Kriss Jessop is a student on the Foundation programme for BSc Computer Science. In this post he talks about the unexpected pleasures of maths, the challenges of programming and his own experience of mental illness.
Even though I couldn’t tell you what classes are like at other universities, I like to think there’s something unique here at Goldsmiths. We have ourselves a fun and engaging learning environment, one that’s entirely different to secondary and further education. For instance, never in my life had I associated the idea of going to a maths class with the word ‘fun’.
I really appreciate the challenge of learning many different things, then having to figure out how to apply them all into a single project. Oddly enough, a number of our class like to complain about these puzzles, yet somehow everybody enjoys maths. Quite peculiar.
That said, a lot of our class had trouble with the last of our Programming coursework, which involved creating a program that simulated the behaviour of traffic lights and cars at a junction. It certainly didn’t help that most people left their work until just before the deadline (seriously, don’t do that – it hurts)!
A friend and I have also started playing with network programming and have found that our program has trouble sending anything more than a couple of basic integers reliably. As such we’ve been looking into a way to send more data reliably over a network. Presently, we’re looking at JSON as a solution to send more data reliably.
For those that have yet to visit the campus, the university sits in an area that truly feels like a small town, in a big city. You see the same faces in the street, it’s normal to bump into people you know and randomly have conversations with total strangers. As far as universities go, Goldsmiths’ is a small, truly vibrant, place; and we really benefit from that.
Me and many of those that I share classes with are mature students. We come from work, often bringing poor ‘A’ level results with us. Some of us have had stress-free jobs that aren’t rewarding, while others have had rewarding jobs that haven’t been worth the stress. Some of us may have considered self harm at some point, while others have lashed out at their surroundings.
One in four people in the UK suffer some kind of mental illness, and I’m one of them. In the past my mental health problems have appeared like clockwork, and I’ve struggled to force myself to do assignments, or my job. But at Goldsmiths the advice and support is always there to help keep you on track, if you need it, whether it’s depression or an inability to concentrate.
We have lecturers who know us and encourage us, who seem to get excited about students doing side projects and asking for extra challenges. We have a faculty that encourages us with stories of our upperclassmen, and understands that sometimes people just can’t bring themselves to get out of bed in the morning, or lack inspiration so much so that they struggle to complete their projects.
Goldsmiths’ is a happy place, an understanding place, and there’s not much that can change that.
Goldsmiths Department of Computing PhD student Karsten Seipp has won the Best Student Paper award at