London in retrospect

Maybe eventually I'll finish writing about my travels on here; I do have a few more good stories to tell. But for now, this is a short paper I wrote for Literary Non-Fiction about London.

When Misery Has Company

I went to London last semester with 30 other freshmen for Houghton College’s First-Year Honors program. We had to pay for the privilege of living in London for three months by working incredibly hard: sitting through three-hour lectures, spending all afternoon at museums like the National Gallery and the Tate Britain, reading works of philosophy and literature by the likes of Plato and Dante in one evening, and writing a five-page paper every weekend. It was intense, and very often quite stressful. Yet now, I can look back on the experience and honestly say that I loved it.

This is not because I had fun racking my brain every Saturday, trying to figure out what an ancient chess set had to do with faith and reason, or because I enjoyed staying up late reading Hume (my friends know I did not enjoy that at all). But although I was often unhappy and sometimes downright miserable, I never truly despaired, and the reason why is, as I just mentioned, my friends. We were all going through the same things, and we made the most of that. On weekends we would write our papers together, complaining to each other about topics like “With appropriate and specific references to relevant materials, analyze and describe some of the ways in which the Renaissance was a catalyst for the Reformation,” frantically trading papers to read over and critique when we finished our first drafts.

It was this togetherness, this sharing in hard times, that made them bearable. The food at the Highbury Centre, where we all lived, was often unpalatable, but when I sat down to dinner and saw that it was their infamous quiche, I had a table full of friends groaning along with me. One day several of us were out doing our museum assignments, having discovered that we were taking yet another trip to the British Museum, when it began pouring down rain for the first time since we had been in England. For no good reason, except that we were tired and stressed, one of my friends and I began yelling at each other as we walked to the museum, shouting through the rain. We were not mad at each other, but we were able to take it out on each other without actually being mean, and when we reached the BM the situation had become funny, and I felt better.

And when I was really, truly down, someone was always there to notice, to ask what was wrong, to listen while I ranted about the anxiety and pressure of the program—and I knew they understood completely. Often I got discouraged about participating in colloquy, the group discussion we had three times a week. When I told my friends about not having an opportunity to talk because everyone else had too much to say, they could empathize, because they went through the exact same thing. Looking back on the London program now, I see that being miserable does not have to be an awful experience—as long as you have friends who are right there with you, being miserable too.

Funday

Ahhh, Sunday feels so good after a crazy week of work. This was the biggest MAGG (Museum and Gallery Guide) we've had (according to the professors), so it took a long time and wasn't the most fun. But the John Soane House was really cool--he was an architect and his house was like a maze, and each room was unique and filled with random stuff from his collections. So that was cool. The reading this week wasn't too bad--two of the major ones were fiction, Candide and part IV of Gulliver's Travels--but one day we had this long philosophical thing, which was actually interesting but really long, and it drove me crazy. Dan drew a comic on it for me, though, and Eri wrote encouraging notes. So that made it not as bad.

Also this week Adam, Dan, Mary Beth and I finally booked our flights to Ireland and Scotland, where we're traveling together after the program. That's definitely something to look forward to. Let's see . . . I played tennis for the first time ever on Thursday, before we got the paper topic. Steve is good, but Dan, Eri and I are not--none of us three have played much before. But it was fun and silly, a good thing to do before the stress of the paper began. The topic was ridiculous; no one could really figure it out. So we were all miserable together for three days, especially on Saturday. We called the blue lounge "the room of despair", Adam repeatedly asked me to kill him, and other people were talking about suicidal urges as well. I turned in my paper right at midnight, and I know it wasn't good. But we all made it through, and now it's Sunday!

I slept till noon, went grocery shopping (it was a beautiful day), then we got a pizza for 5 pounds and watched The Prestige, a ridiculously amazing movie full of crazy mess-with-your-mind unexpectedness. It was good. So although it was another stressful week, now it's over, and this new week has started well. And next week is break, which we definitely all need. And Mom and Joe are coming to visit! So I just have to make it through one more week, one more paper, and then I'll be able to completely relax and have fun. :)

Scraps

What follows are bits from e-mails that I've sent since I last posted. I know it's not much, but at least you'll get an idea of what's been going on.

Jan. 29: Last night some friends and I went to see Les Mis--it was amazing! Three of us were in the very front row (the cheap seats). The stage was right in front of us. It was scary when the actors came right up to the edge. But the music was so good. The cast did a wonderful job. It was so cool.

Feb 1: I got an A- on the first paper (about the individual and the state in Greco-Roman culture). I was surprised and happy. :) I only know of one other person who got an A-.

Feb. 21: London is so busy and so much fun. I've been staying up way too late and doing ridiculous things, like going on a walk at midnight and seeing some ghetto-looking kids frantically run by and then seeing the police with a big group of them (that was earlier tonight) and going on a walk in the evening at Canterbury and having drunk people swear at us (maybe these night time walks aren't such a good idea . . .) London is certainly a lot different from Houghton!
This weekend is wonderful because the professors surprised us by not giving us a paper! So we have a completely free weekend; it's great. I got A minuses on my first two papers, which was a surprise. I have gotten the others back yet. Tomorrow we're going to see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night; some people saw it tonight and said it was really good. So I'm looking forward to that.
Let's see . . . my favorite thing . . . it's so hard to pick. Going to Bath and Canterbury (they were overnight trips) was really fun because we stayed at nice hotels and had good food (unlike at the Highbury Centre) and had lots of free time, so those were probably what I liked best. My least favorite thing was all the trips to the British Museum, which we had to spend a lot of time at and we all got so sick of. Now we're done with it, though, fortunately. Another bad thing is the papers--they came be pretty stressful. >:(

Now let me update you on a few of the those things: I got my 3rd paper back today and got a B+, which isn't bad but is a little disappointing after doing better on my first two. Also, we didn't actually see Twelfth Night because it was sold out, but we're going to go another time instead. Yesterday was a beautiful day, practically like spring, and we went on a walk by the Thames. Utterly amazing. We've watched a lot of movies and just hung out. Tomorrow, though, it's back to school. :( But I'm still loving the whole experience.