Got one under my belt

My first exam was Friday, Macroeconomic Principles, and it actually went alright. I told all of my friends after the exam that if anyone brought up Macro after the exam I would punch them in the face, so I am not going to talk about it. Just glad that it’s over! Goodbye Macro.

Next exam is on Monday, Social Science Research Methods for Management, so lets give it a goooooooo.

Officially 3 weeks until my venture back to the homeland as of yesterday, so now it’s 2 weeks and 6 days which is even more weird. As each day goes by, my heart jumps with the prospect of coming home to everything that is America, but sinks a little with the thought of leaving my life in London. I don’t quite know how to feel about it. When I figure out the words, I’ll let you know.

On the bright side, literally, the weather is AMAZING and it makes me so happy.

I Can’t…

wait to come home!

 

That is all.

It’s Crunch Time

Well, folks, we’ve cracked the barrier of one month to go. 30 days until my return to North Carolina, and I’ll tell you what, it sure is weird to think about. I know of several people who started studying abroad for spring semester who are either already back home or soon on their way. I’m pretty sure, with one exception, that I was the first one gone and will be the last one to leave. Bittersweet? I do not think there is a better word to describe it.

2 weeks and 2 days until exam hell is over. For the next 8 days I will be concluding revision for all courses. My exam schedule is really annoying because I have so little time in between each to study.

May 17-24 will be cram time. I’m going to try to be as far from communication as possible. As I wrote in an earlier post, my exams are on the 25, 28, 30 and 1. The two days that fall between the Macro exam and Research Methods will be devoted to Micro and Research Methods cramming. Once Research Methods is done, I have one day for Social Policy outlining for essays. The next day will be final cramming for Micro and the first day of June will be the Micro exam.

June 1 will be the end and the start of a simultaneously happy and depressing two weeks until home. I don’t plan packing honestly until the day or two before I fly home because I see it as a waste of time. Maybe I will pack a little but every night before I go to bed.

2 weeks Kerry, that is all you need to do. Push harder for two weeks and then you can relax.

You can find me on the 2nd floor.

of the British Library of Political and Economic Science (aka LSE Library) every day until June 2. I’m not one for loving the library, and I never have been, but for some reason I have to get work done in the library now. Since the start of Summer Term in Monday, I have been in the library more than I have ever been in a library before. Monday 13:00-24:00, Tuesday 14:00-22:00, Wednesday 17:00-20:00, Thursday 12:00-19:00 and 22:00-0:00, Friday 0:01-15:00, Saturday 17:00-19:00, and I’m heading back there now. I’m thinking about hiding a bean bag somewhere in case I want to take a nap and everyone is in the lib. We’ll see how that works out. LSE kids love the library. It’s great that it’s open 24/7 now because it doesn’t put a cap on when I can study! I have a lot of preparation to do before exams begin, so I’ve got to step it up more.

My exam schedule is as follows:

EC210 Macroeconomic Principles 25-MAY-12 10:00
MN203 Social Science Research Methods for Management 28-MAY-12 10:00
SA221 Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Change 30-MAY-12 14:30
MN201 Economics for Management 01-JUN-12 14:30

Technically I’m already 25% done with my Social Policy grade because the essay I stayed in the library all night to finalise is worth 1/4 of my final. Really only a week left of extra lectures and revision classes.

As the time dwindles down SO QUICKLY, I don’t want to look back at the year just yet. I know that come June 1 I will turn into an emotional wreck for the 2 weeks left in London before I come home. So I’ll quit being sappy and head off to the lib.

See you on the 2nd floor!

Back to the Grind

I don’t really know how to explain it, but I do not like being alone and it feels as though I have been by myself for quite a bit of this past year. This has given me the opportunity to really step back and look at my life in general; likes and dislikes, wants and needs, opportunities and mistakes.

I don’t know what I want out of anything really. I posted a couple of weeks ago about organising things regarding school and post graduate work/school and such and I have a plan. Be prepared for my life to turn hermit style.

6 weeks until exams… Other than the Harry Potter Studio Tour on the 19th, The Dangerous Summer show on the 26th, Hillsong Colour Conference on the 26-29 and Tough Mudder on the 12th of May, I plan on doing nothing but studying with all of my time. And training, of course, for the impending doom of TM.

