it's a magical world

So. After three days and one night of taking pictures, I present: Dublin, or at least the parts of it I like to take pictures of. I didn't stray much from the city centre for these, because, frankly, I LIVE in city centre, and that's where I tend to wander.

( assload of pictures behind cut. dial-up beware. )

It's Passover, guys, and for quite literally the first time in my life, I have no Seder to go to. O_O This is...BEYOND tragic. For reasons I've never even figured out myself, Passover is my favorite holiday, and I HAVE NO SEDER. *flails balefully*

I know that technically, the college Ministry provides services for people of all religions, and if I went and asked, they could probably find the only Jews in all Ireland and set me up with their Seder. But then again, a Seder with neither friends nor family would probably be worse than no Seder at all.

Ah, well. I'll just have to have a virtual Seder with my LJ. *brings out the virtual Manishevitz and virtual matzoh ball soup* Party starts at sundown, guys!

It's St. Patrick's Day. I'm living in Dublin. Quite near City Centre, in fact. Do you know what happens in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day?

Let's just say, I've been outside, and now I fully intend to hide in my room for the rest of the evening. SO MANY DRUNK IRISH PEOPLE WTF.

I must say, I approve of Irish winters so far. It just doesn't get cold here the way it does in Chicago or even New York. Sure, the sun doesn't come out much, but the chill in the air is pleasant rather than bone-numbing and miserable. And it's postively balmy right now -- don't need much more than a sweater. I'm a fan.

My hatred of essays knows no bounds. Not that this is exactly newsworthy seeing as I complain about it every time I have to write one of the dratted things, but still. Two 3000-word essays due Friday by 5pm. And classes to attend somewhere in there, and being first week, I feel that skipping would be unwise. The next 38 hours are going to be HELL, seeing as I spent most of yesterday trying to recover from jet lag and getting no work done and therefore still have about 5000 of those 6000 words left to write.

I need someone to invent a concentration hat, so that I could actually focus on these damned essays without having my mind wander all over the place. Seriously, if I could just really focus and not think about anything else, I could probably get these done in a third the time. I'm a quick writer. I just get...bored.

Essay word count: 1000/3000, slowly slogging away.

It's like NaNoWriMo, except with fewer words and a very real deadline. I suppose I could heighten the suspense by adding in the other essay I need to write before winter break to the total count, which puts me at 1000/6000 total. Urg.

The heat in my room does not go on. This is not a happy thing. I mean, obviously my room is warmer than, say, outside, but that doesn't make it warm. And it's bloody freezing outside. Here I was, very grateful to be bypassing a Chicago winter for the more temperate climes of Ireland, and apparently the Irish are expecting the coldest winter in several decades. Thanks, Ireland, for making me feel right at home. *shivers*

In other news, I know this is heretical (as several of the other American students here have told me), but I'm quite glad to have missed Thanksgiving. It's my least favorite holiday. My family stresses me out, and I don't particularly like any of the traditional Thanksgiving foods -- turkey and mashed potatoes are very eh, and I detest cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. So while I wouldn't have minded the two days off from classes, it's nice to be in a country that doesn't celebrate a holiday based around a rather bullshit and racist historical occurrence that was the First Thanksgiving we learned about in grade school, second only in trumped-up WTFness to Columbus Day (oh, don't get me started). But anyway. I know that a lot of people in the US genuinely love Thanksgiving, so for those of you who did celebrate it, I hope it was suitably splendiferous.

On the other hand, last year I spent Thanksgiving with the boyfriend's family, and I rather enjoyed that. Other people's family tensions and oddities are amusing to observe, whereas my own family just makes me want to scream. So it goes.

Damn, I wish the Rent movie was out in Ireland. I'll have to wait for winter break to see it.

As the term progresses, I am increasingly thankful that my grades for this year don't count towards my GPA. When the Study Abroad people first told us that, I was all WTF I AM GOOD STUDENT ALL MY GRADES SHOULD COUNT. But over here, I'm really coming to realize how different the British/Irish method of study is from the American, and I'm already quite nervous about failing my final exams. I'm not the sort of person who really stresses out about schoolwork -- bitch about it, sure, but not really worry, because I know I'm reasonably intelligent and I know my shit and I can write good essays and such. But here, I've actually been having nightmares about final exams, which, y'know, is ever so slightly premature as they are in MAY. Because I don't know how to prepare for this sort of exam. I don't even know where to begin. And I feel like I must be miles and miles behind all the Irish students in terms of classwork, because we have no assignments aside from reading, and with some notable exceptions (i.e. we will be discussing play X so read it before coming to class), the reading, while relevant, really doesn't seem necessary. I mean, the prof sits there and lectures us on the topic of the week, and we take notes and are rarely called on to speak or discuss much. So the readings just sort of seem like...background info, and I wind up not doing them because the important info is covered in the lecture. And coming from the UofC, where discussion is the primary element of nearly all my classes, trying to learn in a purely lecture-based environment is...really quite difficult for me, actually. And then we're graded on one essay per term plus the final exam, and that's IT. Also alien to me. The essays, of course, are a bit longer than the ones I'm used to writing (although I have, on occasion, written longer), and heavily rely on doing a shitload of research outside of class. Which, pathetic as this may sound, I'm not at all used to. I'm used to having the required texts for the course, and reading them all cover to cover, and writing about them. Here, it's all "well, this is the play for the week and here is a bibliography of fifty books that are relevant to the course that might be interesting to look over." This boggles me. I don't know what to do with this information. Read all fifty books per course? That can't possibly be what they expect of us. Or is it? I don't know. The other Visiting Students in my classes are just as baffled as I am. Well, I guess we'll all go down together.

