the painful transition from math to met

[Quite apart from the fact that I have turned American and write math instead of maths :-( ]

Actually, the transition from maths to met is quite a pleasant one. I can now perfectly permissibly get excited about clouds, even if they aren't displaying kelvin-helmholtz instability; look up satellite images of hurricanes; and a significant proportion of my study seems to bear relation to everyday, real phenomena. Add to all that that I got to go on a FIELD TRIP; a real field trip, where I could wear my hideous yet warm ensemble of outwear gear, thus adding to my sister's possible reason's to disown me, and prance along the Dorset coast whirling meteorological instruments around my head and watching boys let off weather balloons (we girls lost out because 1) the boys were eager and 2)the boys were taller and less likely to pop said balloon on a spiky tree).

However, certain aspects of this whole application malarkey are rather upsetting.

For example, I am, for the first time in my life, the owner of my very own scientific calculator. Why?

Well, at GCSE and below, my poxy non scientific one coped (I still own it, and it has breakout 2004 stickers on it and my name in orange nail varnish). At ALevel I got to borrow a school graphical one, and learn to draw smily faces for my friends/teachers/self. As for undergraduate, there were two types of maths.
1) we don't need numbers, silly numbers, it's all about defining things, or manipulating things, or whatever, but we can generally survive without things so ridiculous as 7.9346x10^-4.
2) If we did need numbers, say to analyse a physical model, or a clever expression of pi, we wrote a PROGRAMME which did it for us (or a programme which spent eternity trying to compile and then exploded in a puff of smoke, but the point remains).
[this is an awful awful explanation of why I didn't need a calculator, but I didn't].
So, to the question 'you're a mathematician, can I borrow a calculator?' you could answer smugly 'no, ask a physicist' or 'no, ask an engineer'.
But no longer. while my brain can do division and multiplication and the like, it's not quite up to exponentials and logarithms (if yours is, I suggest you check that you aren't actually a computer.) and quite a lot of meteorological expressions seem to contain these pesky things. So I just spent £10 that could have been spent on
1)cake
2)cake
3)cake
...
(the veggie frenzy passed)
on a calculator.

But it is new and shiny, so I guess I can find it exciting for a short while.

and that is why they call me Decaff...

Ah, it was inevitable, really. I'd lasted a whole month. Not a whole month of conning my coursemates into thinking I was quiet, submissive and comprehensible, admittedly (we played monopoly which put paid to the 'submissive'); but a month without any particular hyperactivity. I've noted before, in fact, that my response to caffeine doesn't seem to be at all predictable; sometimes mugs of it have no effect at all.

But take today, for example. 8 hours sleep (somewhat rubbish sleep, I admit, I kept waking up for some reason); nice big breakfast (bacon and eggs and crumpets- yes i have shed some of the Belize pounds, so I've decided bacon and eggs is permissible); no reason for the dormant caffeine monster to emerge. But emerge it did. I think i was my first mug of the morning too- I arrived in the department, only to discover our lecture was cancelled. I had a tutorial an hour later so went and got a coffee (15p!) and sat with some friends.

Well, I say sat. I was more kinda bouncing. and singing about biscuits (of zazzamarandabo- if you get the reference, sing along, and if you don't, check out silly songs with larry on youtube. singing cucumbers, yes yes yes), and belting out a bit of 'Poison' by Alice Cooper (who my friend said 'isn't really metal, more like boyzone'. Turns out he meant boy george...), and generally just being caffeinated. Hopefully no world renowned meteorologists walked behind me while I was boinging up and down.

In case anyone doesn't know, they DO call me decaff. it's my nickname on the support stewarding team at Greenbelt Festival, and it arose as a warning against anyone who should choose to give me coffee, after a certain late night when I got a little bit excited about the Wesley brothers to my team leaders...