Turnings on the path of life
I’ve been meaning to blog about a few things that have happened lately but I don’t seem to be able to settle to do anything that requires some expenditure of effort at the moment. Even simple e-mail replies to friends are taking days because I just don’t seem to be able to get them done. My posting frequency on here has returned to the pathetic once a month on average. It’s rather rubbish, but I suppose given that it’s now the holidays it’s alright and I hope to be back to my usual form by the time 2008 draws to a close. I’ll have to as of course the usual January exams loom and I shall be revising hard for those. For the past year my school has had a building site on the field as a new school is constructed as the current one really is falling apart. We’re finally moving into it after this Christmas holiday, but said exams are due to take place in the mobile buildings that form part of the old site. According to a charismatic religious education teacher I know, the one that my maths exams are to take place in has been recently nicknamed ‘the fridge’ so we’re going to have an interesting time with that.
One reasonably major change that happened recently is that I’ve stopped living at my father’s house during the week. Since my parents split up about ten years ago, my sister and I have switched between the houses with a very complex system that no-one else seems to understand, spending time at both during weekdays and then alternating over weekends – and carrying or sending piles of stuff (mainly school books) back and forth. For years I have got on poorly with my father and have tried to get away from living there whenever I can, and now that I’ve turned eighteen my mother says she isn’t going to stop me anymore and is happy for me to live more at her house during the week. So now I only go to my father’s alternate weekends. I’m obviously not entirely happy with this turn of events: it’s a bit rubbish that I dislike living with one of my parents and my sister thinks I’m being very selfish. I don’t think this is a very fair assessment. I’ve done it because the general atmosphere in the house is rarely pleasant as my father and I clash continuously over trivial things and this is especially true on week nights when I’m dashing off to ringing, coming home late due to after school activities and trying to get homework done. My sister and I have an even worse relationship (always have) so to me it makes sense to try and defuse this situation where I can by spending less time together. You may well disagree, and as I say I don’t think it’s ideal. But given that I think in the long run people will have a pleasanter time during the week, and it’s not as if I’m leaving entirely, it makes sense to me.
Something else that has happened is that I’ve been asked to leave freenode’s staff team because I clearly don’t have the time these days. I think I should have voluntarily given up the responsibility given that I knew this myself, but I just loved the place and the people too much to do that. So now I’ve been retired and told that if I do have more time in the future, I can always reapply. I’ve had a fantastic time with freenode. I’ve met some great and dedicated volunteers who I am definitely not going to lose touch with, and I’ve learnt a great deal about dealing with the more difficult users of the network. I do hope that I’ve been useful in the other direction and freenode has benefited somewhat. I will be sticking around the place and I am still on the network for SilentFlame and Wikimedia channels. I am going to try and focus more on my Wikimedia responsibilities with the extra time: I have jobs that are ideal for the amount of time I have and I shall very much try to do them effectively.
Far more exciting than the above notes is that I received a letter yesterday to inform me that I’ve got a place at Oxford at the college I wanted (Balliol) to study Maths and Philosophy for four years starting from October 2009. I just need, of course, to get the three As at A-level required but assuming I don’t do anything really stupid I think I’m on target to get this. This is fantastic news for me – I feel like I can do anything if I’ve managed this. After going down there to stay for three/four days to be interviewed about ten days ago, I really could imagine myself having a great time there. All the students looking after us were very nice, even if the sixth formers were loud and constantly trying to show off a lot of the time (I befriended two quieter Maths and Philosophy students and lo and behold all three of us got in!). The environment is of course very impressive in terms of the buildings, and the college library is such an amazing place to learn in. Accomodation is basic but fine and the food is okay but is served in a hall of epic proportions. The Balliol tutors who interviewed me were also lovely and I can imagine learning a great deal from them. And of course there are things such as the Oxford Union Debating Society, THE place for debating; all the usual university societies such as gaming and lots and lots of ringing; and it’s not at all a bad city to live in. After such a long time of waiting around and wanting to know I can finally imagine myself there with reasonable surety that it’ll happen.
