All Graduated

Well, that’s that. The end has been and gone. I am now a graduate of Royal Holloway, University of London.

Sheesh. I know it’s a cliche, but where did the time go? Seriously, where did it go? I don’t feel grown up enough to have a whole three letters after my name! Only a week and a bit ago, I left campus for the last time. Saying goodbye to Medicine, to happy memories in Tuke and Reid, to times spent rushing through Canada Copse in the rain to a 9am lecture, or times spent stumbling through Canada Copse after a drunken night out at a Monkey’s Mondays (oh, Monkey’s Mondays…), to afternoons spent lazing in the quad with Pimm’s, or in Crosslands on a gloomy winter’s evening, to hours spent trying to stay awake in the Windsor Auditorium or trying to get comfortable in MLT, to horrendously early mornings putting milk out at the College Shop, to campus tours in the sun with enthusiastic parents (and not-so-enthusiastic prospective students…), to times spent making that long walk down to Kingswood to play a few games of squash, or evenings with the debating lot getting raucous and ripping each other’s arguments apart, to late nights writing stats reports and lab reports and trawling through journals for a decent reference or two, to walking up that path to Founder’s in the spring when the daffodils are out and realising that there’s nowhere else in the whole world that I’d rather be…

Yeah, I’m not sure I’m quite ready to let go yet. It doesn’t even seem real yet, in fact. Though graduation was lovely- here, look at this photo. Isn’t it lovely? 

Yes, lovely. Lovely day. Very hot in those ruddy gowns that, as our Principal said, clearly weren’t designed for women- or anyone with shoulders less than 6ft wide. And someone stole my mortarboard after we threw them in the air, so I ended up with an extra small one that I had to balance atop my head for the remainder of the afternoon. But yes, lovely. I very much enjoyed chatting to the lecturers one last time (though I ended up popping to a prof’s leaving do at a pub the following week anyway, so my many emotional goodbyes subsequently seemed a bit redundant). And my parents had a blast. Overall, it couldn’t have gone much better.

But when I look at photos of graduation, as lovely as they are, it seems odd that they’re mine- that this was my graduation, that the psychology cohort I’ve grown to love over these past three years came together that afternoon to celebrate what is, admittedly, a pretty big achievement. It’s weird that it’s happened already. You see photos of friends in higher years graduating before you, you have an idea of what’s going to happen, and you know that one day, that’s going to be you. And yet, when it happens, despite months of expectation, years of anticipating that unavoidable, harshly inevitable day, the day that’s been floating around in the back of your mind even since you were a fresher- yet, when it happens, it doesn’t seem real. 

Eh, I’ll get over it. We all do. 

Now it’s onto the next thing: a master’s in a different city, with different people. A different vibe entirely. However, one thing I am particularly glad about regarding my undergrad years (aside from the degree itself, of course) is just how many wonderful people I managed to meet, and especially how many of those people I’ll be keeping in touch with. Yes, there’s a sense of ‘onwards and upwards’ now, and I might not be going back to the campus at Holloway any time soon, but there’s a lot I’ll be taking with me from that wonderful, wonderful place. 

Taxi

Taxi ride back to campus from a friend’s house in Egham. Taxi driver is chatting shit as usual, rabbiting on about how we only use 30% of our brain or something after I’ve told him I’m a psychology student (can I just clarify here: WE USE ALL OF OUR BRAINS FOR FUCK’S SAKE FFJHJSHAJH). We start driving round the perimeter of campus, the signs that say ‘ROYAL HOLLOWAY 100M TO YOUR LEFT’ coming up, glowing in the night.

After I mention I’m a third year, he says, “oh, are you going to miss this place? Guess not, since it’s Egham”, and then chuckles.

I say, “of course I am. This is my home.”

Fuuuuuuck.

I See What You Did There

The more I do of this ruddy project, the more I begin to remember why I chose it in the first place.

