First up this month was my dissertation submission. I flew back to Loughborough as there was no way I was going to trust the post to deliver. My first impression on landing was “damn this country is cold”. Getting to the university campus I collected my keys and headed to my digs for the week, which turned out to be the same halls I spent my first year in. The mattresses are still just as horrid (I really shouldn’t have expected them to buy new ones in the four years I’ve been absent). However given I’d be spending 16 hours a day in the library this was no real problem.

That’s what I had to do to get my project finished. Worked some crazy hours, through the night when I felt I could. I find myself least productive in the mornings but late at night, once everyone had gone, I would work through till 6am or so most nights. I have done enough all nighters in my time at university that I realise they were all just training for this one event. Come 8.30am on Tuesday 12th of May there I was at the printers with half a dozen others getting my project printed and bound. Very shiny it looked too!

How do feel about my project? I would say I have mixed feelings. I think there’s some good work in there and it was interesting in parts. However my concern is whether or not I drew enough succinct conclusions. I feel my Project Definition Document was pretty vague and so whether my dissertation actually matches what I supposedly set out to do is a matter for the assessor.

Now that my dissertation is done I’m down to my last pieces of work. I have two reports due as part of my Erasmus placement. The first is a comparison of French and British education and engineering. the second could be anything and for which I have ended up doing a bibliographic study of low energy buildings in the UK. Other than that I basically have a couple of presentations to do mid June and I’m done.

The low energy building project is actually quite interesting. It is beginning to spark ideas in my mind as to whether I can get involved at a business level somehow. Construction is going to have to go in that direction so how can I catch the bottom of the wave? I’ll have me a think. In the mean time it’s back to night shifts to try get the projects knocked out. The afternoon is so warm here I’ll be off to the park again – rumoured to hit 28 degrees today whoop!

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I was selected for the job to gain some experience in mass reinforced concrete. That’s fine but unfortunately the job has only been going for a couple of months so we’re not exactly flying! However each week more guys come onto the job and so the work picks up. It’s a pain (or it’s painful perhaps) when your hour’s setting out on a Monday keep the steel fixers going till Wednesday, the chippy’s going till Thursday (given an extra half hour to set some levels) and the concrete gang Friday.

There are perks though. I recently attended a scholarship event at Head Office. There were various parts, some more fun and/or interesting than others. We had a presentation regarding precast concrete structures by our subsidiary, Malling, which as far as concrete goes was pretty cool (they can hit 60Nmm^-2 in three days!). We each had to give a five minute presentation on our own project. Fortunately we weren’t all in together though I did have to sit through presentations from a lots of QS’ which I didn’t always follow. One guy (an Engineer I dread to think) managed to take 15 minutes however, ironically concluding by stating that the number one lesson he has learned on site is time management. We pissed ourselves.

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Day to day I don’t have a lot to do. I need to make some time to hold a meeting every now and again. I’ve got various ideas I want to get going such as actually running socials. I’d like to try get some sponsorship aswell so we can get some fresher t-shirts.

I also have to attend fortnightly meetings of the Department Chairs. Not so bad really since for each i attend I receive two Shark Packs – each with two free entries and two half price drinks to FND. This gives me some pretty handy links. Through these I have met the Union VP: Education. A handy girl to know since she has the ear of the Senate and when there’s issues with lecturers she is the one to see. Particularly useful after one of my lectures with a particularly horrendous lecturer. Let me put it this way: Today he was assessing our presentation techniques. Giving the feedback you must imagine a man leaning forward against a table, muttering into his notes thinking we will take his advice when he comments about people leaning on objects while presenting and reading their notes too much. Wonderful words! We were almost in stitches.

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