Heigh-ho another interview

2005-01-29 at 8:09 p.m.

The physics exam was not the best thing I've ever done. They had sneakily put in the answers to the questions - say X is 4, prove this - which meant that I could actually see that I had got the answer wrong during the exam. However, I gave it my best shot and will definitely revise next time. Gave my reference sheet thing to the course director, whose response on learning I'd been accepted into South Bank was to groan and beg me to come to the exams. Higher education facilities get their funding cut if students drop out or don't turn up for final exams, you see. So I had to faithfully promise to turn up - which I will, I paid £200 for this, I want my piece of paper at the end!

I had my interview for City university yesterday (that'd be Friday). Much more professional and business-y than South Bank, which I'm not sure I liked. It wasn't an actual interview, there were about thirty of us there for a presentation, a group talk thing, and a test. One of the other attendees was the girl who did work experience alongside me so I had someone to talk to. We had to complete a questionnaire (evidently intended to replace an actual interview - cheapskates), and an IQ test that they tried to pretend wasn't. I've taken quite a few of them before - in fact I recognised some of the questions on this one - and it was definitely a standard IQ test mixed in with some very obvious questions about personality. ("You have a bad day at work. Do you a) tell a friend b) bottle it up c) take it out on the patients." Well naturally you'd choose c). Then we had a rather long presentation given to us, complete with fancy PowerPoint bells & whistles to encourage us to choose City. You see they know that we've applied to South Bank as well, what with them (and Kingston) being the only universities in London to do radiography, so the purpose of the presentation was to try to persuade us that City was the best. They made a big point of being an old university...which makes me, who formerly studied at a university founded in 1582 rather amused, as City was founded in 1966. It was definitely a sales talk, and didn't impress me all that much. At least South Bank seemed to be actually picking students based on ability, rather than just trying to cram students in to make more money. The talk was quite useful though, I had forgotten the NHS' "Agenda for Change", which is apparently revolutionising the allied health professions and may well change the nature of radiography to something I would be happier with. The woman talking to us said that for the high-up ranks of radiographers they might be allowed to diagnose and to presribe medicine for some conditions, presumably in order to spare the doctors' time. That implies a greater level of autonomy than I saw at the private hospital, and is a good sign. We also had to give a three minute talk on some topics they gave us and talk in a group in order to prove our communications skills. This shouldn't have been a problem as I will talk to a brick wall if no one is available, but unfortunately I got a little nervous and didn't speak much. Not that it matters, I have an offer already.
So all in all I wasn't terribly impressed by City, although its postgrad sounded good, strangely enough. I still prefer South Bank, they have the nice admissions director too (their secret weapon, I suspect).

Aside from that excitement I've not been doing much.

Though on another note entirely I see that joistmonkey has been talking about the Latin names for worms. Oddly enough I found taxonomy (thats naming/classifying) to be really interesting when we did a little bit about it in biology. Its almost like magic, knowing the secret names of animals. Something very mythic about it. Besides which the names are cool.

And now I have to go because my mother has informed me she has three presents for me. Although the last time she had presents for me it turned out to be socks, I'd best go.

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