Summer School!

I recently returned from a two-week trip to the University of Essex to take a statistics course in multi-level modeling. Here are a few impressions from my trip!

·      Arriving in a “heat wave” in England – “please travel with a bottle of water” “don’t board the train if you feel unwell”… um, it is not that hot? Temperature is relative apparently.

·      Feeling nervous about navigating all the trains and the tube… and then remembering that I have done this multiple times over in countries where I don’t speak the language.

·      Making friends at the Colchester train station with other Essex summer school participants – the first guy I meet is from Denmark, finishing a PhD in Oxford, is living in Cape Town and married to a lady from Mozambique. Wow, this is going to be an interesting two weeks.

·      Make another friend – a guy who kindly offers to show all of us where the summer school registration office is– I don’t realize I grateful I am for this help until I realize just how complicated the Essex campus is…

·      … There are squares, directions, levels, and doors… very many doors. You can’t access all levels from all squares, and squares all have multiple directions. And you enter a building on the “ground floor”, but it is actually the “third floor”.

·      Go shopping at Tesco – oh goodness, culture shock all over again – there is so much choice! (but the shops are open on a Sunday!) And I find Cadbury’s chocolate and Terry’s orange chocolate – both of these make me very happy.

·      Go to the welcome reception, make friends, eat free food. I am impressed at the introductions given by each professor – these people are good researchers and teachers – that doesn’t happen in academia too often.  Laugh at jokes: English humour is definitely different.  

·      Go to class 1 – maths without numbers. This should be fun. Meet another interesting person – A Canadian, studying in Zurich, who did her field work in Durban. Since moving to Europe – she is one of the few people who guess my South African accent.

·      Go to class 2 – this is going to be interesting and I know I am going to learn a lot. I like the professor’s teaching style.

·      Work, sleep, eat, run and do french (in no particular order) – it is peaceful here. I like it.

·      Go to class 1: “this is a problem we can’t solve, so we turn it into a problem we can solve” – I am sure there is some life wisdom in this.

·      Evacuate the building at 5:30 am when the fire alarm goes off. Stand in the rain in our pyjamas. Make more friends… we are all perhaps a little more familiar with each other than we would like at this point. Go back to the building – no fire thankfully.

·      More maths without numbers… I am sure I should have paid more attention in high-school math class…

·      Continue this for two weeks – I am definitely tired at the end, but this was a good and useful experience.