I'm just. I don't know. My grades are probably going to be lower this year than ever before in my life, and I don't really know what to do about it. Everyone has a system of learning that works best for them, and this is just definitely not mine.

Ah, fuck it. I'm not going into academia, anyway. I'm not even planning on going to grad school, which makes me quite the black sheep at my home university. To be honest, I'm only in college because I know I need the degree to get anywhere in my life. I'm sick of schooling. I'd much rather be out in the real world, learning by experience instead of out of books. But that, my parents/teachers/friends say, would be a waste of my intelligence, so here I am.

My Lighting Design class is going to be all kinds of awesome. The prof is incredibly enthusiastic about lighting in an oddly low-key sort of way, and he's all about being blatantly honest and telling lots of stories and messing around with lights a lot instead of taking exams, and how our final assessment is to light a show and he hopes we all do terrible designs because then we'll be able to analyze them more interestingly and learn more from them and get higher marks. Gah. I signed up for this class because, as a director, I'm sick of feeling like an idiot when I talk to my lighting designer and I want to actually be able to talk intelligently about it. But this guy makes me want to BE an LD. So much coolness.

My other classes here so far have just been, well, classes. You know. Interesting enough, in their way, but nothing brilliant. So this is a huge improvement. Maybe I really will get something out of being here.

Urg. Further hatred of bureaucracies. So last week, I had to submit a form listing the classes I wanted to take, in order of preference. I did. Belatedly, I realized that no one ever told us how we'd find out which ones we were registered for. But I figured hey, I have the timetables, I'll just go to the first course on my list that meets this week and find out from the lecturer. Which would be a class in Playwriting, my second choice course, which meets today (Monday) at 2pm.

Now, the Drama department here? The building is extremely confusing if you've never been in it before. I wasn't even sure where the correct entrance was, so I waited around outside until I saw some other students go in. Okay. So there's a long, narrow corridor, with just one door at the end. Along the corridor are bulletin boards, which include such helpful information as, y'know, what classes each student is registered for. According to the date at the top of the list, they've been there since Friday. Well, that would've been nice to know.

I find my name on the list. I'm apparently registered for six courses -- six. For the full year. And only two this term. You know how many courses I'm required to take for the UofC to consider it a full courseload? TEN.

WHAT THE FUCK. And I listed every damn course that I found even remotely interesting on that preference sheet. Twelve courses in all. I got into SIX. If I couldn't get into any of the other six I listed...well, what's left? I'm probably going to be stuck in a course I have no interest in. There's a course in Avant Garde Theatre that sounded absolutely deadly in the course descriptions. I'll bet that's the one that still has openings.

Incidentally, I might add, our places in the courses are fairly randomly selected. It has nothing to do with merit or anything. It's not like I wrote a lousy essay or something; I just got the short end of the stick in a major way. And I know a lot of the other Visiting Students are taking classes in multiple departments, so taking only six in Drama is fine because they'll take the other four in literature, or something. I'm ONLY in the Drama Dept. I don't have that option.

The Drama Dept. office opens again at 2:30 (also, WTF is it with offices here and how they close for 2+ hours for lunch?). I need to get this sorted, fast. This is ridiculous.

ETA: Sorted, finally, although I'm not entirely happy with the results, but at least I've got the proper amount of courses now. And yes, I'm in the dratted Avant Garde course. Urg. Well, Know Thy Enemy, etc.

So, I'm in Dublin. I couldn't sleep on the plane, so I've been awake for more hours than I care to contemplate. I'm wandering around the city in a sort of haze. And the dorms don't turn the internet on until Wednesday, when people who aren't new students officially start moving in, so...no internet for three days. I'm at an internet cafe now, but I don't think I'll take the time and money to do this again. It's only a few days, right? Also. Every bloody office where I can sign in and pay fees and get information is closed on Sunday, of course of course. BAH.

I think Dublin's cool, but it's hard to tell. Tired. Also, have eaten virtually nothing in past 24 hours. Need to find quick & easy food of some sort. Well, since campus is right smack in the middle of the city, that shouldn't be hard. I passed a bajillion pubs and stuff just finding this internet cafe.

Whee, etc. More enthusiasm later, when have slept. Much hatred for jet lag.

I have just finished my last final paper of the school year. Those were the last words that I will write for a class at the University of Chicago until the fall of 2006. The next class I take will be in Ireland.

Fuckin' yeah!