Early visual processing has to be one of the most beautiful aspects of psychology I have studied so far. Take simple orientation selectivity in the primary visual cortex, for example. Retinal ganglion cells are found in the retina of the eye and act as a sort of mediator between photoreceptors, which receive light from the outside world, and cortices in the brain (though this is a very simplified conceptualisation of their position in the hierarchy of vision, and there are other mediating neurons which contribute, but this example is just to illustrate a point).

Anyway, each neuron has a receptive field. However, these receptive fields are not simply activated by electrical input; they have a clever structure, with a centre which can be positive and a surround which can be negative (or vice versa). This means that if a stimulus activates just the centre and not the surround of an ON-centre, OFF-surround receptive field of a neuron, then this produces the most activation in this neuron. But by covering the whole receptive field, no response is illicited as the negative surround inhibits the activation of the centre. Get a bunch of these receptive fields overlapped in a row and this can lead to orientation tuning, with the preferred stimulus at the ‘right’ orientation activating a whole row of ON-centres, generating maximum activity that can be integrated and sent to a simple cell which therefore preferentially responds to a line of a particular orientation.

This sort of stuff is quite difficult to put into words without the use of diagrams or schematics, but the point is that the most simple idea of receptive fields that can extract very basic information can ultimately lead to the wonderfully rich percepts that you and I experience every day by the processes of integration, summation, inhibition, and a bunch of other mechanisms which utilise these receptive fields (along with a bit of clever filling in thanks to the rest of our very clever brains).

This is sort of vaguely related to my project, which is actually about how we process motion-induced texture boundaries; essentially, the appearance of boundaries when a bunch of dots of equal luminance move about and seem to bump into each other. This is actually a pretty complicated thing to extract and such stimuli are known as ‘second order’, meaning that instead of being a simple difference between something being there or not being there (so light and dark, for example), the processing of such stimuli actually require a comparison of two points. The easiest way of conceptualising this is thinking about first order as a difference in luminance (light and dark), whilst second order is more about contrast, so it’s relative rather than absolute.

Thing is, although the visual processing of features such as texture or contrast would seem to be quite basic things for visual scientists to investigate, not much is really known about how we process second order stimuli versus first order stimuli. There are different computational models about and so on, but we’re still trying to identify where exactly this processing takes place, as finding this out tells us how it happens. That’s where our project comes in, and by the looks of the rather sparse literature that’s out there, technically no-one has done this stuff (behaviourally) before- though there are similar experiments looking at slightly different parameters.

Anyway, it really is interesting stuff, and although writing up this project makes me want to rip off my fingernails at times, there’s no doubt that visual processing (in theory, anyway) is a beautiful area to study.

On Being A Finalist

Well, this is it. The third and final year. Myself and my friends and now all officially finalists.

WHAT DA FUUUUU

I don’t know where the summer has gone; it’s been buried under a mass of ugly children’s shoes and my cat’s heavenly-soft fur. As always, it was lovely being able to spend time with the homegirls, also know as the bezzays or biatches or even the Chi High massive (yeah mate). We had a few boogies in Thursgays and many a drinky-poo in Wests. I went to Prague and Cambridge with the mother, and both trips were very pleasant.

However, though it was nice to chill and have a catch-up, I’m glad to be back. I’ve got my own little room in Reid (see pictures below) and despite the incredibly small bathroom and single bed, I quite like it. More than anything, I’m already enjoying being back on campus in the midst of things, and it will only get better once all of the uni crew return to frolic with me in our last Freshers’ (or Welcome) Week. I have a feeling it’s going to be CRAY CRAY, as the nomenclature goes.

I am feeling a little unprepared and intimated for the work that we’re going to do this year, and I can feel a touch of something foreboding in my loins (potentially caused by the Pot Noodle I had for lunch). It’s going to be a good year, but definitely “word hard, play hard”. After all, this is it. The beginning of the end. The big blowout. The final countdown.

Ohmagherd.

