Well and thus the exams are done, I've had 2 very heavy nights out and am currently eating toast hoping that the carbon residue on the faces will help to settle the alcohol that is most likely still floating throughout my body causing my stomach to churn every few minutes.
Generally its not been too bad in my opinion. I was very very apprehensive going into my last exam on wednesday but with any luck in a few weeks i'll see that being in the library for hours and hours on end has paid off and I'll be sitting on an average of hopefully a 2:1 for the first half of this year.
I'm not really looking forward to monday. I've got lectures kicking off and to be frank my timetable is horrible. 4 9am Lectures (monday-wed & fri) and a 4 hour gap on a tuesday. With any luck however that'll allow me time to be in the Engineering Section of the library going through the reports that i will be set to write on a monday afternoon.
I'm still working out what to do about accomodation for next year. At the moment there is definately 2 of us wanting to move into a 4 person house (Dave, my current housemate, and moi). 1 of our mates says maybe but even then we're still looking for another 1. Its hard being in this position because finding an extra 1 that gets on with all the people wanting to move in is harder than finding another 2.
I must say that the end of this academic year is going to be slightly wierd. Lots of my mates are all moving away from uni to whereever they plan to. Just makes me wonder whether we'll stay in touch or if people are just going to move away and get on with their lives. I've still got a year of uni and I'm still apprehensive of what i'll do when i graduate! I've been in Education for 18 years of my life & maybe its just me but i think that there will be a massive void to fill. Plus knowing me i'll start to become philosophical and ask why am i here, what am i meant to do with my life?
Well I'll think about this over the next few weeks and possibly will do another blog with my ponderings about the meaning of life later this term. For the time being i'll leave the answer of the ultimate question of life the universe and everything at 42 and end this blog.
Gratz to Tim, Adam, Tom and myself for getting roles in the SUCS exec for 2009
I guess that is all...
Hello.
My name is Chris Melvin Aka Foshjedi2004 and I'm running for SUCS President and Publicity in the 2009 Elections.
Here is my 2009 Manifesto
Why Should I Vote for you as President?
Well I've been in the society for 3 years, I've noticed what each president has done and the problems/issues they have faced during their presidency.
As President I promise that i shall take the initiative on new developments for the society and will carry on previous activities and policies from previous execs.
I will campaign to the SU and Estates about securing a new room for SUCS within the new developments on campus and at the very least ensuring that we don't lose our current room or access to it if/when they start developing Union House. I'd also help to organise more evening and weekend socials to allow more people to be able to come to them. SUCS Quiz Teams could also be pretty fun at the Rhyddings, Bryn-Y-Mor, Wig, Brunswick or Westbourne Pub Quizs :D
Why Should I Vote for you as Publicity?
Publicity is an artform. I've been doing web PR roles for various Mods and websites for years.
Sometimes you have obvious PR, I.E. loads of posters, banners and the like, other times all it needs is a gentle nudge to mention something and it travels word of mouth. I was the one responsible for the SUCS LAN events banners last year when the ones done by the KopyShop turned out to be less than ideal - http://sucs.org/~foshjedi2004/LANPARTY/lanparty7.png
I've also been talking with the SU about where the posters for events done by students and societies can actually go around campus. The SU president told me that all the plinthes are under the juristiction of ENTS since they paid for the new protectors on the plinthes. I'm going to be talking with the Sabbatical Officers about trying to find more places for societies to advertise at around the University.
What do you think you can bring to these role? / What are your strengths?
I'm strong willed, resourceful and have contacts within the students union to talk about issues with regards to advertising and the feasibility if there are any projects we'd like to undertake, I.E. the SUCS run XMPP Server for the entire student population, probably still need to talk with LIS about that one ;).
I am also flexible and usually am able to accommodate other people's views into a development. I'm a good team worker with experience working alongside Engineering firms, Institution councils, within teams for projects and within the society itself.
Where do you think the society is at the moment?
The society has hit a wall to a certain extent, this year there are only 5 applicants in total for Exec roles with 3 of them being CS second years. Personally I'd love to see more first years being active within the society alongside more Non-CS students allowing a diversified student membership.
During freshers week next year I plan to talk with each of the Faculties and the Students Union about the possibility of sending emails to the students about services we run and the possibility of doing a small presentation at the start of some of the larger lectures in Faraday A, Glyndwr D and Calaghan about who we are and what services we run.
Where do you want to the society to be in a year? / What do you want to achieve?
In a year I'd like to see the society secure within its location within the union developments in future years and I'd like to ensure that we get active first year members to allow SUCS to have a secure student membership level allowing us to expand and develop once the current members have graduated. I'd also like to see the student population diversified and the image of SUCS being a fanatical Linux only group dispelled.
How do you think you can make your goals for the society happen?
Student Membership levels can really only come down to having services that students want and publicising events that sucs do (Lightning talks, Console LANs, Gameserver etc), focusing on things that we do that the Uni don't (Trac for 3rd year projects, svn, PostGres/Mysql Dbs). Appealing to students with details of our library and what books we have, which books are useful for what courses.
More accessible social events, not just during the day when people may have lectures but also evening/weekend events to allow a wider group of people to come including alumni members, such events would be like cinema, Laserquest, playzone, more evening/weekend lightning talks and LAN and/or Console events, if possible I'd also like to do at least one weekend trip out to Bletchley Park or to Oakwood.
Thanks for reading my manifesto :)
Chris
Foshjedi2004
Hello.. Here is my manifesto for the Positions of "El Presidente", Publicity and Treasurer.
I would have run last year but alas i didn't really understand the protocol and to be honest I didn't think I was ready for the job at hand.
A year later, I'm a year older, a year wiser. Watching the Society over the past year and a half has shown that there are a few other avenues I'd like to look into on top of the ones we currently do.
So lets get down to the basics...
- Why Should you Vote for me at all??
Well I've always been strong at Maths. I've had plenty of experience with cash handling and figures working at a Supermarket and also I have good organisational Ability and as a Student Rep for engineering I'm experienced with discussing things with committees. I think that I'd be a good candidate for the role(s).
2. My opinion of where we are at present.
At Present I think the society is going through a period of change. With the general course change and attitude to Computing changing we have a prime opportunity to show to the SU that SUCS isn't a "Geek" Society and to show that we are a large, active Society. We also should start to look hard about how to secure better Facilities for the Society. Also I'd like to discuss with the LIS whether they could open the Gaming Ports over the weekend so that people could have the ability to play games like EQ2, CSS and other online games with their friends not at Swansea. I know it may not work but it is definitely something to look into, we can from this look at which games are popular across the University and see which games we could add to the Servers, Ideally I'd like to upgrade caesium sometime over the next year to allow us to keep up with the Multi player Server requirements for recent releases.
3. Where would I like the Society to be a years time?
In a year I'd love to see the Society being one of the larger societies in the University. More social events, continuing the Lightning talks, maybe starting to teach people how Linux is now more than ever a viable alternative to Windows.
4. How will we do this???
With Social Events we need to Publicise them more, We should be putting adverts in Waterfront and around the University. There are many people that I've spoken to who like Linux more than Windows who I've been redirecting to SUCS. That may bring more membership, which would increase the likelyhood we could push campus services for a bigger room also give us a larger kitty and may allow us to do a general Upgrade of the rest of the Room. (New Tables, Chairs, the rest of the desktops, start saving for TFT monitors) and the like.
I think that if we have a strong Exec offering new ideas there is an oppotunity to grow from strength to strength.
Thanks for reading :)
~Chris