9.52pm. Went to Keith Moseley's tutorial session on light as a wave and a particle. I'm not sure what I expected him to be like in terms of personality, although he and I have exchanged a little correspondence via FirstClass (the OU email and forum software).
Keith turned out to be a complete delight, who knew his field inside out. He talked fluidly without any notes for about 80 minutes all told, included numerous experiments to demonstrate what he was saying. I wish Keith had been my physics teacher when I was at school (although the one I actually had was pretty good he was rather old-fashioned).
On my way back, Kirsten was irritated because Keith had deflected a question of hers asked after he had finished and he was trying to pack things away. The question was about something horribly complicated, not unreasonably Keith answered with a half-explanation and the line "...but don't get too worried about it at this stage, it's horribly complicated."
As we left the building, she huffed and muttered loudly, "I hate being told that something is too complicated", and I suddenly had a vision in my mind of a sulky little girl being told to wear a dress that she can't stand just because Grandmama is coming for tea.
Kirsten is many things, low-maintenance is not one of them, and clearly she can't bear the thought that something could be intellectually beyond her. To my mind I am happy to be given part of an explanation with a caveat that I probably can't understand the rest because academically I have gaps in my knowledge.
She is certainly very clever in many fields, scientifically she dwarfs me, but there are times when I wish she would at least pretend to act less clever to give the rest of us a chance. Well, give me a chance. Granted she's studying with the OU but notwithstanding that she appears to know almost everything without ever having gone through a learning process, so I feel like I'm years behind her.
Nevertheless Kirsten is also good fun, even if stories of her medical disasters (TB, herniating five discs in her back, etc etc) seem pretty shocking.
Anyhoo as we walked back from Pevensey to Swanborough (the accommodation block) we fell in with Linda, the Activity D (biology) tutor from today's morning and afternoon sessions. As we all walked on I spotted an adult rabbit sitting on the grass only a few feet away, quite unpeturbed by our presence, apparently the campus is littered with them (I suspect 'infested' might be a better word).
Foxes are also extremely common here, I heard that someone saw a fox sitting on top of their car, and it was relatively tame enough to continue sitting there whilst the car owner took a photograph. Rather nice to see nature coexisting with man in this way.
I phoned home and had a lovely chat with Alan. I wish that he was here with me, even if it were just in the evenings. I did even think about offering to pay for him to take the course alongside me. I can see the lure of people doing this course and living off-campus, but I can certainly understand what the OU means when it says that to get the full benefit of the course you should live on campus. It sure reminds me of being an undergraduate at Coventry.
Tomorrow is Activity A, Rocks and Radioactivity. For some reason I have been looking forward to this activity, so fingers crossed it won't suck. It's in the John Maynard Smith building again in the lab directly below the lab we were in today, so another non-air conditioned day. Never mind it's all good for the brain.
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