Posts Tagged ‘University of Leeds’

Having got out of work earlier than planned I headed over to The Terrace to meet Raby have have a bit of a catch up as we’d not seen each other in a month or so. All seems well in the School of Computing, the closure of 24 hours labs is more a change in official policy than something that has actually happened.

Afterwards we headed over to The Park Horse for the talk organised by the Philosophy Society entitled “atheist arguments aren’t much good.” The room was packed out which made for some fantastic photos to add to the A-Soc gallery (what, it was an A-Soc event to attend the talk :p ).

The talk was very interesting and I was impressed by how fast moving it kept with the basic premise being that atheist arguments don’t really work because disproving a specific god doesn’t disprove the idea of a god, it simply disproves that god but you can simply change the definition of god to get round that (for example, he doesn’t need to be all powerful, as this is never said in the Bible, he could just be rather powerful).

Of course this argument doesn’t hold up because if you accept there may be some kind of god but choose not to believe in any of the specific gods then you’re an atheist. It isn’t Atheism with a capital T (or positive atheism or whatever you wish to call it) but it certainly is atheism but regardless it was an interesting talk and well worth attending.

I’m not sure John took too kindly to my thoughts on philosophy as a subject though lol.

Last night was the union council meeting to look at what motions should make it to the referendum or not. Myself, Norm, Nicola, Moz and Gijsbert turned up to support motion 4 and while it’s probably a good job we did, it didn’t do us much good.

I have written a more in depth article for Leeds Student (and anyone else who wants to run it) which we’ll be sending in along with all our other articles in the hope some of it will make it to the next issue, but I will briefly summarise things here.

First of all, amendment 4 passed which removed “this union resolves” part 1, which was to stop stocking Halal and Kosher meat. From a motion to remove Halal and Kosher meat from the union. There is no way that is constitutional! The union council rules state they cannot pass amendments that “significantly alter the nature of the motion.” How could you ever, ever come up with a less appropriate amendment? How could you change it’s nature any more than that?

The amount of open descrimination against the atheist community was also quite clear. It didn’t seem to matter how many times union council members had gone on and on about how this is about whether motions should go forward to referendum, not about the politics of each issue, union council members repeatedly voiced their own opinions and yet hardly any of them mentioned the core issue here – animal welfare.

Finally it would seem important in what is aiming to be a democractic process that union council members are free to vote how they wish. It is interesting then that when Barry abstained from voting on the motion (not even voted for it but simply abstained) he was ridiculed by the chair and asked to give reasons for his decisions.

All of this amounts to showing the clear descrimination that goes on, on campus against the atheist community.

While myself and Zoltan were sitting around in The Terrace last week, RAG came round selling tickets for speed dating and being tired of his moaning about being single I decided to sign him up, which of course meant I had to sign myself up as well.

After all, it’s a fantastic opportunity. 3 minutes to chat to 20 different people about A-Soc, what more could you ask for? I managed to get it into quite a few conversations and Zoltan even had a conversation about it with someone who had already talked to me so that was a nice little double team 😀 .

Less importantly (because let’s face it, it isn’t more importantly as I was going to start this paragraph with :p ) Zoltan seemed to have fun so everything worked out for the best. It was actually quite a lot of fun, you don’t really have time to get bored of someone or run out of things to say because you’re only there for a few minutes and you’re bound to find a few people you really have a good conversation with unless you’re an especially boring person. Plus it’s another thing to tick off my things to do before you die list.

Despite things having been slowly coming to an end for months now, it really started to bite home that we have graduated and university is over.

That’s huge. It’s been like my entire life for the past 3 years. I can barely remember life before university now and suddently it’s all been taken away. The last 3 years have been the best years of my life and I’m sure other people feel similar, Kieran said the same to me yesterday and could possibly be the best 3 years of my life that I’m ever going to have.

I mean, how many people are we going to lose contact with now? It’s a lot. Let’s not kid ourselves. Most people we’re never going to see again. How many of the people I currently consider close friends and I going to know in 10-20 years? How do you really know when you have made a friendship strong enough to stand the test of time?

Furthermore I no longer have university to hide behind. There is no, “well I’m finishing my degree before I make something off my life.” The wall has come down, now I’m just undefensibly failing to do anything with my life, to chase my dreams and achieve my goals.

I don’t think it helps that with it being summer, lots of people who would otherwise be around have gone back home or on holiday but Leeds feels so empty. I’ve gone from living with 6 other people, near the city and campus where all my friends live to living with 2 other people with everyone living miles away from each other.

Still, not everything has changed. I’m still broke. My pre-tax income has tripled but I’m still broke. I’m still working every day (though I did rather enjoy my weekend off this weekend). I’m still not used to mornings. It’s good to know there are some things you can rely on to be constant in your life.

