Why Yes, I Am A Natural Green

For two nights now, all of my dreams have been a variation on the same theme.

Stephen Fry featured in one. In another I had a particularly vicious cold whereby green mucus frothed from my nose continuously. One was the standard cliche dream where I had forgotten to get dressed. I am proud of the fact that, in my dream, I pretended it was my intention to appear naked, and that if anyone took issue, that was their problem entirely.

Well, what would you do, really?

In truth, I am anxious, nervous and just a bit jittery about my upcoming appearance on University Challenge. No matter how much preparation I try and do, it will simply not be enough. I have no idea what team we will be facing, and more importantly, what questions.

In one dream, my particular point of anxiety was that I would continuously answer questions far too early, and lose points. In another, it was that I was too far from the captain for him to hear me.

I still remember appearing on the (understandably) short-lived quiz series Hardspell as a child. The night before, I woke up in a cold sweat after failing to answer any of the questions in a dream.

The mind plays tricks on you. It does its level best to make sure that the thing you are most worried about is the thing you are most likely to mess up catastrophically.

After my moment of smugness and subsequent expulsion from Hardspell, I came to a reasonable twelve-year-old conclusion. I stick by it to this day. It is this: it is easiest to do well when you don't think that what you are doing has any impact.

During the many rounds of examination needed for Hardspell, people commented continuously on how cool I was. Not cool as in rap or skateboarding- I had effectively condemned myself to a school career as "Spelling Girl" and "boffin". The child who came up with those witty and intelligent nicknames, incidentally, dropped out of college and is now working as a barman. I've got nothing against barmen, just now is as good a time as any for a game of one-upmanship.

No, I was entirely calm and relaxed under pressure. Interviewers asked how I managed to stay so. I had no idea why I should be otherwise, and so, to give them an answer, I replied that I stood on one leg if I was feeling nervous, and that the act of keeping my balance would calm me down. I have no idea if this technique works, but feel free to try it.

I was calm because I knew I was good, and because I didn't care excessively. It was only at the final moment, when, stricken by the stupidity of my fellow competitors, I became smug and expected entirely to win.

The fact that I did not win has not been a massive disappointment long-term.

Neither will this. No matter what happens on Saturday, the chances are that in eight years' time, I'll barely remember, let alone care. I have done magnificently to even get the chance I have this Saturday. I may not even do my best, but I will do what I can on the day.

I think I am as prepared as I can ever be. I've had a nice new haircut, and have picked out some clothes.

Oh, and for anyone who sees me around- why yes, I am a natural green.

In Pursuit of Genius

Whilst training just a touch too hard for University Challenge, I took a little time out to read an article in New Scientist. This concerned the sought-after mental state of "flow". In this mental state, everything is possible, your reactions are sharper, and time appears to fly by. Previously thought to be achievable by only the very best, athletes, marksmen and the like, it now seems that this magical state is within the grasp of us mortals.

By this point, I was mentally exhausted. I no longer knew my own name, but I could inform you that William Rufus had heterochromia, the deepest lake in Europe is in Norway and that the Hellespont is named such because mythical twin Helle fell off a flying golden ram into it and drowned. My state of mind was not "flow". It was more "stagnant".

So, the window to this mental state seemed like a nice one to open. Unfortunately, this relies on something called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and the machine that can provide that is going to set me back £5000. If anyone has a spare £5000 lying about, it would be greatly appreciated.

Meanwhile, a phrase in the article which caught my eye was "cosmetic neuroscience". This is a DIY approach to tailoring your own brain to the demands of the modern world. Technology is evolving faster than we are, so why not use technology to make ourselves a bit better?

A quick look at a few web forums make clear why not. Some enthusiasts report temporary blindness, staining of the skin, burning and flashing lights in front of the eyes. Most alarmingly, one user reported feeling a burning sensation within their brain.

Perhaps not then. Perhaps my current state of docile idiocy is safest.

In any case, tCDS is yet to aid in the absorption or recollection of facts. It mostly helps when learning new tasks, or in the cases of people being treated for degenerative diseases, relearning old ones. There are fears, however that this may be possible in future. Just as today, ambitious students with parents to please are resorting to dopamine reuptake inhibitors to get them the university grades they need, precautions may be needed to prevent future students from "electrodoping".