The interview experience as a whole is a very convoluted affair. The amount of variation between Oxford and Cambridge and between the individual colleges is pretty astonishing at first. I stayed from Sunday evening until Wednesday evening and the vast majority of this consisted of sitting around and reading or revising material for interviews. Everyone gets an interview at the college of choice that they applied to and then at least one other at another college in order to try and give no disadvantage to applying to particular colleges which may, in any individual year, find themselves oversubscribed compared to others which may not have ‘enough’ applicants. The problem is that such extra interviews are arranged in a very haphazard way. When I arrived, the noticeboard holding interview details was about a metre wide and hadn’t extended too far with sheets of paper covered in names and times for various subjects. However, with people arriving and departing all the time and more and more interviews being arranged, the board spread out to the right rapidly, filling the common room’s noticeboard gradually across – including duplicates making it necessary to read everything to ensure you didn’t miss something aimed at you. I was also rung up when further interviews were arranged. By the end there was a dismissal notice up for all the maths and related courses but there was a special section at the bottom asking me to stay a bit longer to be interviewed again.
I ended up being interviewed by three colleges, but two of these had seperate interviews for maths and philosophy so I was interviewed five times in total which was rather a lot. Interviews themselves varied very widely. In maths, in one I was asked reasonably difficult but not exactly brain-mashing questions; in the second I merely chatted about recent topics studied and about the entrance test (which apparently I did pretty well on but I wasn’t told my percentage score); and in the third I was guided through a very hard problem (attempting to define a function of n that would tell you the number of zeroes on the end of n!; got there too). In philosophy, I was asked several technical questions relating to the problem of induction, and some interesting political and linguistic questions that I probably shouldn’t share on the web as they do like to reuse them.
And now it’s Christmas day and thanks to the above I have the best present possible. It’s been a very eventful year and it’ll likely be an equally eventful January, but I’m enjoying the fact that I have an absurd amount of family members over for Christmas right now before I start thinking about such things. In our tiny little three bedroomed semi, we have fifteen people: two grandparents, three aunties, two uncles, five cousins, one father and one sister to give their relations to me. My father’s girlfriend’s house is being used to house some and others are staying in a local bed and breakfast. I went ringing this morning while they all strained at the leash of present opening (I pointed out upon entry that calling people to worship is the whole point of the day *nods*) and now I’m at home writing this and am going to put the turkey in the oven for the non-vegetarians (i.e. the other fourteen people) while they’re out for a walk, which after walking all the way up to and back from my mother’s (fifty minutes each way) to get my Oxford letter yesterday and walking all the way to the cathedral this morning (about an hour) I think I’ve done enough.
A farewell to nonage
I’m not quite sure what I want to write, but I feel I should make some sort of post this night before my eighteenth birthday. As I type this I have roughly five hours until this collection of cells other collections of cells like to refer to as Sean will have been around for eighteen years, the age at which this reasonably liberal society decides that one becomes responsible for oneself and one’s own life, when some rights end and others begin. What will I have achieved in that time? I’ve been fantastically lucky to have been born into the rich western world. I’ve had every opportunity slung at me by enthusiastic family members, I’ve had a pretty good education, and I’m supposed to be planning for a successful career in the eyes of this utilitarian society. I seem to have set myself up as someone who questions and questions and never stops, occasionally suggesting an answer to the mix, and I am proud of the fact that I don’t let myself be influenced quite so heavily as others can be by social tyranny and confirmity. I try to improve things around this plane of existence where I can. In the end I may only be another human and I may be immensely insignificant in the eyes of eternity, but at least I can pretend otherwise and write away on this blog as if I am penning an epic tale.
But this is the point. There have been a thousand eighteenth birthdays like mine, there have surely been equally as many who will have realised this and thought themselves to be philosophically superior. As Charlie says in my favourite passage of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, his friends sitting in a cafe arguing over some issue are merely replaying a conversation had a thousand times before by similar groups. There is precious little originality, and there is precious little variety left in our lives. We laugh at the same jokes and we slot ourselves into the moulds available in society: our education systems turn out doctors and lawyers and managers who then pick from a similar choice of family circumstances. And then we lose our fervour, and become dull and routine, never changing as we plod away at the lives we have chosen. It is oft said that the young are idealistic and unsettled, and that we have ridiculous, ignorant ideas of how we want to shape the world. But this is something we must keep. If everyone just does something that’s gone before and occasionally something new is thought up, why bother? If we settle for what is practical and easy and we don’t instead try our hardest to bring variety and difference and change then you might as well collapse all generations into one and stamp a historical label upon them all as a era of repitition.
