hours / four groups. I then went back to group II, realised I'd completely misinterpreted one question and it was an order of magnitude simpler than I had thought, used a method for one question that may have been a slightly dodgy simplification but I think actually is ok, and wrote some hopefully useful stuff for the other. So overall, I think things were ok: I'll find out tomorrow!

Well, that takes me to about 3pm! After some lunch, I met up with many of the other students at The Asgard. We then had a good evening together, enjoying being free from the pressure of the looming exam. There was a lot of drinking and chatting (although I only indulged in the latter), including an introduction to a few American drinking games for us international students (eg. beer pong, 7/11/doubles, kings).

In the evening, we went to the Sidney Pacific welcome reception. It was nice to chat with new and newer friends, although there was a live band (keys, drums and FIVE electric guitars) which made it a bit difficult: I don't think that was very well thought-out. It was actually so loud that I struggled to hear people 20cm away, and my ears were ringing as I left.

I actually left the party (back to the physics party, by this stage) at 10pm, around the same time as a few others who hadn't been drinking. That was the thing about the exam: it made mid afternoon, rather than evening, the natural starting time for the party, and brought forward the point where sober people start to tire of the drunk! But it was a very nice afternoon and evening.

Yesterday I wandered to campus to take advantage of the orientation activities going on. I went to lunch with representatives from the campus police force, who had various bits of advice on crime prevention. I then went to Grad School 102 (we physicists missed 101 due to our exam), a set of seminars with very rapid information delivery.

The evening was a welcome barbecue at Sidney Pacific, with another long line (45 minutes, this time). That was followed by 'A Beautiful Mind' on the big screen (sheet attached to the outside wall of one of the SP wings). I do remember watching it before, although I couldn't tell you the exact date this time! Probably around May 2006.