Spring Break
Study in the U.K.: not cheap, but easy
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I live "in halls" at Middlesex University, in northern London, and dorm life in a British "uni" is squalid. There's no shower, just a bath. There's not a lot of heat in the rooms, and the beds are either sitting on trundles or built into the walls. Laundry costs at least two pounds for each go, and the dryers don't work. There's no microwave in the kitchen that I share with 10 other people. The kitchen staff steal my dishes if I haven't washed them before they come and clean, and if I happen to be eating at about noon, I get kicked out so they can mop the floors and steal my crockery.
Not a lot of people go on to university in the UK, so one would think they'd take it somewhat seriously. But after two years at Hopkins I look at their "rigorous academic schedule" and smother laughter. It's rare to find a student who doesn't have at least a three-day weekend (I'm off Thursday nights to Tuesday mornings). Classes typically meet once, or at most twice, a week. There are almost never any tests, and when I turn in my essays, I have to get a receipt from the student office because there is a better than even chance that my tutor will lose it before he can grade it. In my writing workshop, if we're assigned more than 100 pages of reading, half the class will have found it too strenuous to finish the entire book, and workshop itself consists of 20 minutes of in-class writing that we then have to read out loud. For my American history class, our study of colonial life in pre-Revolution America consisted of watching The Last of the Mohicans. This week I had to do an exercise to prove that I could navigate the allegedly tricky waters of the library database. It asked me questions like, "What is the author's full name? Which campuses have copies of this book? Are any of them available?" I had to take an hour-long orientation class just to gain a library card.
At home, I go to the library because I know I'll run into a friend, or because I can pass an hour on the couches in M-level. Here, it's difficult to go to the library at all. The dragon guarding the door requires student ID, fingerprints and my firstborn to let me in. The computers almost never work. It costs 10 pence (15 cents) to photocopy or print anything. And the main trick is finding the library open at all. Definitely not before nine. Definitely not after eight, not during the week. Definitely not after four on Saturdays. Don't even try it on Sundays. Check-out desks close a half-hour before the library does. The computer rooms, over an hour before. The printers and the photocopiers close a half-hour before. It's an interesting contrast when I know people who sleep on B-level during exam week at Hopkins.
However, none of this is really a bad thing. With "Central" (downtown London) just a half hour tube ride away, most days see me watching the sunset on the footbridges over the Victoria Embankment, sitting in Hyde Park, watching them do The Full Monty from the front row, getting Chinese food in Leicester Square, shopping in Oxford Circus. And then, of course, there are the pubs. Drinking borders on a religion in this country, and they'll serve to anyone who's tall enough to see over the bar. Don't even try for mixed drinks here; they charge by the shot.
I love British accents, and now I'm surrounded by them. Sometimes I forget that I don't have one until I start talking. Since it's the American accent they dig here, this usually gets someone's attention. He (it's always a he) will then ask me one or both of the following questions ? One: "Are you American?" (Gee, what gave it away?), and two: "How did you let Bush run your country?" Then, while I deny any part of putting Dubya in office, he'll continue with how much he dislikes Tony Blair, and George Bush and America and everyone in it.
I'm getting the hang of this European thing, though. I can get off the tube at Hyde Park, and get to Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden and down to Big Ben without getting back on the tube. I've been through the Chunnel, jumped the turnstiles for the Metro in Paris, took a nap in King Louis XVI's backyard, read at Oxford, bar-hopped in Edinburgh, slept in a train station in Bologna and got hit on by our waiter in Florence. I can pronounce "Grosvenor," and I've got my "mobile" phone, which I use while I sit on the bus, at dinner, in class, to text message and ring up my friends.
Now if only I can figure out which way I'm meant to look when I cross the street, I'll be all set.
Study in the U.K.: not cheap, but easy