The above is probably full of fallacies and I’m sure I’m a hypocrite in so many ways here. If what we have right now isn’t good enough, and never will be according to this model, what is it that we are trying to reach? Why have variety if actually it doesn’t turn out to be very much different for individuals? Maybe by sticking with a routine and what one has one has merely reached the ideal situation. And maybe it is all irrelevent anyway as we all die, and it all ends. Maybe instead of worrying about trying to strike out we should try to achieve that fabled balance between the extremes of progress and conservation, and be satisfied in the knowledge that we’re never likely to divine some sort of eternal meaning, but trying makes us understand things better.
The above is what goes round and round in my head on a day to day basis. When I see a tired looking worker on the bus or a bored school pupil, when I see a stereotypical student or teenager or toddler just going through their lives, I consider these issues. I’m not going to try to pick a side here on the question of what the answer is here. All I would like to hope and set as a goal is that I keep thinking. If we ever put aside questions as unanswerable, there isn’t much point in having the questions at all. And in this again I’m just another would-be philosopher who likes to play around with questions, just someone else who secretly thinks themselves better for doing so, but knows they’re really not. So I’ll keep trying to be original and new, and I know I’ll never likely be happy with how that comes out, and I’ll never be satisfied with the quest. But a life with no certainty and permenance and purpose is infinitely better than one of false surety and contentment. There has to be something more than mere happiness. I suspect I’ll always hold that belief.
I won’t be any different tomorrow morning, but this was worth saying, even if it was a bit garbled and unclear – but that’s sort of the point. Good night.
Real history
Today history will be made, today the world will be changed for better or worse. Today, the most powerful country in a world that divides itself such camps based on concepts of so-called ‘national identity’, culture and even race will decide who it wants as its leader, who it chooses to place in what is probably the most powerful job on the planet. It’s been a fantastically vibrant and involved election. The turnout is predicted to be very high, and there are so many factors involved even today no-one really knows which way it will go. I certainly have no idea. Obama has captured a massive chunk of a conservative nation’s favour through his fantastic oratory. The polls all predict a win. Yet McCain has bounced back again and again, and there is nothing to suggest he won’t manage that again. Both sides have things holding them back. The world is dissatisfied with Bush’s Republican run of the presidency, but Barack Obama faces the question of his race. If America finds itself capable of putting aside the simple colour of his skin, and his unusual name, humanity will have shown itself capable of moving a pretty significant step closer to the end of simple and unreasonable prejudices. If Americans can put aside their tribalistic drives for what is the most important job in the world, even if it is less important than it once was, then the presidency itself will have massive potential for change. America’s credibility as a voice on the world stage that isn’t there purely due to economic might will be enhanced. Racism will seem old-fashioned, and the race-blind young as they are called will flourish and old prejudices will wither and die.
Our world isn’t in fantastic shape at the moment. As in the fifties when the Cold War was at its nuclear peak, we feel afraid of external threats, but from within we also face massive problems. Warzones only get worse across the world: the Congo has recently erupted into full-scale battle; the Middle East is as violent as usual and no-one seems to have any solutions. Nuclear weapons and other such terrors remain stockpiled, and the West hypocritically demands that smaller states cease their quest for them, raising backs more than anything else. In so-called civilised nations, utilitarianism returns to make torture and abuse of human rights morally acceptable as a salve for the fear that grips the countries, once bastions of human rights and civil liberties, that have now sunk into depravity in the name of a little temporary security. And from within consumerism and rampart capitalism maintains the expectancy of the impossibility that is infinite growth, of always getting more for less. Community collapses, education becomes entirely based around capital in one’s later life, and people lose sight of the greatness that humanity can achieve through thought, consideration and generosity to others, rather than a selfish desire to smother pains with ignorance and material goods. And then, on top of all of this, the human race faces extinction from climate change, or from wars against each other over dwindling natural resources. With our free market situation it seems to me that it’ll only become economical to do something about this threat when it’s already too late – at least for some, if not all, of us.
