PH400 exam & my birthday

As its my birthday, I treated myself to train journey to london for my exam - my "cheap day" return is £23! I am not impressed.

On the way up, I also treat myself to a new Boris cd. I have about 20 recordings by them but have only so far listened to the first dozen or so. So today it is the first listen to their "Rainbow" cd - and at least one stand out track already, "Sweet No 1". Excellent psychedelic guitar - sounds similar to another Japanese band I used to listen to a lot, Highrise.

A quiet morning at LSE. I returned the Philosophy of Science textbook that I borrowed before Easter and have used as my revision text (and paid my accumulated fines). Then an early lunch upstairs where I met Miklos who stopped for a chat - mainly about next year's options and the PH400 revision seminar that occured a week or two back.

And so to my exam. Met Caroline and her husband just before it. She is half way through her exams and is somewhat stressed. PH404 seemed to have gone ok last week though. Anne Marie was also around and I mentioned that I'd like to find out from her how she organised her Philosophy of Mathematics course this last year.

In the end PH400 seems pretty straight forward. No questions on social constructivism or inference to the best explanation, my two best topics, but nonetheless, I could probably have done about 9 of the 14 questions. Main problem was cramp in my hand as the exam developed. It is probably close to 20 years since I last did a three hour written exam.

Afterwards I had hoped that a few people might be on for a drink, but most have one more exam left and so they all shot off. And many of them I probably won't see again - Victor, Leonardo, Mark, Femke, and so on. So a somewhat sad way to end the afternoon - especially as it was my birthday. In the end I walked up to Holborn with Kyle and Jacob, both of whom are off to start PhDs back in the USA this autumn.

A brief walk through Covent Garden to clear my head and then home - an odd melancholic end to the day, despite the voicemail from Emma wishing me happy birthday and hoping my exam had gone o.k. She would have been preparing for her college ball when she rang, so I didn't call her back.