Most of you who read this know that I'm back in the states; actually, I think most of you have seen me. Well, I'm moved in to my new house (dubbed "The Manor" by its inhabitants), which I keep trying to call a flat for reasons that don't make any real sense, and am about to change the title of the blog to simply "Raeann's Adventures", as I might keep updating with tidbits about my life that strike me as adventurous and interesting but that happen here in Spokane.
But not before I fill in the London blanks!
Posts to follow in the approximate order of their dates.
Oh, and I'm posting this from BruceWayne (or just Bruce in company). It's a rather dashing-looking black Lenovo that can't hope to be as awesome as Max (aka the Mac), so I named it after Batman to increase its coolness factor. I'm thinking about getting a batman logo sticker/skin, either to make it look cooler or to replace the manufacturers's protective sticky thing that I've left on the cover to protect it while moving and haven't got around to removing.
In spite of my still-strong attachment to the Mac, Bruce is growing on me. For one, he has a name and gender. I still think of the Mac as an it, even though I named it Max in the last few months of ownership. I'm rather enamoured of the fingerprint logon for Bruce, and the fact that he does in fact have two-finger scrolling capability was ridiculously exciting. The keyboard is nice, even if the number pad does get in my way sometimes. The processor is way slower than the Mac, but I really only watch movies that I've seen a hundred times before and am just watching now to fill the silence, let's face it. Also, it can hook up to a TV if I have cables, something that the Mac would only have been able to do for several hundred dollars.
Is this my new favourite computer? Absolutely not. I miss the Mac, and the multitouch, and OSX, and the more sensitive scrolling, and the fast processor, and the way I had conformed it to my needs. But, in the absence of the Mac, BruceWayne will have to do. After all, he's secretly Batman.
Showing posts with label Whitworth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whitworth. Show all posts
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Friday, 13 January 2012
It's my last week in Sunderland...
So, I'm leaving Sunderland for good in a mere three days. Rising to the top of my mixture of emotions is the panic of not having packed — or even having enough suitcases, in all likelihood — at all, not even sorting my stuff.
Of course, this has been a week of more "lasts" than I can remember having since my high school graduation. I was in denial about graduation for three months before it until two days before it, when I finally read through my speech and got the panics.
I had my last day with my british biochem lab partner Freya, who's been featured on this blog before.
I turned in my last assignments.
I've been busily not buying more food, since I'll just be leaving in a few days (I use jessi's milk instead).
I returned all my library books. I really will not miss that place. I spent too much of my time cooped up trying to write lab reports on the top floor.
I keep realising that each day is my last "day of the week" in Sunderland, probably ever. I probably won't see Conor, Josie, James, Adam, Flo, Jessi, or Freya ever again after I go home.
Of course, I won't have to deal with that impossible little frenchman ever again (except for when I have to take that exam in friggin' June, not that I'm bitter). I won't have to feel like I'm wasting my time by going to lectures (I hope. I've never felt like I didn't need to go to a Whitworth lecture).
It's just as well that I'm done with my papers, though, since I had my last packet of alpine cider this morning.
A couple of funny stories about words with different meanings:
1. Cider. Cider in the UK means the alcoholic kind. It's like beer with apples, I believe. Comes in cans. Cider in the states, unless preceded by "hard", means "cloudy apple juice, I guess" or "hot, spiced apple beverage that is mostly sugar". I got some funny looks when I said that I write my best papers while drinking cider.
2. Fanny. In the states, it's sort of like saying "bum" in reference to someone's hindquarters: a fairly polite word for a culturally amusing body part. We even have fanny packs, which sit either on the bum or on the stomach.
In the UK, fanny means, ah, "ladybits", as Adam so delicately put it when we pried the definition out of him.
I probably wouldn't think this was such a funny word if I hadn't grown up with it as a quaint, funny way of saying butt.
Snrk. Yes, I am five years old.
