Excitement in AA

Universities do give silly names to their buildings, presumably with the intention of making it difficult for new students to find their way to lectures and thus establish some sort of subconscious understanding of one's place within the overall scheme of things. The logic on behalf of the student presumably being: "If I can't figure out how they number the rooms and buildings, how on earth am I going to get through my degree?" It's understable, I suppose.

The numbering of rooms and buildings at the University of Surrey is no different, having as it does something to do with the level of the floor above sea-level, or rather having had something to do with the level of the floor above sea-level. Things are less complicated now, with level three, for example, being denoted '03' and buildings by some combination of letters; thus room fifteen on level four of the building that contains the maths department is denoted 15AA04. Which just happens to be my "office".

The point of this is to explain the title: today was a very busy one in the AA building, which is to say that it was busy in the maths department. First of all, we had what has become known as a "jolly" to welcome two new post-doctorate students and one member of staff; talk was centered around whether the presence of wine was going to affect the general proceeding of work in the afternoon, the common assumption being that one glass was beneficial whilst two was inhibiting. I decided to stick to the orange juice, for no other reason than my supervisor was in the room and some strange logic compelled me not to drink the wine. I'm not sure I understand that myself, actually.

The second "event" was the transfer exam of the student that sits opposite me. According to him, things went well and so — by my calculations, at least — I shall be the next student within the department to undertake the transfer from registration on the MPhil course to PhD.

Finally, another student gave their PhD presentation to the department, explaining their thesis and the results therein. This was a formality before his PhD defence, which is to be held tomorrow — and made for interesting, if not slightly incomprehensible viewing. It worries me slightly that I will have to do something similar at some point in the future and acted as a great motivator for the rest of the afternoon. Unfortunately, my motivation has resulted in a quite boring diary entry since my mind is elsewhere; let's hope this works itself out soon such that I can be motivated and interesting at the same time...