  On Friday we went off to Sheffield University, which turned out to as I had thought; awesome. The city itself was clean and very green considering its size, with excellent public transport. The department was enthusiastic and passionate about what they were doing and the course was better than any other. The union is the best in the country, and although self catered accommodation wasn't too good, catered was, with larger rooms than all the others we've seen. Sheffield easily jumps into the number one spot on my list because it's simply such a well rounded university and one that I'm sure I'd enjoy living and studying at. We drove home on Friday night and then on Saturday morning I had my driving test. Just as I stepped out of the test centre, it started raining - just my luck! I passed though, surprising myself on how well I drove, even if I was a little overcatious. It didn't really sink in that I'd passed until today when I drove for the first time on my own and I couldn't stop smiling all the way to work.
Tomorrow I'll be giving my friends a lift to school, which will be an interesting challenge in itself I'm sure. Anyway, on Saturday afternoon my dad and I went off to our last university open day at Reading. It a huge place in terms of area, but the population of the uni was half that of the others ( only 12,500 students) and the department was remarkably small - only about 100 students, a fraction of the size of others. On discovering this, we decided to go home a little early as there wasn't much point staying to see another accommodation talk or whatever.
They did put a lot of effort into their open day and it's a nice place though, I'll give them that. So, I get to apply to up to six universities and I've been to six open days; quite a feat I think. They were all similar in one way or another; there were always more girls than boys visiting by a long way, making it a 'target rich environment' (or something like that, ha ha) which proved distracting on several occasions (it just shows that intelligent girls are amongst the best looking!). Accommodation is very similar accross the board as is the courses and facilities I'm interested in.
The general feel of the unis did differ quite a bit though, and taking it all into account, I've got a semi-final list of them in order of preference: 1st Sheffield 2nd Nottingham 3rd Manchester 4th Birmingham 5th= Leeds 5th= Reading Today was mainly spend at work, which was okay because of the nice weather and general lack of customers. It left me fairly tired though, but that was probably due in part to this week's extensive walking about various campuses.
Tomorrow will hopefully be the start of a normal week in which I can settle back into doing school work (even if there is little of it) and work on my website. I'll be ordering my digital camera as soon as the money transfers as well, so that's definitely something to look forward to, 
