Exams, sheds and beds.

As I write this, I should probably be revising for exams. But never mind.

I had my final French-language exam this morning - a 'TP' exam ('travaux pratiques', for long), which is a strange mix of comprehension, creative writing and paraphrasing. I sat in Reading University's deceptively-titled 'Great Hall' for three hours, determining the rest of my life via a few ill-chosen and badly-conjugated verbs. It dawned on me as I left the exam that I'm under no obligation to ever speak French again in my entire life. (I'll let you know how long I last.)

The Great Hall. Which is too exam-y to be 'great'.

After the exam I walked into town to get my hair cut. I thought that after a difficult morning of work, it'd be nice to do something non-academic for a couple of hours. I sat down in the chair and began the idle hairdresser-chatting: Me "No, it's not my day off, I'm a student", Ever-so-witty hairdresser: "Oh, every day's a day off then!".

I then discovered, much to my annoyance, that I'd somehow managed to find the only French hairdresser in the whole of Reading. He then proceeded to chat away in French about his planned trips to Disneyland Paris, throwing in all kinds of subjunctive, indicative, imperative and infinitive, and confirming my suspicions that I definitely can't speak French, and most-likely didn't pass the exam. Ah well, c'est la vie! (I lasted two paragraphs)

My next exams are on Wednesday, when I have a three-hour exam at 9am, a break of two hours, then another three-hour exam at 2pm. Excellent timetabling there, Politics Department.

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On a completely unrelated, but fairly interesting note, I saw this item on the news today, and found it worryingly relevant to my living arrangements last year. I think I might've been conned. Compare the following:

BBC News article on 'sheds with beds'.
My 2010 blog entry on my very own 'shed with a bed'.

At least mine had a swimming pool included.