And a few more of your least favorite things

My girlfriend's best friend turned me onto a group called +Vitamin String Quartet, who do stringed covers of bands. They are just incredible, so click play below and enjoy this band as you read on.

Today I finished the first cut of the Alumni video, which is turning out to be an absolute headache because the star is uncontactable for the foreseeable future and, regretfully, it's seeming like we might need an extra take. Still, the first cut is certainly watchable, and with a few cuts and some movie magic (I immediately regret writing that phrase) I'm sure I can make this project awesome. All the same, his voice was getting a trifle annoying, so while the film exported I started work on some statistical analysis.

In this particular project I'm looking at how many students said they'd take part in extra-curricular activities, how many actually turned up, and how many of those filled out the evaluation forms at the end. The numbers decrease exponentially.

(Side note, evaluation forms that are not anonymous are, to me, little better than useless. Nobody's going to tell their instructor they're rubbish and put their name to it?)

Still, it's a good opportunity to get grubby in Excel, and some string covers of rock bands (a combination of my two favorite things; their cover of +Panic! At The Disco is especially excellent) helped me power through and create some lovely shiny graphs. A short break from that brought me back to my Alumni colleague, with whom I'm working on some designs for our annual dinner - I'm feeling Gatsby Le Magnifique with an art-deco, monochromatic, angular style (say, do I know any event planners/graphic designers?) and then lunch with five women speaking in rapid French. I understood at least 3/4, which I'm counting as a massive win, because the quarter I didn't understand seemed to be a joke based around me. Not in an unpleasant way, but more in a "isn't-the-foreign-boy-cute-and-clueless" kind of way.

After lunch I got on with a couple of translations and was visited by a few colleagues, who seemed shocked that I had DVDs. I'm leaving in 22 days, and they discover this now.

I'm leaving in 22 days.

That's a really upsetting thought.

I don't want to go. I've got crazy stuff lined up; a holiday in Chicago with my girlfriend, a (paid!) fortnight of work with PRCA, and the chance to write a thesis in French. I'm going to see Derren Brown, and if I'm lucky he'll sign a couple of books that I had to summon demons to acquire. And yet -

and yet, I'm speaking to my replacement, and she's so excited and nervous and I remember being there. And I want to be there again. I want to taste that nervousness, and curse every tiny mistake, and meet again these enormous, wonderful characters that I've known while I've been here.

Nostalgia is cruel and kind in equal measure.

Still, there's nothing else to be done. Life must go on. I've got to take the next step, and fight the feeling that the struggle is Sisyphean.

Also, rediscovering +Spotify is amazing.