3. The Garage. Here pronounced GARE-uhj, which still seems foreign. Although, I use and hear this one enough that it's making guh-RAHJ sound weird and foreign. In the states, a gah-RAHJ is the thing that holds your cars when you're not driving them. I think it's normally that way for GARE-uhjes here in the UK, as well.
However, there's a petrol station that I think of as "behind Clanny", although it's really more to the side. Anyway, it's the place to go for late-night food hunts that don't include hot pizza or any other kind of takeaway. Do we call it "the petrol station"? No, we do not. Someone in Clanny House, past or present, started calling it "the GARE-uhj", and the name stuck. If you say "I'm going to the GARE-uhj, does anyone need anything?" then everyone in the room will either reply that they'll come with you or thrust fivers at you with orders. I think that if I tried to call it "the petrol station", no one would know what I was talking about.
The thing that makes this really funny for me is that I still don't think of a GARE-uhj as a place to put a car, but rather as the petrol station behind clanny. Guh-RAHJes are where you keep cars.
I'd like to think that I'll be too busy packing and eating the rest of my food to post again before London or Leicester, but who am I kidding? I'll put it off until late Sunday night, and we all know it.
Of course, this has been a week of more "lasts" than I can remember having since my high school graduation. I was in denial about graduation for three months before it until two days before it, when I finally read through my speech and got the panics.
I had my last day with my british biochem lab partner Freya, who's been featured on this blog before.
I turned in my last assignments.
I've been busily not buying more food, since I'll just be leaving in a few days (I use jessi's milk instead).
I returned all my library books. I really will not miss that place. I spent too much of my time cooped up trying to write lab reports on the top floor.
I keep realising that each day is my last "day of the week" in Sunderland, probably ever. I probably won't see Conor, Josie, James, Adam, Flo, Jessi, or Freya ever again after I go home.
Of course, I won't have to deal with that impossible little frenchman ever again (except for when I have to take that exam in friggin' June, not that I'm bitter). I won't have to feel like I'm wasting my time by going to lectures (I hope. I've never felt like I didn't need to go to a Whitworth lecture).
It's just as well that I'm done with my papers, though, since I had my last packet of alpine cider this morning.
A couple of funny stories about words with different meanings:
1. Cider. Cider in the UK means the alcoholic kind. It's like beer with apples, I believe. Comes in cans. Cider in the states, unless preceded by "hard", means "cloudy apple juice, I guess" or "hot, spiced apple beverage that is mostly sugar". I got some funny looks when I said that I write my best papers while drinking cider.
2. Fanny. In the states, it's sort of like saying "bum" in reference to someone's hindquarters: a fairly polite word for a culturally amusing body part. We even have fanny packs, which sit either on the bum or on the stomach.
In the UK, fanny means, ah, "ladybits", as Adam so delicately put it when we pried the definition out of him.
I probably wouldn't think this was such a funny word if I hadn't grown up with it as a quaint, funny way of saying butt.
Snrk. Yes, I am five years old.
3. The Garage. Here pronounced GARE-uhj, which still seems foreign. Although, I use and hear this one enough that it's making guh-RAHJ sound weird and foreign. In the states, a gah-RAHJ is the thing that holds your cars when you're not driving them. I think it's normally that way for GARE-uhjes here in the UK, as well.
However, there's a petrol station that I think of as "behind Clanny", although it's really more to the side. Anyway, it's the place to go for late-night food hunts that don't include hot pizza or any other kind of takeaway. Do we call it "the petrol station"? No, we do not. Someone in Clanny House, past or present, started calling it "the GARE-uhj", and the name stuck. If you say "I'm going to the GARE-uhj, does anyone need anything?" then everyone in the room will either reply that they'll come with you or thrust fivers at you with orders. I think that if I tried to call it "the petrol station", no one would know what I was talking about.
The thing that makes this really funny for me is that I still don't think of a GARE-uhj as a place to put a car, but rather as the petrol station behind clanny. Guh-RAHJes are where you keep cars.
