The Children's Hour

The UCL term proper begins on the 25th; CoMPLEX likewise. So this fortnight is not an official part of my course. It is, rather, a crash maths revision series aimed primarily at new undergraduates and only incidentally offered to random scientific postgrads who've been out of the loop awhile. As a result, the vast majority of other students just now are, to all intents and purposes, children. This is a tad unnerving.

Well, perhaps not unnerving exactly. But in the midst of revisiting subjects I haven't looked at formally in many years -- although much of it has been used in one way or another -- I'm also being irresistibly reminded of what it was like to live amongst shiftless, callow teenagers; and, for that matter, be one.

Eugh.

I can only trust I'll feel more desire to bond with my fellow CoMPLEX students than I do these feckless brats. Not that I dislike them -- far from it -- just that I have nothing in common with them and no reason to engage; so, by and large, I haven't.

I'm enjoying the work, however. It seems so liberating to be doing stuff just to learn -- or re-learn, or in quite a few cases today, simply practise -- rather than in some mad scramble to meet unreasonable client demands on an impossible schedule.

Not, I suspect, a contrast that would impress my teenage compatriots one little bit.
Posted by matt at September 12, 2006 10:44 PM