Second Year Has Been and Gone

The title says it all, really. The end of summer term has flown by, and now we’re in that awful limbo between second and third year, without (in the case of myself and my fellow psychology students) knowing if we’ve quite made it into next year. 

So, I guess a reflection over what’s happened in the past year is needed. For me, it’s been a haphazard year, very different to last year in terms of its feel, its focus, even day-to-day experiences. Last year, we were freshers and we knew it. University was a veritable playground for us to exercise and expand our minds in an almost carefree fashion. Yes, we had exams, but poor performance, though certainly not ideal, was not the end of the world. And even outside of academia, there was a sense of discovery, the feeling that anything was possible because it was all new and shiny and fresh. 

This year, we returned to what now felt like an old home. But it was an old home that had changed a lot in the space of a few months…Instead of living within the safety of campus, we were now dispersed through Egham and the Green. Even now, I still can’t decide ultimately which I prefer; the convenience of campus is what’s bringing me back for third year, but there are definitely positives to living in a house, one of which has to be my lovely, homely room. 

It’s been a very work-intensive year, to say the least. I’ve thrown myself into my “extra curriculars”, probably at the expense of decent marks in my exams, but it has been fun. The fact that certain individuals are graduating this summer and hence won’t be around in September means that both the Squash Club and the Debating Society are going to be very different entities from now on. I’ve really enjoyed having my radio show on Insanity, even though just the thought of doing a show still makes me nervous. Being a Psychology Rep. has been wonderful, as always, and I’ll always remember Faculty Board meetings with a fondness that meetings should never be remembered with. There’s something very empowering about sitting in a room full of people unbelievably more senior and experienced than you, and yet your opinion still mattering and being heard. 

Work-wise, my time in the College Shop has actually been much better than expected, mainly due to the wonderful individuals who work there. It’s hardly the most fascinating of jobs, but it’s definitely become a positive part of my university experience and the money comes in handy, to say the least. I’m glad to have a few months off, but at the same time it’s a comfort knowing that the job is ready and waiting for me when I return in September. I’ve done the odd bit of Student Ambassador work throughout the year, mainly the key Open Days (one of which is tomorrow- exciting!) but I’m making the most of the job now that term is over and I’m not working in the College Shop. It’s a nice fallback to have. 

And then there’s my internship, though I’m planning on writing a dedicated post about that as it, too, has become a significant part of my life in general. 

This has become a bit of a mindless list of “things I’ve done this year and enjoyed LOL”, and it almost sounds as if I’ve done no academic work this year- and yet the opposite couldn’t be more true. My fellow psychos will empathise with me when I say it’s been a tough year academically. Coursework after coursework, followed by the most intense exam period of my life…I might not be a lover of the summer, but I can’t help but feel a few months off is something we all need after that, even if I may be working in an asinine retail job for the majority of it. 

So, I guess I don’t know how I feel about this year. Until second year, I’d never felt homesick whilst at university, but suddenly things became very intense and real, and there were certainly times that I didn’t want to be here- a shock considering the love affair I’d had with RoHo (yes, I did) last year. The rose-tinted glasses are well and truly off. 

But for all this sense of realism and almost harshness of the impact of second year, I still love this place. I still love the wonderful people in it, especially my particularly close friends who have now, for wont of a better phrase, revealed themselves as a ruddy good and reliable bunch. At times it’s been a bit of a struggle, but certainly a worthwhile one, and I can’t help but look forward to what third year may bring- hopefully yet another new flavour entirely. 

Where is my Mind?

Figure it’s about time I actually write a post about how this term has been so far and shizzle. I guess I’ve been putting it off for so long because it’s been a strange term; second year has taken me completely by surprise. First year was different to how I expected, of course, but it was infinitely better than I could ever have imagined. Second year has been more of a mixed bag, and so I thought it would be better to write this when I’m feeling more positive about the whole thing (as if I’d written this post in the first few weeks of term, it wouldn’t have been fun reading).

