![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bak 2 skool
Oct. 1st, 2008 02:55 amFor anyone who's behind with my journal: So, this academic year I am going to Birkbeck College to do a Graduate Diploma in Chemistry. You can take this over one year or two, but what I'm doing is taking all of the Final Year undergraduate courses along with the current UGs. This mostly works, as most of the modules I'd want to do are being offered this year.
Yesterday was my first official evening at college – a lecture on Transition Metal chemistry. People online asked me how it went and my only reply was "Still processing". I think there were 25 people in the class – a mixture of 3rd and 4th years plus one other Graduate Diploma person. The lecture was revision of the material covered in their 2nd year class, and it was strange. ( Chemistry stuff. )
But I am really rather annoyed with some of the other students. Birkbeck is a college for "mature students" - meaning "aged over 21". I had been hoping it would also carry the other meaning of "mature", but apparently not. So far I have been to college twice – once for the induction evening, and again for the first lecture – and so far I have been asked idiotic questions about my most visible disability twice. In fact the same actual question by two different people! And not only that, it might well be the first time I've ever even heard this idiotic question about my disability!
It is... "Is that yours?", in reference to the walking stick which I am both carrying and using.
What are they expecting me to say? "No, I stole it from my granny"? (That would explain why it is made of fluorescent blue transparent plastic, yes.) Or "No, I'm just carrying it for a friend"? It's such a stupid question that the only way to answer it is with a simple "Yes". But that prompts the further idiotic question "Why do you have it?".
I hate that question. ( Disability rant. )
Yesterday was my first official evening at college – a lecture on Transition Metal chemistry. People online asked me how it went and my only reply was "Still processing". I think there were 25 people in the class – a mixture of 3rd and 4th years plus one other Graduate Diploma person. The lecture was revision of the material covered in their 2nd year class, and it was strange. ( Chemistry stuff. )
But I am really rather annoyed with some of the other students. Birkbeck is a college for "mature students" - meaning "aged over 21". I had been hoping it would also carry the other meaning of "mature", but apparently not. So far I have been to college twice – once for the induction evening, and again for the first lecture – and so far I have been asked idiotic questions about my most visible disability twice. In fact the same actual question by two different people! And not only that, it might well be the first time I've ever even heard this idiotic question about my disability!
It is... "Is that yours?", in reference to the walking stick which I am both carrying and using.
What are they expecting me to say? "No, I stole it from my granny"? (That would explain why it is made of fluorescent blue transparent plastic, yes.) Or "No, I'm just carrying it for a friend"? It's such a stupid question that the only way to answer it is with a simple "Yes". But that prompts the further idiotic question "Why do you have it?".
I hate that question. ( Disability rant. )