But despite these problems we still have one resource that is so very important and so very powerful. We have people. People might be selfish and uncaring, but they can also show incredible altruism, respect and thoughtfulness. Humans have already achieved so much more than solving the above list of grievances. We’ve constructed ideas and fields of science and technology from a primitive existence in caves and forests. We have thought our way outside of ourselves and outside the confines of this doubtable empirical world, and we’ve struggled for truth in the battlefield of ideas. If we can vote in Obama, if we can show that we’re more than mere nature and biology would define us as, then we’re making the first step onto a path to better things. Come on America. Let us remember this day in history with pride.
Tantalising times
This blog is in dire need of an update, and in my uncharateristically cosy attic room this evening I intend to fulfull said need. Things have been happening lately with regard to the rest of my life. I finally got my university application off a few weeks ago (wow I need to update more often), applying for Maths and Philosophy at Oxford, Durham, Birmingham, York and Nottingham universities. The first two have been my actual choices of places I really want to go to for some time, but both are hard to get in to and hence insurance choices, as they are usually called, are very much needed. This was particularly difficult for me. Some people visit all of the places they apply to, but I was a bit stuck in this regard as all you really get on open days are the advertising from the universities, and this is also true of the prospectuses they unload on you. I really found it hard to pick places where I would like to go, or where I would like to go as opposed to others. Fortunately, my course isn’t all that common (I couldn’t really apply to either seperately either because my personal statement was so geared towards the joint honours course) and so I had a narrow list to whittle down, but my list still isn’t as well thought out as it probably should be, considering I could well end up at any one of these places for three or four years. What made this harder (wow again I need to update more often, all this past tense) was the fact that I got such conflicting feedback. My form tutor, who knows me pretty well, said that she would eat her hat if I didn’t get into one of my first two choices and that I really shouldn’t agonise over the other three. My mother on the other hand (who isn’t fantastically keen on me applying to Oxford at all, although she’d probably say this sentence is misrepresenting her view…) continually points out the risks at each stage. This makes more sense and is probably my approach, but I will see who was more realistic come Spring 2009 when offers, or lack thereof, come through.
While it’ll take until then for places like Oxford to let me know whether they want me, I’ve actually already had two offers this half term. This is very reassuring as at least I know I am going to university at all – and as a friend points out, going somewhere I chose. York have offered me ABB as the A level grades they want, including an A in maths which I already have and so this is an ideal insurance offer, should my A levels go fantastically, superbly wrong. Nottingham have given me something less useful; AAB including an A in both maths and further maths as while I am likely to meet this offer if I do, I’d rather go to one of my other choices. The difficulty now is picking between these kind of places, and this I suppose comes down to the course content, something I need to look into more. Probably worth visiting them too, but this can wait until the time of picking between offers comes along, which of course could well be just between these two.
Speaking of this half term holiday, it’s not been going quite according to plan so far. I very much intended to get some non-school stuff done, catch up on some awaiting tasks and generally take stock of things after a solid block of weeks into the new year (note the lack of figure as I can’t be bothered to go and work it out). However I was shocked to discover, on Saturday entirely by chance from an Internet friend, that the Oxford entrance exam for maths is the Wednesday after the holiday, i.e. three days into the term, and as far as I was aware at this point school didn’t know about it. Fortunately I was able to get in touch with a maths teacher from school, and I borrowed text books to revise from as the test is on material we did ages ago (to allow non-further maths students to do it), and it seems the school will be automatically sent an exam paper since I have applied. This has meant that this half term has, after homework, consisted of preparing for this test. I did my first past paper this afternoon, and got around 70%. Adding on marks for silly errors I believe I would have fixed due to careful checking over in the actual exam, this gives me about 80%. This mark doesn’t mean anything however, because the Oxford website is not particularly helpful in terms of what it makes available. For the two specimen papers available, answers are provided but only general notes about how marks are applied, rather than them being split up for parts of questions. For the two actual past papers available, one is on a slightly extended syllabus so isn’t as helpful and neither have mark schemes, but instead average marks and average marks of successful applicants are shown – and they differ between the two years a fair bit. So on the specimen papers I can find out what I got right, but I can’t know if my mark is any good, and on the past papers themselves I can’t even start marking anything. Great.
