When In London...

…study British literature.

Classes have officially started, and I am going to love every single one of them. Well, I don’t know about French yet, since language classes don’t start until the second week, but every single one of my English classes promises to be an adventure. My course schedule for this semester is as follows:

Tuesday: Fiction and Narrative - Lecture 10-11, Seminar 11-12

Wednesday: The Dickens City - Lecture 10-11, Seminar 11-12; Beginner’s French 1 - Class 3-5

Thursday: Representing London: The Eighteenth Century - Lecture 10-11, Seminar 11-12

Yes, folks, that is it. Any other time during the day I am technically free. In reality, I do a LOT more consistent reading here than I did at Berkeley. I would say about 100 pages a night would get me through the required reading, or “set texts” as they call them here. But there is also recommended reading that is much more strongly recommended here than it ever was back home. You basically can’t get an A on a paper unless you demonstrate you’ve done at least half of the recommended reading as well as the required stuff.

Thankfully I’m a fast reader and some of the stuff is really interesting, and/or I’ve read it before. For instance, although I’d never even heard of the book I’m reading currently for Fiction and Narrative (Roxana by Daniel Defoe), the novels for the next two weeks are ones I have already read in a scholarly context: Persuasion by Jane Austen and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

International Baccalaureate has really done well for me; I’ve been somewhat prepared for the way European schools work since high school. The kinds of essays people here want me to produce seem easy in comparison.

Also also, I felt like a fabulous geek when Markman Ellis (the lecturer for my eighteenth century London class) was talking about how very few Queen Mary students would have had any experience with 18th-century texts, since their first-year curriculum is set (you don’t get to pick any classes; all first-years take the exact same ones) and doesn’t really cover the 1700s except for Robinson Crusoe, and this is a second-year course. But thanks to Professor Goldsmith, I know my way around the 18th century already! In fact, one of the books we’re reading is Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, which is a fabulously obscure little ditty that I hadn’t even heard of until I took 45B, but that I wrote a (pretty interesting) paper about and have read large excerpts from. More and more, I realize how lucky I am to have had such great English instruction at Berkeley. I am more than prepared for this.

Also also also (I don’t really need to be eloquent here), I knew nearly every fact that my Dickens lecturer (they don’t really call them professors here) talked about in her first lecture thanks to writing lit guides for DemiDec. I may only have read one of Dickens’s novels (A Tale of Two Cities), but I can tell you all about his life and the impact of serial publication upon his works — which was the content of the first lecture.

I need to think of a better word than “also” to tell you that classes run quite differently here. Well, lectures are mostly the same, at any rate, but seminars are actually led by lecturers/professors — usually junior ones, but definitely they already have their PhD’s before they’re allowed to lead seminars (imagine your professor actually leading a discussion section!). The seminars are also nicely small — about fifteen people. My lectures range in size from thirty to a little over a hundred.

I haven’t actually attended a meeting of my French class yet because the Language Learning department doesn’t start their courses till the second week of classes, but I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.

Don’t think I’ve just been reading books all day — I’ve gotten in a good deal of sight-seeing, including visits to Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Shakespeare’s Globe (where I saw As You Like It), and Oxford Street (famous for shopping!). Plus I’ve gone a couple times to do more mundane shopping in Stratford, one tube stop east of where I currently live, which is within sight of the stadium being constructed for the 2012 Olympics. I have to say, I’m glad I’m not here then — so much is going to be happening in East London during the games that transportation would be a veritable nightmare!