Immediately following exams (June 1 at 13:00) I plan on spending as much time as possible with the friends I won’t be able to see for a while, you know who you are. LSERC does Paintball? We’ll see how I survive that one. Throw in Thorpe Park and I’ll be a happy camper. That is, until the day I leave when I’ll be crying like a baby. I love you guyyysssssss.

9 weeks exactly until flying back to the home land of good ‘ol North Cackalacky. I expect a BBQ Tray with fries, chicken nuggets with honey mustard and a Cheerwine float from Cookout upon my return from the person that picks me up from RDU. Please and thank you.

The following 12 days will consist of ridiculous amounts of fast food (Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Bojangles, Cookout, Panera, Moes, Chic-fil-A, etc etc) and lots of kitten snuggling with Kate. Perhaps some tennis matches and a couple of rounds of golf during the day after baking cookies and cakes and brownies and anything else I can create from the lovely kitchen on Knollwood House.

July 1 marks the voyage to Miami for my summer internship while living with Papa Joe in his new crib. Work work work, row row row, sleep sleep sleep. Flip work and row depending on schedules and then repeat.

During this time, GMAT practice class must be in effect. 180 hours I believe? I’m not too sure about that, but it’s definitely going to be 2 days of class per week up until the start of fall semester. Hooray Grad School! That’s not sarcastic, I am genuinely excited.

Latest August or middle of August, move into the new place of residence that will hopefully be awesome, though I’m just glad I have a kitchen. Last semester of college to take place until mid December made up of Business Finance, Business Communications, Sports Econ, Health Econ, and Ethics of Business.

Post grad applications for the first round are due between October 6 and 12, which means GMAT has to be taken mid September and essays need to be done between then, which is where I’ll be devoting the majority of my time.

Providing I get accepted into the next round of any of the schools I apply for, interviews will most likely happen in this time frame as well.

Graduate.

NYC FOR MAGGIE’S 21st! Or maybe just CT, but definitely a trip to NYC.

As for now, I am sitting in a hostel in Amsterdam pondering what I actually want to do. My guy instinct is telling me to spend a bunch of money on canal cruises and food, but all i really want to do is drink coffee and study a bit. I tend to absorb material better in foreign places so I am going to try to find some coffee shop to sit in and study for a while.

Bring it on 2012, I’m gonna kick your butt.

Catching up Part 1: Women’s Head of the River Race

3 March, 2012:

I have never been so motivated in my entire life. WeHORR (Women’s Head of the River Race) pushed me to my point of physical stamina, mental strength, and determination.

We got to the boat house around 8:30am for the start of what would be a ridiculously tiring day. The boys were about to get off of the water from an outing in preparation for the Supaerowing event in Toulouse the following week.

All of the girls were getting ready to go out and prepping ourselves in the changing room. We went out to the boat and then fixed our foot plates and waited for the right time to boat. Pelayo was the nicest of all of the guys and stayed to get our wellies out of the boat, which made all of the difference with our time! We ended up paddling down the river to a little bit past the start line so that we could marshall before the start of the race.

We were 180 in the draw so while we were marshaling, we were able to see around 150 crews at the start! It was a crazy experience to see all of those crews go off and an even better experience watching the 20 crews in front of us do a hairpin turn at the exact same time.

And at that point, we were building up to the start. Power strokes were on and then we were off!

I can’t even begin to tell you actually what was going on during the race because I was too focused on my stroke. It sounds incredibly cheesey, but that’s the truth. All I can remember of the 7000m race was sheer pain and Val’s voice screaming different things throughout the 24 minutes. It seemed as though every 10 strokes we were told to focus on something new. Whether it was the catch, slide, recovery, stroke length it was anything to keep our minds fresh and off of the fact that we were rowing all out for so long.

The one distinct part of the race that I do remember was the crew that started at 181 that was trying to overtake us. It was a battle for about 2 minutes of bow ball to bow ball until our crew pushed so hard that we pulled back our lead. We kept getting further and further away from the crew and that gave us an even greater amount of motivation to keep going. This happened a bit early in the race but we just kept on going.