I can give this advice to any university officials worried about their students using a nine-volt battery to get them through their exams. They're the ones with green-stained skin and burns on their temples.

How to Love Mondays

I currently love Mondays. This is not because I have been visited by James Reed. This is because I don't work, and have nothing to do particularly.

However, I am trying to get a job. More specifically, I am working on my dream job of becoming a writer/renowned genius/unicorn-riding ninja. Unfortunately, the number of "useful tools" on the internet is so vast that they all are made useless. Let me give you an example by telling you the state of my web browser this morning.

I opened my emails. My emails suggested I look at a job that had just become available at the BBC. This reminded me that I still hadn't posted off my application to Focus. I opened the Focus website. As part of the application for Focus, I had to include my term dates. The Liverpool University website opens.

Next, an email from my mother reminds me that I haven't posted anything on Fiverr yet. Annoyingly, Fiverr wants an example photo of my work. I'm a writer. I have to now take a photograph of a piece of paper. Whilst not taking a photograph of a piece of paper, I remember that I haven't checked People Per Hour for a while. I suggest to potential employers that they google Sachtastic or Sacha Torregrosa-Jones.

I then realise that I may have made a fatal mistake. I google Sachtastic. Luckily, my website sprouts first, followed by, annoyingly, Roblox. I try to delete my Roblox account. The people at Roblox kindly inform me that there is not currently any feature for deleting my account. I wonder how this is legal and resolve to do something about it later.

The next link is for something called Scribd, which I signed up to last March and promptly forgot about. This would probably be a useful tool if I ever had time to write anything which wasn't instantly devoured by one or other of my projects.

So, my browser window is now a mess. Happy Monday.

Far from having nothing to do, I've suddenly uncovered all the things I should have been doing when I was in university. I also have to email all the publications I telephoned last Monday to tell them, in writing, why they need me to work for free for them for two weeks.

I'm also supposed to be revising my stripy little socks off for University Challenge, going to ASDA, doing my electronics tutorial and apologising to the editors I already have for not sending them anything recently.

I want to know how I ever coped before I had Mondays. I love Mondays. They enable me not only to get things done, but also to realise how much I'd forgotten needed doing.

Spare Time, or What's Left of It

In the Douglas Adams novel Life, the Universe and Everything, Slartibartfast expresses his intention to take up the octraventral heebiephone. As Adams explains, Startibartfast has "the wrong number of mouths", and any attempt to learn to play the heebiephone therefore would be, "pleasantly futile".

The point behind my latest diversion into the world of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is this: when I have something important to do, my spare time tends to be consumed by a far more complicated, and therefore more enjoyable, task. One which can be described in no better manner than with the words "pleasantly futile".

I have, at the moment, a very important thing to do. This is to revise my little blue socks off for my upcoming exams. This is of course, happening, but progress is slow. The problem is this- it can never truly end, thus rendering it a task which is unpleasantly futile.

Meanwhile, I have been using my Sunday and the fifteen minutes between revision hours attempting to construct a family tree for the entire pantheon of Greek gods. This is an incredibly slow task, especially as different writers give gods different origins and different names.

So far, I have positioned 59 different Olympians, mortals, Muses, Protogenoi, Titans and so on. I have written a biography for all but a handful. I am not yet proud of it, but I do feel a sense of impending pride.

I have hit upon something of a hurdle, however. After becoming tired of the many and varied progeny of Zeus, and returning to the primordial gods for some amusement, I hit upon the Wikipedia entry for Thaumas, the son of Gaia and Pontus (earth and sea). It said that he married and Oceanid.

Not thinking I had anything to fear, I tapped the link.

The writings of Dr. Wikipedia kindly informed me that the Oceanids were the children of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, and there were three thousand of them.

Now I accept, being immortal, that you tend to have a lot of time on your hands. Boredom is going to set in eventually. "Tethys dear, shall we try for another?" "How long since the last one, Oceanus?" "About six hundred years." "Oh, that's a reasonable age gap, I suppose we could."

Three thousand, though? And that's just the daughters. The sons were known as Potamoi. Care to guess how many of those there were? That's right, another three thousand.

When I tried to find out the names of all these children, Dr. Wikipedia pointed out that only a "relatively small portion of their names" were actually given in Greek writings. It surprised me that Hesiod hadn't taken up the majority of his Theogony with listing them. In fact, fewer than two hundred Oceanids and Potamoi are named in all known Greek works.

