All these things that I have done

I am constantly taken by surprise by how caring Alex is towards me. He offered to stay home from the pub with me last month to look after me and keep me company and things. I wasn't violently ill, just being strange and light-headed. I've been getting more head rushes than usual lately for some reason and yesterday that combined with having to get up early, having a stressful day in Milton Keynes and then getting hit by one of the insane gales and hail/rain storms coming home from weight-watchers. I just collapsed on the sofa and got toasties made for me. Alex gave me hugs, fed me and was quite willing to give up his whole evening to devote to making me feel better. I love him very much indeed and he so often reminds me of how lucky I am to be with him.

This morning I was feeling quite a lot better although my muscles are still rather achey and I went out for my second try at running. When I first decided to exercise I did a little bit of running in South Park before the gym openned but I really couldn't manage much. By a year later, I can jog all the way to the river and round Deadmans Walk and back to Christ Church without stopping. I'm amazed. I think I could definitely switch over, although I'll have to find a way to carry water with me when it gets hot (I have to have my hands free).

Another thing I wanted to note: at Milton Keynes yesterday, we had lunch in their rather nice canteen and I noticed that they have a bar in the corner! Seems a bizarre idea for a workplace, but who knows what's normal in Milton Keynes?

So, it occurs to me, reading back the entries here from the last week or so that I have spent far too much time bitching mostly about work and so I think it's time for a blessing count.

• My health: While this is not as good as it could be (i.e. I get colds all the time) it's not like I have to go to hospital ever or anything like that so I think that counts as a plus
• General: I live in a country where I have freedom of choice about my religion and orientation and where no-one will actually try to kill me on behalf of the state for taking drugs or committing adultery. I have plenty to eat and if I couldn't provide that for myself there are safety nets there. I don't have any problems keeping warm or dry. I may bitch about Britain sometimes, but it's not bad compared to some of the alternatives.
• My house: It has made a huge difference to my quality of life living in a house I really like in a city I love. I was so lucky to find this place - it ended up being a last minute thing because the place that I was going to have (which wasn't nearly as good) wasn't going to be ready in time and this place was pretty much the only one I could find within both my price range and the area of the city I wanted (i.e. not too far out) so I was pretty much going to have to take it whatever happened and then it turned out to be lovely. Hoorah.
• My job: I know I bitch about it all the time but actually my job is not bad. There may be a couple of annoying people here and it may be a bit of a commute but the work itself is fairly interesting, I get to work fairly autonomously, I have quite a nice boss and I get paid frankly far more than what I'm worth which has to be good. Also, they are still paying for me to beef up my CV with useless qualifications. Plus, it would appear that GE have unofficially given in about the tea in that our security passes will once again let us into the nice coffee bit but no-one has announced this. Bless
• My friends: Are fantastic. They're good fun, have great ideas, organize me to go out and do things and are generally all round fab.
• My family: Are also fantastic. I'm very close indeed to my immediate family (as those of you who've been reading this for a while may remember). They're always there for me to whine about whatever's bugging me or share whatever I'm happy about. They're a great laugh and we enjoy lots of the same things (my Mum is one of the best shopping partners in the whole world :) ). Yay for them
• My boyfriend: Ahhhh, he's so lovely. Plus he puts up with me being endlessly soppy and adoring with remarkable good grace, suppressing his natural cynicism for the cause. He lets me bully him into making me tea pretty much whenever I want (with the exception of being the first one out of bed in order to perform said task) and lets me worm my little head under his arm pretty much whenever I want a hug (i.e. pretty much all the time :) ). He puts up with me when I'm depressed and when I'm happy - both of which can be a strain. And he loves me loads*. And he's fantastic in bed.

So, there you are. It's great to be me.

* I am as certain of this as it is possible to be about the feelings of a person who is not myself.

For most people, finals is a bad part of their time at university. They remember the stress, the nerves. But for me it was like my whole university experience intensified - it was intense but ultimately I look back on it and I enjoyed it. The feeling of being full of knowledge, ready to go. I guess part of it was that I worked hard in that final term, mostly on past paper questions so I really did feel prepared. More than just learning the stuff I had a handle on what topics would be covered in each paper so that I could for example not revise statistics at all (the one part of my course which totally lost me) and concentrate on probability and linear programming. I even knew which topics I might get an alpha in and which would probably be beta's. About once a week I would boil over and Alex would take me out to dinner to calm down. I would describe to him in great detail my exam plan for whichever paper and, to his credit, he would listen without looking bored and say encouraging things, remembering enough from his finals to give me sensible advice.

So, I did a lot of work. But I also still managed to have fun. I'm pretty sure I made it to OUSFG most weeks although I stopped staying late. I had Suz, Rach and Marta round all the time, sitting working (or drawing horses in Rachs' case), laughing, singing along to Joseph or Phantom, drinking tea, calming each other down.

Even when it came time to do the exams themselves I wasn't scared, I was high. Geared up on adrenaline. The difference between that and mods was almost palpable - I hadn't done hardly any past papers for mods revision and ended up not really knowing what to expect. On edge, but in a good way. One of my enduring memories of Oxford is the afternoon of Saturday 17th June 2000. I had my B1 paper (set theory, computability and logic) which was definitely my favourite. I was going really well and when I got to the end of one of the further logic questions, I found this -

Deduce that L' is compact (you may assume that L is compact)

Now I knew that L wasn't compact. And I knew a really short proof of that. I could also see that if it was compact then it was easy to show that L' was also compact. I guessed from context that what was really meant was complete not compact. I wasn't feeling rushed (I'd done 5 questions and had 20mins left) so I decided to be a bit smart. I proved the result requested with the assumption stated. I then disproved the assumption. I then proved the completeness of L and from there deduced the completeness of L'.

Now I know this makes me really sad but doing that made me feel really high - I was knowledge girl! I headed out of the exam in the sun down to Parsons Pleasure for the OUSFG punt party, told Alex about it in an extremely excited fashion and then drank, ate, laughed and punted home for more drinking, laughing, etc. That day was like the archetype of my life in Oxford. It was great. This userpic was taken on that day as I head across the field to the party still in my gown and sub fusc.

When I finished my exams, we all went to the pub and got drunk and laughed and I went home that weekend and watched the whole of the first week of Wimbledon. I'm not kidding! I got up at about 11am, had breakfast, mooched and turned it on at 12 on the dot. Because the results day was so close to when I finished (2 weeks) I felt like I was in suspended animation. I had a pretty good idea of how well I'd done, enough to tell me that I was on the borderline of 1 and 2:1. The next weekend I went back to Oxford to stay with Alex so I could go get my results on Tuesday from Schools. I went over at lunchtime and they still hadn't put them up. I went over the bridge to college and put the tennis on. Every couple of hours I would head back to exam schools to check. Now I felt scared - now it was out of my hands. I watched the Williams sisters play each other in the women’s quarters with my stomach churning. I headed out of college again at 4:30 to check schools and met Karen on Cowley Place coming back. She congratulated me on getting a first! I was so excited that I actually punched the air. I didn't quite dare ring Mum to tell her til I'd been to schools and seen it myself. Sometimes I still can't quite believe it. I got a first! I went round the corner and rang Mum, Alex, Dad, Nan, everyone. I had planned to pretend that I had failed and then admit it but I was too excited even for that. Mum cried and rang all her friends. Alex took me out for dinner and when we went to the pub all my friends seemed much less surprised than me. We bought champagne from the bar. I still feel like grinning uncontrollably when I remember it. It was one of the best experiences of my life.