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Showing posts tagged Queen Mary
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…blog!
In slightly over a month, I will board a plane in Los Angeles and get off ten hours later in London.
I’m spending my junior year studying abroad at Queen Mary, University of London, located in East London between the tube stops Stepney Green and Mile End. I will be living on campus in student housing, with my own single room in a suite of five to nine boys and girls (also with their own single rooms). We’ll share a bathroom and a kitchen, and probably a lot more as the year wears on.
I plan on doing a lot of traveling while I’m there. London is pretty much in the geographic center of a long list of places I want to see. I’m already planning weekend trips throughout Europe (perhaps even north Africa — I have a strange desire to see Morocco), and my “spring break” encompasses most of the month of April.
But I also want to get to know London like a local. The prospect of actually living abroad, and not just vacationing, intrigues me. I’ll be studying British literature at a British university from British professors who speak with British accents. I’ll get to be a part of a new culture and finally experience this city I love (and this country I love) from the perspective of someone who’s there to stay — for a year, at any rate.
While I’m abroad, I’ll be updating this blog more-or-less regularly (I’m aiming for actual entries every week or two, with pictures posted a little more frequently, at least to begin with). I don’t know my contact information in the UK yet, but when I do, I’ll post it here. The one surefire way to get through to me is to e-mail (or you can always leave a comment on one of these posts).
Now, it all seems like a crazy fever dream. Between me and London stretch long weeks of packing, acquiring my student visa, saying goodbye to friends, finishing up my work projects, unpacking, re-packing, and generally preparing for what will most likely be the best and scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And it’s really happening.
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…do some more walking! Yeah, that’s it! And dancing!
The past week (I can’t believe it’s only been a week) has been hectic with a side of crazy, but I’ve also been loving every last minute of it — yes, even those minutes when my feet were hurting and I was hungry and the weather was about as consistent as someone both indecisive and bipolar.
Since my last post, I’ve officially moved in at Queen Mary. I live in Pooley House, which is the largest residential dorm in the relatively new student village on campus. I have a single room in a suite of seven. We have our own toilets and showers in our rooms (small, but ours) and we all share a kitchen. I’d post pictures of what my room looks like, but right now it looks a bit like Ground Zero — I’ve been so busy doing things and meeting people (and trying to find push-pins for my corkboard, and finding out that the Brits call them “drawing pins” only after attempting to fruitlessly describe to a salesperson what I was looking for) that I haven’t had time to put up any of the room decorations I brought with me, excepting the large rainbow-striped “PACE” flag I bought this summer in Florence (pace is Italian for peace; when I was in Italy four years ago these things were everywhere, and I really liked them, plus mine packed small and really brightens up an entire wall of my room).
Although I’ve only known them for a week, I feel like I’ve found (best) friends in some of the other University of California students who are studying in London. There’s a core group of about five of us who have been hanging out together a lot (more on this later) and I just feel comfortable with these people. I also really love my flatmates. In Pooley Flat 3 we have four girls and three guys. One of the other girls is actually a UC kid, and one of the aforementioned (best) friends — our singles are literally next door to each other.
Yesterday was the first day since moving into Queen Mary that I ventured back into central London. Me, Jessica (my nextdoor flatmate), Sam (short for Samantha), Reno (yes that is a girl’s name), and Oren (actually, that’s a boy’s name) went shopping on Oxford Street, where I was willingly talked into a beautiful pair of brown ankle boots that make me feel like I waltzed out of a period piece. These would be the aforementioned UC students at Queen Mary that I feel I’ve gotten really close with. I’ve hung out more with Sam and Jessica, but Oren and Reno are both English majors and we’re taking a lot of the same classes. In fact, Oren and I have every single English class together first semester. This should be good times.
After shopping, we ended up searching in vain for a pub near Covent Garden (where our theater was). We actually ate at this Australian bar/grill place that was slightly pricier but had huge portions to make up for it and could actually sit the five of us comfortably. Then it was a quick walk to the Fortune Theatre and The Lady in Black.
The play is billed as the scariest ghost story in London theatre. The first half of the play was not at all frightening. And then the second half was just *shudders*. It does a really great job of building tension and always revealing just a little less than you want to know but a little more than you want to think about. It was in a more gothic tradition of horror, which I appreciated — I have a feeling Edgar Allan Poe would have enjoyed it. We bought the tickets in Leicester Square for a discount rate, paying about 25 pounds for seats that normally go for 45. I wouldn’t have seen the play for full price, but it was definitely a necessary experience (and better than The 39 Steps). I just feel so London-y: I’ve seen two west end shows in the space of a week.
I suppose I’ll round out this update by discussing my classes. I managed to figure out my schedule, and it makes me exceedingly happy. First semester, I only have classes Tuesday through Thursday; I pick up a Monday class second semester, but still have my Fridays off. I could’ve had a Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday schedule, but I would’ve been missing out on one class I really want to take.
In the British school system (or at least at QM) it’s possible to take year-long classes, or “modules” as they’re called here. I am taking two year-long English modules both focused around London: The Dickens City (where we read a bunch of Dickens books about London — seven within the first semester alone! — and supplement that with walking tours of Victorian sights) and Representing London: the 18th Century (aka 1700s, which is the class that meets on Thursdays and which I really wanted to take and almost couldn’t get into, but literally the girl in front of me in line dropped it and I nabbed it up before anyone else could).
First semester, I’m also taking an English course called Fiction and Narrative, which appears to focus on different types of narrative fiction. The first book for the class is Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, but the syllabus also contains everything from Jane Eyre to Jane Austen (Persuasion) to Henry James to the graphic novel Maus. The readings span a pretty wide time period, and I’ve never taken a class that does that, so I think it’ll be interesting to compare narrative strategies across centuries. I’m also taking Beginner’s French I because there was nothing else I really wanted to take as an “easy” course, and no way I’d take four English courses in the same semester — that’s like suicide. I have plenty of reading as it is.
Next semester, I keep all the year-long modules, but in place of Fiction and Narrative I’m taking the equivalent of a Senior Seminar course called Race, Gender, and Empire in Women’s Fiction 1790-1900 (for which I am also reading Jane Eyre — excitement!). In fact, my entire rationale for taking the course was that I knew we would be reading Jane Eyre, and that I’m kinda interested in women’s fiction as a distinct entity in the 1780s-1820s (thank you, Professor Goldsmith!). In place of Beginner’s French I, I am taking The Classical Hollywood Musical 1930-1960 in the film department…which should be amazing. I’m really excited.Well, that’s it for now, folks! I have a few books to read before courses officially start on Tuesday, and it would also be nice to finally set up my room and sort through all the admin stuff I have to get done. Expect more in another week or so. Cheers! (See, I’m British already.)
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…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!
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The view out the library window. This is why I love London. (And yes, there is a graveyard in the middle of my university campus.)