One of the huge changes in second year is living in a house. I remember this time last year, when we were booking numerous house viewings and panicking about finding somewhere half decent to live, and we came across this house and fell in love with it. However, viewing a house and living there is not the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the cottagey kitchen and the huge shower, and my room has become ‘a home away from home’ (though I did coerce it into being so) but when there are damp and mould issues and a gas leak and a toilet seat that isn’t attached to the toilet…Alas, these things are to be expected in a Victorian house, and particularly in one being let out to students. To be fair, I don’t spend much time in my house anyway; it’s ended up being somewhere I return to at the end of a long day to crash and nom and faff.

This year has been a lot more work so far. The essays are more abstract and we get less guidance, and with the four lab reports we have to do this year we’re ending up doing 8,000 words per term. It’s a lot. We haven’t received any marks back yet and I could not even begin to guess how that bloody cognitive essay went…Academically, there’s a feeling of wading through, trying to get everything done but knowing that I’ll end up cramming at Christmas.

To be honest, it’s also partly down to all of the other commitments I have this year which seem to take twice as much time as last year even though I’m essentially doing the same thing. As Media and Communications officer of Debating Soc., I now have my own radio show on Insanity- yep, that’s right, I’ve reached the big time. Aside from the general coolness of having a radio show, it’s been going surprisingly well; we’ve got a few regular guest speakers who never fail to be able to string out a debate about middle eastern politics or something else I know pretty much nothing about for a good twenty minutes before we cut to some music. I chip in every now and then with a comment clearly from a layperson’s perspective in the hope of appealing to a wider audience, but to be fair, if you’re listening to the Debating Soc.’s radio show, politics and history are what you’re going to get. I apparently didn’t comprehend that myself before taking the show on.

Squash was particularly heavy over the first couple of weeks- there was a lot of administration stuff to do, as Secretary. It’s calmed down a bit more now and I’m starting to simply enjoy playing again. The social side of squash is pretty intense but crazily fun; I’ve particularly enjoyed a couple of our outings to the SU and a great night at the Magic Wok with copious amounts of Chinese food and wine. I don’t play as often as I’d like but having a gym membership means that I get light cards for free so I really should go and book the courts with a few mateys more often…

Then there’s the College Shop (officially the Store on Campus, but no-one calls it that). Working at the College Shop is a unique experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done retail before (five years at Clarks this month! Worrying times…) but this small-scale retail, this is niche retail, and hence it’s pretty idiosyncratic. In comparison to working at Clarks, the almost absolute freedom granted whilst working in the College Shop was unnerving at first, but now I’m really starting to enjoy being able to faff around a bit without worrying about targets or selling or being excessively nice to customers. For the first time, I don’t feel like I have to be a subservient arse-kisser and it’s really rather refreshing. Admittedly, there are times when I wish there were more aims and targets and general direction, and there is no doubt that when there isn’t much to do, even my four hour shifts drag by awfully slowly. All in all, it’s a decent job and it brings in some very handy extra cash.

I guess those are the main facets of my life at the moment. Sometimes I feel like I hardly socialise, but I’m so incredibly thankful to have made such friends at university that, even if a whole week goes by when I don’t see some of them, we can meet up again and nothing will have changed. The love’s there. It’s like they’re mini-versions of my home friends, and I could never have expected friendships on that sort of level in such a short time frame; I consequently get a lot of those, “shit, I have good friends” moments which have helped me through the times this term when I was feeling a bit low. The first few weeks were tough in particular (spending the whole three months at home during summer was possibly not a good idea) and I was overwhelmed with everything, but now I’m feeling much more integrated with university life and the thought of leaving Royal Holloway, even for a week or something, actually worries me. It’s almost like I’m in a relationship with the place, and we’ve recently had sex and made up and are now in the period of having to spend all of our time together. Hmm.

Oh, and the title? Go listen to the song. It’s by The Pixies. It’s immense.