I'd like to think that I'll be too busy packing and eating the rest of my food to post again before London or Leicester, but who am I kidding? I'll put it off until late Sunday night, and we all know it.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Success, Views on the World, and I Don't Like Thursday — Tuesday 4 October to Thursday 6 October
Tuesday saw an interesting development in my viewing of the world, yet again. Up to this point, I was under the impression that Americans were the only people group that exhibited the "ugly American syndrome", but, in retrospect, I think we may have inherited it from the British. When I thought about it a little, I remembered that the British colonised, and made multiple attempts to civilise the savage, heathen corners of the earth. Remember the British Empire? Yeah. My new acquaintance had this to say about the rest of the world: "Yeah, France is nice except that it's full of French people. Germany would be okay too, but there's so many Germans... And I bet America is quite nice, but you'd have to put up with all the Americans, begging your pardon. Yep, this is the best place in the world with the best people in the world." He also recommended Idiot Abroad, a TV show about a british guy that gets taken to various countries around the world. Apparently, the star of the show shares the sentiments of my history class companions.
History class also brought me into contact with the Veronica White of Sunderland. Apparently there are two of her, since I hear there's an art major like her as well. She's the sort of person who, once she starts talking, doesn't know how to shut up. Not that I claim to be much better, but in class I do tend to keep quiet. Not so for the Veronicas of the world. I believe that the original Veronica at Whitworth was unaware that she was doing anything wrong or impolite, and I think that it's the case with these two as well. Unfortunately for my conscience, I'm not a nice enough person to befriend them and do them the kindness of helping them out with their social skills. Quite frankly, I can't stand people like that. This is probably indicative of some awful traits that can be found in me, but some people get under my skin.
Wednesday was a successful day. I successfully contributed to the discussion in history seminar, which may well have prevented me from embarrassing myself by being asked what book I read (because I didn't read). Success!
After class I sat down in the library cafe to determine the plot of The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope's mock-epic monster. I was determined to sit there and write down every plot point until I made sense of the whole thing. Unfortunately, the library had a fire alarm, so I picked a new location (City Space, the building which houses the cafeteria and the gymnasium) to occupy until I defeated Pope.
Success came, but not without much grumbling and several notes in my plot outline regarding the pointlessness of the whole thing. I believe that this may have been Pope's point in writing it, actually, since he was writing in an epic fashion about a stupid trivial thing that was treated as something incredibly serious. I don't dislike him any less, and I don't think that he was really all that great, but he wasn't too bad. It was still a bit of a crabbed number, but it was less unmanageable when I worked at it.
I also succeeded at biochemistry calculations while ensconced in City Space.
After my wild academic successes, I decided not to take the metro back, since I would have to wait longer than it would take me to walk. I ended up taking a back way, which is regrettably not faster than the normal way. There's a little street that curves around behind the Royal Hospital (across the street from Clanny), and it's probably one of the most british places in Sunderland. There's a post office, and several little tea rooms, bakeries, and grocery stores, as well as no fewer than four fruit and veg stores and two pharmacies. I'll have pictures tomorrow, since I plan on mailing the postcards I've done so far.
I decided, as I was walking, that I want to move Whitworth to Sunderland. I want my professors and my three-minute walk to class and my friends and Whitworth's lack of administrative nightmares, but I really love this place. I'm not sure that my Whitworth friends and Sunderland friends would mesh very well, though.
I watched How to Train Your Dragon, which has been highly recommended to me. It was pretty good, although the vikings are scottish and Gerard Butler. Hmm. The story is mostly cute, with some impressive cultural messages and some rather serious plot twists. The soundtrack is good, and I discovered that it was composed by John Powell, who did the Bourne trilogy and has worked extensively with Hans Zimmer, who seems to be the John Williams of the last decade or so. The dragon is adorable. D'awwww... The most scottish viking, voiced by Craig Ferguson of late night talk show fame, has a great line about trolls: "They EXIST! They steal your socks! Only the left ones, though..." I maintain that the trolls work with the car key gnomes, and that they've been hanging about the Clanny laundry room, since I just lost a sock.
