I didn't want to go to the maths residential. It was an unwelcome interruption, a distraction away from the bike ride and its lofty mountain roads and pretty, flower-filled alpine villages. Instead I would be going to grisly, drizzly Nottingham. Thanks, OU. But as the course was a requirement of both degrees I'm doing I couldn't escape it. Now it's over I'm so glad it was forced upon me. The residential, that is, not Nottingham.
This might seem irrelevant but bear with me. I've mentioned on here before that I once lived in Austria, in Graz, about a decade ago. Each week, every Thursday evening, a gang of us would descend upon the same gasthof for a stammtisch, basically a regular, night-long, beer-fuelled opportunity to talk utter nonsense. I was surrounded by bright, funny people and we'd sit there every week, all 10 or 15 of us, and we'd laugh ourselves sick. Eventually I moved on and the group slowly disintegrated but a few of them still linger in Graz. When I go back, we can manage an equally worthy subset of the original, which is the reason I had to detour my ride to Graz last month, but I miss the big group and I've never been able to find or recreate a similar one anywhere else. And then I arrived in Nottingham.
The beauty of the residential is that you have an instant in, conversationally speaking, with everyone there, which means starting a chat with someone is easy. You're all in the same boat, working towards some future degree and with a life full of stories attached. It's not difficult to make friends.
That group I had in Austria was recreated for a far too short week in Nottingham. We laughed ourselves silly. I've never bonded so quickly or so profoundly with a group as I did at the residential. Some of the others attendees avoided the social side of things and didn't seem to have so much fun. But if you want it, it's there and the tutors are equally happy to be a part of it. In many cases, they're the ones initiating it.
Oh, I forgot. We also did some maths. That was good too.
Unfortunately, many of the OU's residential courses are being phased out, which is a massive shame. I've been an OU student since 1997 (although that includes an eight year gap) and I was never once able to go to a tutorial. There, at the residential, was the first time I felt like a belonged to a real university and I enjoyed every minute of that belonging. A reunion has been mentioned. I'm looking forward to it already.
Pictured above: Adele, me, Don, Chris, Sonya and Sarah, some of my team mates and their team mates' teammates. If you're wondering why Adele and Sarah have identical silly poses, they're sarcastically emulating my photo on the last blog entry. Thanks for that.
