Essay on comets, reading about "Bluestockings"

After a few days off, I am back writing my piece on the comet of 1577. This is a exposition piece on various views over the period prior to Newton and mainly focuses on Michael Maestlin and Tycho Brahe, with only a little bit of Kepler. At the moment I am very pleased with it. I have decided to use 7 illustrations and these work well I think. Hopefully I will have this ready in the next week or so and can get some comments on it from a couple of my teachers. I am hoping to use it as an example of my writing to include on my PhD application which I hope to make around the end of October

Current "light-hearted" reading post Dunant is Jane Robinson's Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to fight for an education. I was particularly taken by the strong expressions of the love of learning that the book contains. That, of course, fits very well with my own views of the world. I have really enjoyed the half I have read so far though I would have prefered more direct quotes or extracts from the letters of the people involved.

In the light of Emma returning to college, I have been thinking about that old saying that one's time at college is often the best time of your life. That always seems a sad idea to me, but there is definitely some truth in it, especially if one's working life is dominated by working 48 weeks a year. I tend to view the couple of years from mid 2001 as my favourite. I worked at home, spent a lot of time with Emma, worked hard but mainly for myself . . . . By contrast, my second year at Uni was very poor. True I worked extremely hard and laid the foundations for my First, but I wasn't very happy that year. The time I wasn't working I spent listening to music or attending live concerts. I was very much on my own though. Year three was such a big improvement.

A 1930s "cocoa party"