Thursday has been a bit of a trial. I don't like thursdays, since I have class 9-5 with two 1-hour breaks, and I have to deal with the impossible little french biochemist who can't explain things very well in english.
First, I found out that Steve Jobs had died about ten minutes before I ended up having to leave for the bus. I think that Joy of Tech has one of the best memorials. Gizmodo has published several pieces as well.
I also received some unfortunate news about my grandpa's health.
Then, I forgot my wallet and ended up missing the bus and walking to class in the cold wind (although I walked so fast to keep from being late that I eventually took off my coat). I just made it on time to biochem.
We had a new prof, who is easier to understand because she's british, but she talks like the class is comprised of first graders. Also, the subject of the two-hour session was quality control and SOPs, followed by a one-hour session that was on calculations instead of spectrophotometry.
Bleh. What it all comes down to, to borrow her favourite expression, is that I signed up to learn about biochemistry, not about being a biochemist.
Lab was okay, although the impossible frenchman was back. We were doing a protein assay, and I was excited to recognise several terms and concepts from my internship at PNNL. The Bradford reagent, for the Coomassie protein assay, was as brown as ever, and it turned a familiar blue in the presence of protein. We used BSA standards, and made curves. It was all so familiar... My group and I forgot that we were diluting our standard by another 10x, so we had a failure of a standard curve. Sad day. Luckily, we did one run with the 100x diluted standards, and the results were much less awful.
When I got home, I discovered the ginger Clanny House cat outside the flat drinking milk. He's so friendly, which is good because I needed a kitty snuggle. He's got this incredible long fur, and I suspect that someone brushes it. In any case, he submitted pretty readily to snuggles as long as I didn't take too long.
It was a pretty exhausting day. As soon as I got inside, I went to bed and slept for about three hours before venturing downstairs to eat dinner at around 8 (20:00). I ended up staying in the kitchen and watching a few episodes of Downton Abbey, a british TV show that Conor introduced to Josie, Jessi, and me (Flo and Micha are too busy, Thomas is still gone, and Adam already knew about it).
Now it's time for me to go to bed again. I have a lot of sleeping planned for tomorrow morning, in the absence of any classes. Also, I think my typing might keep Jessi up. Sorry, roommate!
History class also brought me into contact with the Veronica White of Sunderland. Apparently there are two of her, since I hear there's an art major like her as well. She's the sort of person who, once she starts talking, doesn't know how to shut up. Not that I claim to be much better, but in class I do tend to keep quiet. Not so for the Veronicas of the world. I believe that the original Veronica at Whitworth was unaware that she was doing anything wrong or impolite, and I think that it's the case with these two as well. Unfortunately for my conscience, I'm not a nice enough person to befriend them and do them the kindness of helping them out with their social skills. Quite frankly, I can't stand people like that. This is probably indicative of some awful traits that can be found in me, but some people get under my skin.
Wednesday was a successful day. I successfully contributed to the discussion in history seminar, which may well have prevented me from embarrassing myself by being asked what book I read (because I didn't read). Success!
After class I sat down in the library cafe to determine the plot of The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope's mock-epic monster. I was determined to sit there and write down every plot point until I made sense of the whole thing. Unfortunately, the library had a fire alarm, so I picked a new location (City Space, the building which houses the cafeteria and the gymnasium) to occupy until I defeated Pope.
Success came, but not without much grumbling and several notes in my plot outline regarding the pointlessness of the whole thing. I believe that this may have been Pope's point in writing it, actually, since he was writing in an epic fashion about a stupid trivial thing that was treated as something incredibly serious. I don't dislike him any less, and I don't think that he was really all that great, but he wasn't too bad. It was still a bit of a crabbed number, but it was less unmanageable when I worked at it.
I also succeeded at biochemistry calculations while ensconced in City Space.