Anyone else having a similar experience? Open up, share…

So Wednesday was graduation. I want to talk a little more about the general concept later but for now I thought I would offer a run down of what happened as it’s certainly an experience even if it is one that you can happily live without.

Heading out from home we took no less than 4 cars down there and somehow managed to stay together as a convoy which is quite an achievement in Leeds given there is so much traffic, lights and junctions. We even made it out too despite them locking the car park barrier and forcing myself and Kieran to drive over the grassy embankment designed to keep cars out which was rather wet and muddy. Go Astra.

The experience of picking up our gown was an experience in itself, not only do they provide you with one but they also having a robing room where they dress you in it.

The ceremony itself was your standard pompous and boring event. The vice chancellor opened procedings with a speech and then the degrees were presented and we filed up to the stage one by one to collect them.

Later in the day our head of school, Roger Boyle was to say to Kieran

You know, someone told the Vice Chancellor they were going to do drugs

Or at least something to that affect. He also added, “I hope it wasn’t one of our lot.”

Wishful thinking Roger. I mean seriously, who do you think it was? Just, and this is a purely off the cuff suggestion, the same kind of person that would put a lolcat in their FYP ;).

Ok, let me explain a bit more. I arrived on stage and shook the Vice Chancellor’s hand. He then asked me “so, what’s next in your life?” I could have explained to him my plans for my start up, my extensive vision of conquering the business world, finding love and founding the Chris Worfolk Foundation to solve the world’s problems, or even the fact that I’ve already moved on to the next stage and am now happily working in a job.

But he didn’t have time to hear all that. And right now all I could think about was the amount of caffeine and alcohol I was planning to consume when I finally get some time to celebrate (or in my case, commiserate) my graduation. So I gave him the short snappy answer he was looking for – drugs.

Anyway, afterwards we stopped by the school for some of Kieran and Norm’s hard brewed GLPale which went down an absolute storm and then headed off to Loch Fyne in town for a celebratory dinner. Taking no less than 29 people I was rather pleased with the amount of people I managed to get down there, though Graham is also owed just as much credit.

I was less than impressed with the food to be honest and it didn’t help that I felt rather ill during the meal but everyone else fully enjoyed the meal and once I got round and talking to people I felt much better. We also met Rachael, the new Ms Wharton who seems very friendly and outgoing – but I’m sure they make a good match none the less :P.

Finally we finished up with a few drinks in The Terrace and then headed home. I can’t say I particuarly enjoyed it but I’m glad my parents did, mainly because I made them pay for most of it and having spent most of the day with Kieran I could see he enjoyed it which I was glad of (even if I could physically feel the smug radiating off him and burning my skin) as it really was well earned on everyone’s part.

Having done a lot of this over the years it seems somewhat tearful to think that this could well be my last blog from DEC-10. It’s been like a home to many of us, particularly those of us who have spent more time in here than our actual homes (I wish I was joking lol).

While my room is very noisy with the hum of computers and climate control devices I’ll miss the quiet hum of DEC-10, the endless late nights we spend in here coding. I hadn’t really been dwelling on the idea of one chapter coming to a close and another beginning but sitting here is really making me think. And we all know that is a bad road to go down :P.

Then again, who really wanted a good degree from the University of Leeds anyway?

I mean, it’s not like such a hideous failure in my degree means my entire life is a failure. I have many other strengths outside of academia. I have many other areas of interest and expertise – such as my intimidating knowledge of Simpsons quotes.

And after all, who really wanted the opportunity to go on and do further study or be hired in an exciting graduate role? I’m sure their are companies just crying out to pay people huge wages for researching just how many flips make the perfect burger.

You have deviated from the path of win.

Welcome to fail.

Having hatched a plot while drinking in The Old Bar on Monday night, myself and Mr. O’Shea arrived at 9:30am Friday morning in LT17, the lecture theatre in which we were due to have our last ever lecture, and indeed, our lecturer, Dr. Nick Efford’s last lecture in SoC also. With such an occasion we obviously had to go out in style.

Soon we had concealed within the desks at the front a laptop and a pair of travel speakers set to run a scheduled task and play an MP3 at 10:25, midway through the lecture. I’m sure you can guess which certain MP3 that was :D. The plan went off without a hitch. Now if only we can find a way to get that live band in for next time…

Seriously, who are Circle Theatre Tricks? Because I’ve never heard of them. Yet they have the best publicity on campus. Apparently.

Still, Friday night saw us hit Fruity. It was quite good to work the stress out after having driven down the M1, had a job interview and driven back on the M1. How do people not die on that road?