I can't believe it's already mid-January, and I'm already 20% of the way through term 2! I've started all my new classes and have been very much enjoying them, and again I have a great schedule (2 hours of class a day, Monday through Thursday). I'm taking four new classes this term, two in the Classics department and two more in other departments. First is Greek Myth, which is the class that made me apply to the Classics department at UCL in the first place - I've loved Greek myths since elementary school! Reading our "Classical Mythology" textbook has hardly been like work at all. The other course I'm taking in the Greek & Latin department is Greek Comedy, which has turned out to be really fun so far. The tutor is so very English and it's great fun to listen to his lectures on Aristophanes and Menander. I'm also taking London Before the Great Fire, which is an Archeology course quite similar in structure to the course I took last term at the British Museum and the classes I took over the summer - instead of sitting in a classroom listening to our tutor lecture, we go on field trips every class to visit museums and archeological sites. Last week we went to the Museum of London (one of my favorite museums in the city after I visited it over the summer with my Multicultural Literature course) and we have 8 more trips coming up, from walking the remnants of the old city wall to Southwark. Lastly, I'm taking an ELCS course (European Language and Cultural Studies - the same department that offered the Literature of the First World War course I took last term) called Literature and Memory in a Globalized Society. So far it's been a bit theoretical for me, discussing the various kinds of cultural memory, but next week we start talking about the first novel on the reading list and the reading list (Julian Barnes, Milan Kundera, Jorge Semprun) was what attracted me to the course in the first place, so I'm looking forward future classes. All in all it looks to be a very interesting and engaging term. I've also received back several of my essays from last term and got decently good marks on all of them, so I feel like I've got a good handle on what's expected of me.
I've received great responses from my grad school applications and so far I have invitations to interview at 9 schools (still waiting to hear back from one). It's a little complicated to work out the interviews, as flying back and forth from London for each interview doesn't make much sense, but I have worked out to fly back to Ann Arbor on January 26-29 to interview for PIBS, and then I'm going to take a week off from school and combine it with reading week to interview at 4-5 more schools (UCSF, UPenn, Wisconsin and UNC - possibly UCSD as well). Two weeks after I return from that trip, I've booked a visit to Northwestern from March 1-4. It'll be very busy and a lot of traveling, but I'm looking forward to visiting so many schools and taking the next steps towards figuring out where I'll be getting my Ph.D! Luckily grad schools pay for all your expenses to visit (they don't normally do this for international students, but round trip flights from London are incredibly cheap right now so it worked out very much in my favor)!
One more thing - I very highly recommend the BBC show "Sherlock"! I just started watching it a little while ago and I've been very impressed with it. It's a modern retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, and the location where they filmed 221B Baker St is just a 2-minute walk from where I live (it's not actually on Baker St). "Sherlock" may even have replaced "Downton Abbey" as my favorite British television show...
I've received great responses from my grad school applications and so far I have invitations to interview at 9 schools (still waiting to hear back from one). It's a little complicated to work out the interviews, as flying back and forth from London for each interview doesn't make much sense, but I have worked out to fly back to Ann Arbor on January 26-29 to interview for PIBS, and then I'm going to take a week off from school and combine it with reading week to interview at 4-5 more schools (UCSF, UPenn, Wisconsin and UNC - possibly UCSD as well). Two weeks after I return from that trip, I've booked a visit to Northwestern from March 1-4. It'll be very busy and a lot of traveling, but I'm looking forward to visiting so many schools and taking the next steps towards figuring out where I'll be getting my Ph.D! Luckily grad schools pay for all your expenses to visit (they don't normally do this for international students, but round trip flights from London are incredibly cheap right now so it worked out very much in my favor)!
One more thing - I very highly recommend the BBC show "Sherlock"! I just started watching it a little while ago and I've been very impressed with it. It's a modern retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, and the location where they filmed 221B Baker St is just a 2-minute walk from where I live (it's not actually on Baker St). "Sherlock" may even have replaced "Downton Abbey" as my favorite British television show...