After my wild academic successes, I decided not to take the metro back, since I would have to wait longer than it would take me to walk. I ended up taking a back way, which is regrettably not faster than the normal way. There's a little street that curves around behind the Royal Hospital (across the street from Clanny), and it's probably one of the most british places in Sunderland. There's a post office, and several little tea rooms, bakeries, and grocery stores, as well as no fewer than four fruit and veg stores and two pharmacies. I'll have pictures tomorrow, since I plan on mailing the postcards I've done so far.
I decided, as I was walking, that I want to move Whitworth to Sunderland. I want my professors and my three-minute walk to class and my friends and Whitworth's lack of administrative nightmares, but I really love this place. I'm not sure that my Whitworth friends and Sunderland friends would mesh very well, though.
I watched How to Train Your Dragon, which has been highly recommended to me. It was pretty good, although the vikings are scottish and Gerard Butler. Hmm. The story is mostly cute, with some impressive cultural messages and some rather serious plot twists. The soundtrack is good, and I discovered that it was composed by John Powell, who did the Bourne trilogy and has worked extensively with Hans Zimmer, who seems to be the John Williams of the last decade or so. The dragon is adorable. D'awwww... The most scottish viking, voiced by Craig Ferguson of late night talk show fame, has a great line about trolls: "They EXIST! They steal your socks! Only the left ones, though..." I maintain that the trolls work with the car key gnomes, and that they've been hanging about the Clanny laundry room, since I just lost a sock.
Thursday has been a bit of a trial. I don't like thursdays, since I have class 9-5 with two 1-hour breaks, and I have to deal with the impossible little french biochemist who can't explain things very well in english.
First, I found out that Steve Jobs had died about ten minutes before I ended up having to leave for the bus. I think that Joy of Tech has one of the best memorials. Gizmodo has published several pieces as well.
I also received some unfortunate news about my grandpa's health.
Then, I forgot my wallet and ended up missing the bus and walking to class in the cold wind (although I walked so fast to keep from being late that I eventually took off my coat). I just made it on time to biochem.
We had a new prof, who is easier to understand because she's british, but she talks like the class is comprised of first graders. Also, the subject of the two-hour session was quality control and SOPs, followed by a one-hour session that was on calculations instead of spectrophotometry.
Bleh. What it all comes down to, to borrow her favourite expression, is that I signed up to learn about biochemistry, not about being a biochemist.
Lab was okay, although the impossible frenchman was back. We were doing a protein assay, and I was excited to recognise several terms and concepts from my internship at PNNL. The Bradford reagent, for the Coomassie protein assay, was as brown as ever, and it turned a familiar blue in the presence of protein. We used BSA standards, and made curves. It was all so familiar... My group and I forgot that we were diluting our standard by another 10x, so we had a failure of a standard curve. Sad day. Luckily, we did one run with the 100x diluted standards, and the results were much less awful.
When I got home, I discovered the ginger Clanny House cat outside the flat drinking milk. He's so friendly, which is good because I needed a kitty snuggle. He's got this incredible long fur, and I suspect that someone brushes it. In any case, he submitted pretty readily to snuggles as long as I didn't take too long.
It was a pretty exhausting day. As soon as I got inside, I went to bed and slept for about three hours before venturing downstairs to eat dinner at around 8 (20:00). I ended up staying in the kitchen and watching a few episodes of Downton Abbey, a british TV show that Conor introduced to Josie, Jessi, and me (Flo and Micha are too busy, Thomas is still gone, and Adam already knew about it).
Now it's time for me to go to bed again. I have a lot of sleeping planned for tomorrow morning, in the absence of any classes. Also, I think my typing might keep Jessi up. Sorry, roommate!
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
The Visa Story (and also a house story)
Hi, all. The last post was a while ago, so here are some updates:
1. I leave in a mere 24.5 days.
2. I am not getting a visa.
3. Holy crap, I leave in less than a month.
About the visa. I had acquired a CAS number (confirmation of acceptance of studies) as required by the points-based system for UK visas when I finally found the fee page. It costs £255 for a student visa (general sponsored adult), and that works out to over $400 with the current (crappy) exchange rate. If I was staying for the full year, this would be worth it. As it stands, however, I probably wouldn't be able to make enough money to cover the cost of the visa. So, no visa. I'll try to be more frugal than I tend to be when presented with stores.