From what I have done, and through a little web forum searching and chatting to people, I’ve come to the conclusion that a mark of around 80% plus a good interview is what I need in order to have a fair shot at a place, and I think this is something that I can achieve. Most of the test is very approachable, with only a few super hard questions that I’m not likely to get, unlike the Cambridge maths admission test where getting half of it right would be a prodigy-like performance. The questions tend to focus on spotting something, a fact or trick or hidden axiom in a question, which then makes the rest of it pretty simple. I know that I’m not going to be able to answer some of the very hard ones in an exam situation, but I can get the more normal ones pretty well. And if I can’t, I’d like to hope that this means I’m not someone who should go to Oxford for any kind of maths course, and that I’d just find it too hard anyway. I’m trying to convince myself to put my faith in the test and interview process as an effective selection filter. Actually succeeding at said convincing is an entirely different matter of course.
My obsession for getting into Oxford is still a serious issue, especially considering the fact that it’s probably quite likely (assigning probabilities is pretty futile here) I won’t get in, and also that I may well not get into my second choice either. I’ve asked Oxford to consider me for maths should they not want me for maths and philosophy (they give this choice to all applicants) and if I were to get in for this, though unlikely since the philosophy is my stronger side, I don’t know what I’d do: give up my favourite subject or give up Oxford? it seems I’d give up the former at present. I seem to have this idea at the moment that if I don’t, I’ll be missing a mark of self-worth, and that if I do get in, I’ll never again have to worry about my own standards. This is silly. My abilities and more importantly who I am are not going to change because of this application, if I do get in I’ll be very far from the top in terms of ability, and plenty of bright people go to other places. It also doesn’t help how I cannot help but measure myself based on my academic success or failure. I would never, ever claim that ability is something to judge people on and I stick to the idea that choices and intent are what make someone who they are. But I don’t follow this in my own thoughts, that maelstrom of convoluted contradictions.
So with regard to university I shall see how things pan out. With regard to the non-school stuff that I was planning to do over half term, I’m starting to despair at my own lack of ability to actually do the less interesting aspects of my work for projects that I am so passionate and enthused about. It seems that my grandfather’s life-long comment that I’m inherently lazy is coming more and more true. But I think I’m finally accepting that I’m not going to override this natural tendency any time soon. Sure, I could force myself to do things as well as school work and have no leisure time at all, but I’d hardly be doing much of quality. I can’t go forever as some people I know can. So on the advice of a long-time colleague on the web, I’m trying to delegate more, and section myself down to things that I can manage and do and fit around everything else. I’m restricting my Wikimedia work down to jobs I know that I can do well and I’m going to stop taking on other things that I end up leaving hanging for ages because of school and the like, only coming back to them later. I’m going to keep at my role as user support on freenode when I can, working away at something I know I do reasonably well where I can properly and consistently put something towards a project that I care about.
This blog post is feeling more and more detached as I go through all these topics, a common symptom of not having updated properly in a while, and the quality of my writing is somewhat slipping. The other thing coming up pretty soon is my eighteenth birthday, and at the moment I have three parties planned for different groups of people. Party is a word I am loathe to use because of the connotations of such events for my age group. I am not going to be drinking alcohol or going clubbing or having hundreds of people round to trash my house as seems to be the traditional image. Instead, I am taking full advantage of having an inset day on my birthday, which is a Monday, and also one on the Friday before the weekend, giving me a four day weekend. On the Friday I am having a LAN party with Teh Geek Warriors, the usual group of geeks from school, and we intend to get some serious gaming done. The Saturday will just be filled up with leisurely pursuits, since I have asked for the time off work. The Sunday sees a fancy lunch for the family, something that is far more for them than me, since it’ll involve my mother’s boyfriend’s children, who I’m not exactly keen on, and my cousins dog, which I hate. And then on the evening of my birthday itself my friends of my own age (geeks are all younger) will be round for some form of meal my mother is cooking. I am at this point incredibly grateful to her for doing all of this, and will endeavour to do as much as I can to help throughout. I am looking forward to my long birthday weekend. I shall try to update this blog more often, and certainly will do so for those four days. Here’s hoping they are memorable enough that I won’t need to re-read the post to recall.