Work is mounting. And a couple of realizations about the school I chose to study at have scared me shitless and have made me try (and I repeat, try) to stop procrastinating and get stuff down.
1. UCL is the #4 school in the world
2. UCL rarely, rarely ever gives out the equivalent of an A.
3. I'm getting my ass kicked in one of my classes.
I half-realized the first point before I got to London. The second I realized when I got a paper I wrote back marked with the equivalent of a B+, and the guy in my class I went with to get my paper said "Whoa, B+? That's really good. Since they don't really give out As..." So, yikes. And three has been a steady realization since I thought I did well in the beginning. It's just hard. There's just a considerable divide between what I thought was answering the question for the problem set and what they were expecting. I don't know if this is just because I'm not cut out for it, or if the courses I took back at home ill-prepared me for the course here, that I didn't even take a course back home that would definitely help me right now, or if I'm just still not in the right frame of mind (as in a totally economic mindset) to approach the course. It's probably a mix of all of them. At least nothing we've done so far has affected the grade, because for better or for worse, the Final Exam is 100% of my grade. Yep, 100%. Which is sort of lucky because I'm getting my ass kicked right now, but that means I need to stop getting my ass kicked by this class to make it out of it alive.
And the sheer irony of it all is that I went abroad with the impression that I could just come back with a nice set of As or so and keep my GPA at the level its at...and now I might come back with a fistful of Bs and kill my GPA. Jeeeeeeeezus.
But aside from all the academic junk that could get any person down, here's a description of the fun stuff that's happened since the previous update, which is numbered at...two things.
The first is a trip to Kew Gardens. Basically it's a set of Gardens with a bunch of conservatories and exhibits sponsored/maintained by members of the Royal Family. When visiting last Saturday, it was still the "Tropical Flowers" special theme, which meant bunches and bunches of orchids and other amazing-looking flowers. Here's my favorite orchid photo:
It somehow looks less vivid than on the camera and on iPhoto before I uploaded it, so I'm gonna chalk the downgrade to Facebook and what I would guess is some strange tendency to decrease color count. But moving on, here's another flower (non-orchid) picture I was a big fan of:
There were also small exhibits regarding animals, but there wasn't anything very rare there at all. The rarest thing was probably a green water dragon, which I'm guessing is likely not very rare at all. That being said, Kew Gardens was basically really fantastic. I loved it. I would love to go back when the weather's nicer. There was a pretty rad "treehouse" sort of walkway that slightly evoked memories of Donkey Kong Country while on it. It was ludicrously high up (my estimation is 50ft) and so you got to see the entirety of the park. Pretty stellar, if you ask me.
Event number two actually occurred right after the trip to Kew Gardens. All of us who went all came back to my flat and ate a very, very American dinner: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I'm lucky in that I received a shipment from my parents and can thus enjoy it once in awhile, but some of the folks hadn't had any at all since coming here. Which amazed me. It was a fun occasion, in that we were all American and were enjoying the essence of American (gourmet, depending on how you look at it) cuisine.
But yeah. There has not been too much new. Just a lot of work and a lot of muted panic as the horrors of this term have been slowly creeping up on me, dogging me every day.
Today and yesterday, however, have had totally beautiful weather. I don't think the weather has ever been nice two days in a row since I've gotten here. Woah. I am super happy about that though.
Stay rad until next time, folks,
-e.
NP: Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Maybe David Byrne was right when he said that heaven "is a place where nothing ever happens." Food for thought, I suppose.
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