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09/22/2001 Archived Entry: "Lies"

Since my room at university wasn't ready in time for when I wanted to go back, I'll be staying at home for another week. One of the upsides to this is that I will now be able to attend the Cambridge Freshers' Evening at Liverpool.

The purpose of the Freshers' is to give new students at Cambridge from the Liverpool area a chance to talk to older students about what it's like, the atmosphere, workload and so on; it's all a very noble and friendly meeting with free wine, and I quite enjoyed it last time. But what they don't tell you is that everything said to you at the evening are all LIES!

Yes, I feel the use of capital letters was necessary there. For when I attended and talked to a Natural Sciences student, I was assured that, 'Oh, the workload isn't that bad, you'll cope, etc etc.' I wasn't told that for at least the first term you'll be simply floored by the complete change of gears up from A-Levels and will seriously start worrying how the hell you're supposed to remember the conformational domains of beta-helices in proteins.

To be entirely fair to them, the mind does tend to blot out the unpleasant experiences in the past and even I, I'm ashamed to say, am doubting my words now. Could it really have been that bad, I wonder? Well, it was. The first term of any science degree at Cambridge (and possibly the humanities, but I wouldn't know) is extremely trying. Subsequent terms are relatively easier, however.

So I see it as my personal duty on Monday evening to scare the living daylights out of any Natural Sciences students in attendance and tell them that, yes, all the rumours you've heard are true. Hold onto your hats and prepare to be shocked, the first term at Cambridge is no walkover. I honestly do think that it'll make them more ready for the experience than I was, in any case.

And now for some links... (Culture readers might as well skip this bit because I've just lifted stuff from my list emails here)

I was doing a spot of research onto systems of voting today for a discussion I'm starting at the New Mars forums on KSR's Martian Constitution when I came across the ACE Project.

The Administration and Cost of Elections Project has several thousand webpages that cover every single aspect of elections, from the different systems to legislative framework, voter education and vote counting. Sponsored by the UN, it 'represents the first-ever attempt to provide a globally accessible information resource on election administration. It provides user-friendly, operationally oriented information on options, detailed procedures, and the administrative and cost implications associated with organising elections.'

I've found that it's incredibly comprehensive and very interesting - I'm not sure whether it's still being updated (the 'last update' for most pages are two years old) but the info is still fairly current and I suspect that they're busy with their project to translate it all into Arabic. It's also supposed to be a living document including feedback and commentary from readers. Now this is a good use of the Internet.

Also, what with all the talk of 'Operation Infinite Justice', I unearthed a link on Metafilter to a very interesting article about the art of naming military operations, dating from WW1 to the present.