Ultimately we finished 202 out of 287 crews which far surpassed our original goal of passing 250. We also came in 11th out of 40 in the Novice Academic category and beat 39 Intermediate crews over all! I am so incredibly proud of LSE Women’s Rowing.

The pain and suffering and overwhelming joy of rowing for 24:09.10 made up for the 9000 m row back to the boat house.

Check out the pics!

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Short and Sweet.

This post is to apologise for being so lax with the blog writing, as the last three weeks have been the most insane bunch I have ever experienced.

I will recap everything in a series of blog posts that will start on Monday after I return from Dublin, Ireland with Maggie for St. Patrick’s Day.

To the airport!

Joseph Kony 2012

Do you know who Joseph Kony is? If you don’t, you need to.

If you’re having trouble getting onto the Kony2012 website, it’s because there has been such an overwhelming amount of support that the site has crashed several times! In the mean time, www.kony2012.com has been redirected to a site that works but you can still find all the information you need on www.invisiblechildren.com when the site gets back up.

For right now, I encourage you to watch the film, that is posted below, so that you can be aware of the atrocities Joseph Kony commits and the need to bring him to justice. Sign the pledge to help us bring Joseph Kony to justice in 2012 at www.kony2012.com

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Just a little update.

Happy March, everyone!

Last weekend was training for Global Poverty Ambassadors, and what an incredible weekend it was. I’m currently making a video log of some of the Ambassadors and their feelings about the weekend and it will be updated by Sunday. But for now, I’ll tell you a little bit about our current campaign, Protect Point 7.

There’s no better way to say it than how Sam did in the Global Poverty Project blog,

“12 years ago at the UN Millennium Summit, all 190 UN nations re-stated their commitment to work towards spending 0.7% of their countries income on international aid to help end extreme poverty.

The UK has been one of just a few countries to stick to this commitment. On March the 21st, the British Chancellor George Osborne will present his annual budget to Parliament. He will lay out his plans for the economy at a time when unemployment is still rising, the Eurozone is in continued difficulty and consumer confidence remains low. On the face of it, keeping this commitment to aid looks like a hard task.

And of course, this comes just weeks after the news that an opposition politician in India claimed that India neither wanted nor needed British aid. This lead to discussions of whether spending part of the little money we have as a country on international development is still a justifiable option. The government is under pressure to cut our aid budget, and with it, withdraw a lifeline to millions of the world’s poorest people.

While the government of India may be signing contracts to buy new military jets, 300 million people in the country continue to rank amongst the world’s poorest people. And more than this, regardless of how we feel about India, India is not the sole recipient of UK aid.

Whatever spending decisions the Chancellor decides to make, and however tough the current economic climate may be, we know that few people in this country will be left to try and live on only a pound a day. Yet across the world, for 1.4 billion people this is reality – trying to manage their food, heath, rent and travel all on the equivalent of just a pound a day (the definition of extreme poverty).

International aid can have an incredible effect on saving lives; the number of children dying before their fifth birthday has more than halved in the last 50 years, and since 1990 international aid has helped lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty. Our aid has contributed to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, helping to save at least 4,000 lives every day, and has saved an estimated 7.7 million lives in 150 countries.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell have repeatedly said that as a country we would not ‘balance the book on the backs of the world’s poor’. All three mainstream political parties committed to the 0.7% target before the last election, and it features in the coalition agreement; yet it is at risk in the 2012 budget.

That’s why today we are asking people to take action and contact their MP to tell them they believe that aid spending is important. We’re asking MPs to ask questions at the next International Development Questions on March 14th to ensure this government understands that taking money away from the world’s poorest option is not an option in this budget.

The government spends money on what it believes to be priorities, and without a vocal appreciation of the importance of aid and people standing up to protect it, we are in danger of losing it. So please, click here to take action and show your support for the 0.7% target, and ensure the Chancellor knows this isn’t a budget he can cut.”

If you would, go on facebook and “like” the page we have created for Protect Point 7 at this link http://www.facebook.com/protectpoint7 and post a photo of yourself holding a sign that describes your appreciation for the government to Protect Point 7. If you really want to help, write a letter to your MP! Also, you can tweet to #0.7

We will also be going to Parliament to lobby on March 6!

As for Rowing, Women’s Head of the River is on Saturday! I’m looking forward to the 7km race that will test not only my strength, but my determination and will.

