Class evals and recent activities.

I am officially a student again.

There are about 20 people in my degree program: 12 from Scotland, England, and Ireland; two from the US (including me), and one each from Canada, Barbados, Finland, Slovakia, Singapore, and Thailand.  We have all the same classes at all the same times, so I'm sure we'll be a tight-knit bunch by the end of the year.

My program director is also the professor for two of the three courses I'm taking this semester: Research Methods I and Stress & Coping.  He is very long-winded and prone to go off on tangents, but seems like a nice enough guy so far.

Research Methods I: This is a short course (only 5 weeks long), and it's shaping up to be a general review of the statistics and research methods classes I took in undergrad.  We're sharing it with the Strength and Conditioning students, so there are 40 people in it rather than 20.  I'm not anticipating this one giving me much trouble.

Planning and Instruction for Performance: The British equivalent of a TA is teaching this class, because the actual professor is about to go on paternity leave.  The title of the class is dry and misleading - it's mainly going to be about all the different theories behind successful performance.  Yesterday's lecture was all about experts vs. neophytes, for example.  A lot of the reading is on studies relating to music performance, so I'm REALLY going to like this class.

Stress and Coping: As I said, long-winded teacher is long-winded, and this is going to be the class that requires the most outside work.  But this is a topic that I potentially might want to do my dissertation on, so I'm trying to get the most out of it that I can.

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In other news, on Sunday I climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano in the middle of Edinburgh, with my flatmate Mandy.  The ascent, 823 feet, took much less time that I thought it would - about half an hour, including a couple of rest breaks - and the view up there is amazing.  I could see all of Edinburgh, and into East Lothian and across the Firth of Forth to Fife (say that ten times fast). 

I'm signed up to go to Arrochar, near Loch Lomond in western Scotland, with the Hillwalking Club on Saturday. 

I bought a guitar off of Mandy and her brother Roy for 15 quid yesterday, and I've already managed to break a string while trying to tune the thing. 

I've already broken my resolution not to do any schoolwork at my flat, as that's precisely what I'm doing now, in between writing this post.  My excuse is that it was pouring down rain earlier and I didn't feel like going out into it (although, in a typical case of Scottish Weather, it is now gloriously sunny).  That resolution has now been amended to "No paper-writing or project-doing at my flat."

Those are all the items of note for now.  Cheers, y'all.