Of Lecturers and Longitude

Greetings all! Look, I'm doing better: only 5 days in between posts! In my defense, even my English tutor was marveling at the amount of paper-writing I have to do this semester; it wouldn't be all that bad, really, except for the fact that the semester is squeezed into 10 weeks. Once you figure in the few weeks lost to orientation, introductory classes, and, umm, procrastination, any academically-minded student starts to dream in printer reams.

I must say, though, that I absolutely LOVE my classes here. How often does one often get to visit the London wall or the Roman amphitheatre with the man who actually excavated them? Or how often does the proximity to Shakepeare's Globe facilitate an English department inviting its students on a private tour of the theatre? How frequently does one read about the spread of the Black Plague in London in 1665--and then walk down the streets which Defoe described as reeking of disease and death? It's pretty amazing.

Plus, the quality of the teaching itself is superb. UCL is ranked the 7th-best university in the world, and this shows in its staff (note: to avoid utter academic embarrassment and cultural labeling, know that the word "faculty" does not mean professors in England; that would be a course of study). I walked out of my first Shakespeare lecture, for example, feeling like I'd just drunk two cases of Red Bull and been dunked in the Colonial oatmeal pool. Spit flying from his lips, Professor Rene Weis has the ability to make the very air molecules quiver with awe at a Shakespearean couplet. As he held his dilapidated, thirty-year-old copy of The Riverside Shakespeare aloft, I couldn't help thinking of an acropolistic statue, his face aglow and hair standing on end (he has a habit of running his fingers through his longish-yet-still-conservative locks when he gets excited). In a way, I'm glad he doesn't teach every lecture; I would be too exhausted from the expenditure of emotional energy.

But when the emotional energy is exhausted, what can one do but...travel! Yes, our latest London excursion involved a trip to Greenwich village, the site of the prime meridian. Of course, being cheapskates, we decided to take the bus.

Bad idea.

Let's just say that pretending to race your friends from the second floor of the double-decker bus and playing foreign tour guide to formerly-unknown tourist sites can only take you so far. An hour and a half later, though, we arrived at Greenwich. The place reeks of scholarship, from the National Maritime Museum to the Royal Observatory (science nerds: try to contain yourselves). Visitors can climb up the hill (quite a hike!) to see the line. Of course, one must take the quintessential Greenwich picture: straddling the prime meridian. There is just no way around it. Even if French tourists are semi-rudely trying to decide (in French) whether to ask you to move (not knowing, of course, that you can understand what they are saying), you simply must plant your feet, throw a smile, and...check your watch (mine was almost two minutes slow!).

Of course, by the time we finished walking through the time museum and the requisite gift shop (and being sorely tempted by the stunning pocketwatches and compasses, not so much by the "I straddled the prime meridian" t-shirts), there was little daylight left. We browsed quickly through the National Maritime Museum, then got on a bus to head back to Ramsay Hall to meet friends for dinner.

Did I say before the bus was a bad idea? It still was. After spending nearly forty-five minutes in dead-stopped traffic (going a whole two blocks!), we gave up and forked out the extra money for the tube. What did we buy those Oyster cards for anyway? By this time, of course, the new plan was just to meet the friends in Brick Lane, famous for its Indian curry. That will have to wait, though, because I got a migraine and had to skip.

But Indian food may yet be in my future. Because in two days it will be October 16. And you know what that means....


MY BIRTHDAY!!!!

(Stay tuned for more details; sorry this was such a boring post.)