I’ll get back to you with more info related to everything soon.

xx Kerry

What a Day for LSE Rowing!

There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you are racing. I could not even expect what I felt on Saturday during our race for UH Head. Not only did we do as well as we thought we could do, but we finished even better than expected! Our practice run of the 3,600 m course last week was enlightening and we knew just how much we needed to push for the race.

The girls got to the UL Boat House at 11am and waited for our coxswain to get out of her meeting so that we could take our boat out. We ended up just flipping our boat in the racks so that we could change all of the footplates to be placed closer to our seats. This is because we share the black 8 with the Novice Guys team and quite a few of them are significantly taller than we are, so everything had to be changed for the race. While a marshall was checking our boat to make sure that our shoes were tied down, the boys arrived! It is a really really really good thing that they came early to watch us boat because it was exceptionally windy when we were trying to take the boat out. Providing some hilarious pictures, we ended up having about 13 people holding our 8 while waiting for the other crews to boat.

When we were finally able to put our boat in the water and push off of the bank, it was game time. The weather wasn’t as cold as I had anticipated, which was a great relief. The paddle to the pink house where we had to marshall took a while, though I couldn’t give you the exact time because I was trying not to pay attention to the time! It was a bit difficult with the strength of the wind to get a clean stroke, so we were all trying to make sure that we could square our blades early enough and not get caught up by the wind. Our draw was 22 out of 23 for the first division, so we were the second to last crew to roll start. Once we got around the corner and made our turns and paddled up to the start line. For those of you that don’t know a lot about rowing, a head race has a rolling start, so you can power up to full face pace right before you cross the start line. We were down to our onesies and ready to go.

I can’t really tell you much about the race because I was focused on my stroke during the race, but there were a couple of points that are well worth mentioning. I am not quite sure how far we were into the race, but right before the first bridge our cox, Val, shouted, “Alright girls, only 1 and half boat lengths until we overtake this next crew!” I remember thinking that there was no way we could be overtaking a crew so early. About 15 strokes later another call from Val was, “1 boat length girls! Push harder!” The bit where we actually overtook the crew is somewhat of a blur because I was just too excited that we were in the process of going fast enough that we could overtake a crew. We managed to take the crew going around the bend and under the first bridge.

Andy caught the bit after the 2nd bridge while we were passing the boat house and you can watch it below!

We passed the boat house with cheers from our fellow LSE rowers and that was one of the best feelings I have ever experienced. It was really something else to be cheered on to get that extra push of power going through one of the last bits of the race course. We only had a bit left until we reached the finish at this point and we were making our final pushes ’till the end. As we passed the finish line, we knew that we did very well as a crew. Given that it was our very first race as a crew, my first race ever, our 7th time on the water as a crew, and my 6th time on the water ever, I would say it was an incredibly successful race.

The novice boys jumped in our boat right as we came up to shore to start the paddle to the pink house for their race at 3:30, so we didn’t have to carry the boat out of the water! This was fantastic because it started raining as we were paddling back and it would not have been very fun to put the boat back. The boys did well also! The Men’s Intermediate 8 came by the boat house first and we saw them overtake 2 crews! Then the Men’s Novice 8 came through and they overtook a crew right in front of the boat house, which gave me some epic photos.

Overall, it was a fantastic day for the LSE Rowing Club. We went to The Station House, a gastropub near the train station in Chiswick, after everyone was back from races and changed into dry clothes. It was fun having everyone in the same place at one time, as this does not generally happen. Everyone was anxious to see the results posted by the UH Head staff and you could tell that we didn’t need times to confirm that we all rowed well and had an amazing day.

We had to wait until this morning to see the results (you can see the full results here). Ultimately, the Experienced men overtook 3 crews and finished the 3,600 m course in 13:42, placing 4th out of 7 in the Men’s Senior VIIIs. The Novice men overtook 1 crew and finished in 15:04, placing 4th out of 7 in the Men’s Novice VIIIs. Us girls? Well, much to our excitement, we finished in 15:49 and placed 2nd out of 7 in the Women’s Novice VIIIs!

Second place?! We made the podium!!! I am so proud of my girls for how far we have come. On to Women’s Head of the River in 2 weeks!