Law Lectures and Lacrosse

With the first day of lectures over, this year looks like it could be a lot of hard work. This may not be the worst thing ever if I can get into the habit of it as the work itself does also look quite interesting. I have to do a couple of core modules which seem ok but I got to choose one module so the freedom there means that I have been able to pick a module which particularly interests me.

The core modules are Public Law and EU Law and I have been forced to do Comparative public law alongside this all of which seem reasonably dull at times but I think they'll be alright. It's the module on the Law and Internet Commerce that I got to choose which interests me the most. This is because of how different it is to everything else. It is very much an independent research based module with barely any teaching throughout the entire semester, leaving a lot to the students to decide on. The essay question is also very broad which is nice because it gives me the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want to do with it.

I also have a german module to do which doesn't seem too bad. Just a lot of grammar which isn't the most exciting thing in the world, though we were told today that grammar isn't something to be afraid of...

Hopefully I can settle down into a routine of reading and studying for all of these modules and I am hoping that the Internet module will help with that as that is pretty much all based off my own work. 

Alongside my studies I am hoping to start playing Lacrosse which should be fun. I'm not 100% sure what I may have got myself into, having never played before, but that I suppose is part of the fun of it. It should also be good because not many people here have played it before therefore no one is expected to be any good so I might be able to get into a sports team for once! Hopefully this year will be the year I finally learn how to study properly and get good at a sport, either way it looks as if it'll be a lot of fun!

Back to work

Here it is, the end of the summer holidays. It's a shame in some ways, the lack of important things to do was quite nice, however it has started to become a bit boring. Having nothing to do all day is surprisingly difficult even though during the busy periods of the year they seem so easy and are often what we look forward to. 

I came to realise that there are two kinds of boredom over the summer. There's the boredom you get while working or studying where you are mainly bored due to there not being much to do other than what you've been told to do, and the boredom you get when you've done everything you want to do and there's nothing left. I managed to get some sort of mixture of these over the summer through the few weeks of work at the beginning of the holidays and the free time throughout the rest of it.

I can't decide which I prefer. Obviously boredom is never a good thing, but the advantage of the boredom when there are things to do is that often there is some reward at the end of it. This could be the wages that you are being paid or the satisfaction of completing the work at the end of it, which is nice. But then the other kind of boredom is normally a lot easier to get rid of because you have the freedom to do whatever you want and are normally not constrained by anything other than the things around you. 

Obviously I can't really speak for everyone but I much prefer the first kind of boredom. I think I just have issues finding things to do that will keep me occupied for longer periods of time. I keep finding things to do that keep me occupied for a while but then would become boring after a while.  It's not that I have any sort of attention-span issues it's just that I can't go back to something that I've gotten bored of for a while.

Either way, university lectures start back again on monday so that should give me something to do. I am also hoping to do a few more extra-curricular activities this year so that should give me plenty to do. In the meantime though, I'm going to go and watch some random videos on YouTube...

My trip to Berlin

It's almost the end of the summer holidays, I'm going back to Aberystwyth to start my second year tomorrow, though lectures don't start for another three weeks. I'm going back so early as I have some job interviews during the later part of this week. It's almost the end of the summer holidays, I'm going back to Aberystwyth to start my second year tomorrow, though lectures don't start for another three weeks. I'm going back so early as I have some job interviews during the later part of this week.

This summer has been varied and fairly busy, which has been nice as I've always had something to do and I haven't got too bored. I started the summer with six weeks of work which was really boring but I needed the money so I can't really complain. I then spent a few weeks at home, not doing a great deal but enjoying my time, relaxing and catching up with friends from school who I hand't seen for a few months. 

The Brandenburg Gate

I have also just got back from a week in Berlin with my girlfriend which was really nice. We were both quite interested in going to Germany and Berlin in particular, but for different reasons. I,  as a German student, really enjoyed being surrounded by the language and being able to test myself in an active environment where everyone is speaking it around me and I think I coped very well with this. My girlfriend, Emma, is a history student who is really interested in the history of the 20th Century, and especially the Cold war. This did mean a certain amount of her inner "history nerd" as she called it being unleashed anytime we passed some sort of museum or memorial. However that was not a major issue for me as I am also fairly interested in that period but I was more interested in attempting to improve my German. 

Our 1986 Trabant

We started the trip off with a self-drive tour in a Trabant at +Trabi Safari Berlin, which was an amazing experience that I would recommend to anyone who can drive and wants to see the city in a unique and different way. We then went to the Jewish museum which was incredible, the architecture was designed in such a way that you were always unnerved or uncomfortable, which added to the emotion as we read accounts of German Jews during both wars and saw various pictures of Jews in ghettos and concentration camps. 

Checkpoint Charlie

We visited a few other museums, my favourite, the Neues Museum, which boasts the bust of Nefertiti as it's prize attraction. This museum was full of exhibits about ancient cultures such as the Egyptians, the Romans alongside the Germanic tribes of that period amongst other things. We also visited the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was quite good, however it felt a bit like they had tried to fit too much information into to small a space which was a shame, it all felt quite cluttered. However they did have various examples of contraptions people had made in order to escape from East Germany which were really interesting.

It's a shame that the holidays are almost over but I'm sort of looking forward to this year, I guess I'll just have to see how it goes, anyway here are a few more pictures from the holiday.

Das Fernsehturm - The TV Tower

Berlin Wall Memorial

Memorial to the Jews killed in the Holocaust