I have a lot of reading to do. This means no lectures and a lot of homework. It requires a lot of discipline to study like this and you, my dear readers, will not be surprised to find that I'm having trouble with it.
The fall is beautiful this year: yellow, orange, little rain. I feel like going outside every time I look out the window. Reading outside didn't work, I tried it. Walking is nice, but it's too cold to sit still on a bench, which is definitely required for reading.

Besides being beautiful, the fall is also the start of the gloomy period of the year. November is typically the month in which I end relationships. Ever time I had a boyfriend for a period longer than a month I broke up with him in November. I suppose that the winter depression stacked with some existing dissatisfaction is enough to make me feel thoroughly fed up with it all. Hopefully it's the same this year.
I don't have a boyfriend, but I definitely have to break up with my feelings for he-who-wont-have-me. It's driving me crazy...
I imagine some of you will sigh when reading this and shake your head. Out of pity maybe, or out of annoyance over my silliness. But I tell you, I never asked for this and try to deal with it in a sensible way (though sometimes sense seems to have little grip on emotional matters).
November will set me free. And in December I'll celebrate my freedom when I reach the magical age of 25.

Back to reading now... Or no, I think I'll go for a walk first.

posted by Marian @ 1:24 PM 3 comments

The presentation went great. I got some really nice responses. Content was very good, I really hit the core of the argument according to the teacher and my talk was clear and easy to understand.
The external references I used (Freakonomics and some computersimulations I used as examples) were very much appreciated. The teacher even decided to give a lecture about simulations, because he agreed with me that it was a relevant theme in our discussion.
Huzzaa!

posted by Marian @ 3:02 PM 2 comments

The last four or five times I had to give a presentation I was ill prepared and didn't really care. I was stumbling over my words and didn't put any kind of structure in my talk.
There is no excuse: I knew starting my preparations the day before wouldn't be enough and I can't claim to be a bad public speaker, because I'm not. The only reason for my bad performances was laziness and I got away with it.

Next week I have to give a presentation again, for this horribly pretentious master course in philosophy of science that I'm taking. There are only 6 students, every single one of them has a decent background in the matter. The expectations are high...
There is just no way I will get away with anything less than excellent this time!

I did some research in the library yesterday and found a bunch of relevant articles. Reading them will no doubt be incredibly boring. Much less exciting than leveling my mage to 58 so I can go to the Outlands with her. And much less exciting than finding out what this Foundation is all about that Hari Seldon started.

posted by Marian @ 10:03 AM 1 comments

Today it's Annabel Day!

And to honor her I refreshed an old cartoon [click].

posted by Marian @ 8:51 AM 3 comments