Also, I leave in less than a month.
My housing situation has improved, apparently. I will be living in a house off campus, probably in the room that the person who hooked me up with the house will vacate in December. In a fit of irony, she's the only one living there that I know beyond casual, visual acquaintance.
The house is awesome. It's got columns and a basement (already dubbed "The Cohab Cave") and a million bedrooms and a fireplace and a freaking conservatory. Also a washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. I'll be on the ground floor, by myself and the kitchen. There's also a patio, two bathrooms, and two living room areas (the entry and the, what, parlour?). It's maybe a mile from campus, and at least one of my future housemates has a car. With some boldness on my part, I should be able to get a ride in on particularly awful mornings. On halfway decent mornings, I should be able to walk in easily enough. Hopefully, I don't have any 8 AM classes.
In other news, I leave in less than a month.
I've stopped having dreams about being unsure of my placement by ISEP (those involved a rainboot store where I never managed to try on any boots) and moved on to dreams about missing my flight (one involving hijacking another plane to catch up at Reykjavik and another about leaving the Tri Cities about half an hour before my flight leaves Seattle). Happily, my subconscious is free of fears about real, terroristic hijackers, so there's one less massive anxiety focus... With the riots in London I've spent a bit of time worrying about not being able to go for safety reasons and having to take random filler classes at Whitworth and not having a place to stay... In fact, I had planned to take random filler classes this semester anyway (just in England instead of the US), and I think there is an extra room at the house.
Wellp, see ya later.
1. I leave in a mere 24.5 days.
2. I am not getting a visa.
3. Holy crap, I leave in less than a month.
About the visa. I had acquired a CAS number (confirmation of acceptance of studies) as required by the points-based system for UK visas when I finally found the fee page. It costs £255 for a student visa (general sponsored adult), and that works out to over $400 with the current (crappy) exchange rate. If I was staying for the full year, this would be worth it. As it stands, however, I probably wouldn't be able to make enough money to cover the cost of the visa. So, no visa. I'll try to be more frugal than I tend to be when presented with stores.
Also, I leave in less than a month.
My housing situation has improved, apparently. I will be living in a house off campus, probably in the room that the person who hooked me up with the house will vacate in December. In a fit of irony, she's the only one living there that I know beyond casual, visual acquaintance.
The house is awesome. It's got columns and a basement (already dubbed "The Cohab Cave") and a million bedrooms and a fireplace and a freaking conservatory. Also a washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. I'll be on the ground floor, by myself and the kitchen. There's also a patio, two bathrooms, and two living room areas (the entry and the, what, parlour?). It's maybe a mile from campus, and at least one of my future housemates has a car. With some boldness on my part, I should be able to get a ride in on particularly awful mornings. On halfway decent mornings, I should be able to walk in easily enough. Hopefully, I don't have any 8 AM classes.
In other news, I leave in less than a month.
I've stopped having dreams about being unsure of my placement by ISEP (those involved a rainboot store where I never managed to try on any boots) and moved on to dreams about missing my flight (one involving hijacking another plane to catch up at Reykjavik and another about leaving the Tri Cities about half an hour before my flight leaves Seattle). Happily, my subconscious is free of fears about real, terroristic hijackers, so there's one less massive anxiety focus... With the riots in London I've spent a bit of time worrying about not being able to go for safety reasons and having to take random filler classes at Whitworth and not having a place to stay... In fact, I had planned to take random filler classes this semester anyway (just in England instead of the US), and I think there is an extra room at the house.
Wellp, see ya later.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
The Adventures Begin
Hello, readers!
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?
(Edited on 23 May 2011)
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?
(Edited on 23 May 2011)
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