Today I have read eighty-one pages for a single class. I don’t remember Edinburgh being this hard, or this demanding.
Haverford is not the place to go if you want to have a do-nothing year abroad. Since classes began two weeks ago (it seems like forever), I’ve had a two-to-four page essay due in for each class every week, plus the expectation that I’ll be able to converse on the finer points of language theory, Plato’s discourses, the British empire and the moral conundrums thrown up by the invention of the atomic bomb. Tricky? Hell, yes. Interesting? Doubly so.
Classes are totally different to what I have so far experienced in my two years at Edinburgh. I’m in class for three hours a pop, four times a week, and when I tell my newfound friends that I’m taking four 300-level (3rd year) courses, they look at me as though I’ve gone mad. “Why aren’t you taking an easy course?” they ask. The answer – because Edinburgh, in its no doubt infinite wisdom, won’t let me. The Edinburgh system, a distant three thousand miles away, has decreed that I must only take third-year courses, no matter that third (and fourth) years here always take an enjoyably easy course to lighten the load; I have to struggle under the weight of ridiculous numbers of books and print-outs…but I’m secretly enjoying it.
My ‘Writing, Sound and Modernity’ course is run by a rock-band-playing closet-hippy who opened the first class with ‘whatever the energies are in the room, that’s how we’ll lead the discussion’. He’s since gone on to make me the ‘Finder of Objects’ (which sounds like something from one of those role-playing games) for this week, which means I have to read the theories (oh! the endless theories) and bring in something which exemplifies them. It’s essentially show-and-tell with the added thrill of Lacan and Foucault.
The class numbers are so small – five in one of my classes, four in another – that there can be no slacking off, no excuses, and so most afternoons and evenings I can be found in the library or the common room devouring papers and journals.
The nights, however, are more fun, and this week saw my first experience of Cuban food (delicious!), beer pong (exciting!) and the Haverford Eighties Dance. Yes, I pulled my hair into a side ponytail, found a pair of neon blue leggings, and slapped on some ridiculous make-up. No, there are no pictures, and certainly not on facebook.
And, of course, I’m following the Presidential election. Those of you who know me will know that I jumped on the Obama bandwagon long before there was a band or a wagon, and I’ve been enjoying talking politics, and once the problem with my social security number is sorted, I’ll be able to register to vote! Those of you who know me from Edinburgh will also know that I get extremely excited about exercising my democratic right, and I can’t wait to do so over here.
So long for now – sadly, Mark Twain won’t read himself.