All I can do is speculate then, that none of them were called Blue Ivy.

I must admit, the prospect of filling out another six thousand biographies, the latter 5800 with the word "Unknown", has moved my task from the realms of the possible but daft, into the land of the impossible and barking.

Back to revision then. Or learning the names and locations of all 27 French regions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oceanids

Universally Challenged

I know. I’ve been away. It’s because I’m struggling to express one particular concept. To corrupt a cliché, I have managed to snatch failure from the jaws of success.

Anyone who knows me, or has read this blog before will be mightily aware that I have a certain infatuation with the idea of appearing on University Challenge. The sad fact is, I may be about to miss that train.

I’m the reserve. I’m the cursewording reserve.

Out of the fifty or so who took the test, most were abysmal-let’s face it, most people are at most things. It’s a fact we live with, move on from but still have to put up with at times. There were just six candidates that stood out well above the rest. The team were in that six. I was in that six. One unlucky fellow was also in that six.

I guess I should count my blessings that I’m not him, her, it, zir or em. Another day, different questions, and I might have been. Say, if George hadn’t told me that Niels Bohr had said a particular something, or if I hadn’t looked up the dates of Immanuel Kant that morning. These two facts have now slipped my mind, but they came to my aid when I needed them.

That person is wandering around right now, stunned by the fact that they aren’t as much of a genius as they thought they were. Do they know how close they came?

I hope not. It’s rubbish knowing that you were a whisker from success. It’s rubbish being the reserve. I’m not going to poison the others, break their limbs or anything like that. I can’t pretend I wish them all well though.

They’re my Facebook friends. We went out for drinks last week. I had to sit in the pub with them, knowing that if anything on Greek Mythology comes up I’m going to be eating my own shoes in the audience, despairing that they don’t know any of it- but I do. I had to sit in the pub with them, knowing that I’m not really one of them, and that if I really want to get onto University Challenge, one of them is going to miss out.

If that happens, will they hate me? I want it to happen. I want one, non-specific member of the team to go down with crushing gastroenteritis an hour before we go to film the first round. I want him to gladly give his place to me. It might be bad for team spirit, but I’d love to save the day, I really would.

So perhaps it’s my calling to be the reserve. My brilliance has been confirmed, so my ego isn’t suffering. I probably won’t get onto the program, but there is still a chance. There is a chance of me being the happiest person alive for just a little bit, as a door that was creaking shut suddenly opens for me.

I want it to happen. I know it won’t. Wish me luck.

Stupidly Clever

These days, I am giddy with anticipation at the fact that I am as close as I have ever been to appearing on University Challenge. This is coupled, however, by the grim reality of the fact that I am far less prepared to do so than I was at this point last year.

I had a class test this week, a lab on Monday, an essay due the same day, a presentation the following week, an assignment due that I am too busy to even think about looking at. What’s more, this has been going on for a year now, and all of the general knowledge I had previously accumulated has been replaced by Physics.

That’s not to say I’m not a formidable quiz opponent. I certainly have the broadest base of knowledge of anyone I know- but is that enough?

On the entry form, I was asked what my specialist area of knowledge was. Baffled by this, I put “all-round”. I have no idea whether this will play to my advantage or not.

Isn’t this how things should be, though? We are human beings; whereas birds can fly and fleas can jump, the one thing we can do is think.

In any case, I have a 100-question exam next Tuesday. I have no idea what format the questions will take. There are no past papers, nor clues as to what form the test will take.

It’s the most exciting, and the most terrifying exam I will ever take. There are no real negative consequences if I fail- aside, that is, from the lack of positive consequences. Still, I do want those positive consequences.

Think about it. What’s your gift, your talent, your ability? What are you good at? Don’t you like it when people realise?

The older I have become, the more the educational system has wanted to limit what I can study, attempting to make my knowledge more and more specific. The fact of the matter is, that I am a jack of all trades and a master of sweet Fanny Adams. I want an opportunity to show what I still know.

I am not some sort of “mad scientist”. I am not a “bookworm”. I’m a well-rounded human being, and, no matter how much my schedule seems to want to make me fail, I am beyond determined to prove myself.

If it goes well, I’ll let you know how it goes. If it doesn’t, I’ll be too busy sulking.