Shati Patel

Shati Patel, Third Year at Lady Margaret Hall, reading Mathematics.                   

Being almost midway through the week, one would expect to be nearly halfway through with lectures and classes for that week. Not so, I'm afraid. Due to the extensive choice of options in the 3rd and 4th years, timetables start getting rather... unbalanced. I get to Wednesday morning having only had one lecture and one class that week (discounting my non-maths-related German class on Monday evenings), with at least two more classes and seven more lectures to go. Interestingly, most of these are in consecutive time slots on Thursdays…

Wednesdays on the other hand are more manageable. I cycle over to the Mathematical Institute for a class at 11am, followed by a lecture at 12. Then I rush back to my college, Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) for a quick spot of lunch before getting changed into sports kit and heading over to the University Parks for Quidditch practice.

Brief digression: contrary to popular belief, Quidditch is a pretty serious sport. We had a regional tournament in Southampton at the end of the third week of term and the World Cup happened last July in Germany. Exciting stuff.

Anyway, after a bit of quidditching, it’s time to frantically rush back to the Maths Institute for another lecture at 3pm and hope that I don’t look too muddy… After about an hour of fun with Banach Spaces, I finish with lectures for the day! I pass by the Maths Institute Café π on the way out to check on the chocolate situation and then go back to LMH.

Talking about the cafe, here’s another noteworthy topic: BROWNIES. In my first and second year I gained quite a reputation for being extremely passionate about the triangular brownies in Café π. However, for some reason these triangular prisms of joy have since been replaced by what can only be described as cake-like cuboids. (I suppose they are homeomorphic to the previous brownies, but apparently taste and texture have not been preserved by this map.) Will we ever see the original brownies return to Café π? Was this whole text just an excuse to talk about brownies? Who knows.

Web editor note: Café π takes all feedback seriously and is looking in to the brownie allegations.