The Day to Day

I found a tree!

It has been pointed out to me that ever since my first couple of posts, I’ve just been posting about all of the adventures I’ve been enjoying, and I haven’t really told about everyday life in Edinburgh. I admit that I have quite a bit of down-time here, and I am not in fact spending all of my time gallivanting from Rome to Skye.

As I outlined way back in the beginning of the semester, the Folk Society meets every Tuesday. I’ve attended very regularly, only missing a few of them, and I’ve loved it. Sadly, the last meeting of the year, and for me forever, was last Tuesday. Luckily, I brought my camera, and took many pictures of the wonders that are FolkSoc. Here’s one:


But that still leaves a lot of time, so there’s more. I have taken up reading for pleasure again, which was a strange and alien concept to this Philosophy major. I think the reason for that lies in how many dense philosophical readings I’ve been through, or maybe it was the stress of the American collegiate system. Whatever it was, I decided back in February to start reading more, and I stumbled across the perfect thing: an independent book store that sold only fantasy & science-fiction books. It is called TransReal Fiction, and it is solely and entirely run by one soft-spoken, brilliant man. I fell in love with the store immediately, and I have already made my way through an absolutely incredible trilogy, and have since begun another. One of my favorite things to do, and what will likely be one of my favorite memories, is reading whilst lying in a bed of comfy moss in Holyrood. Sadly, I haven’t been able to do that as much now that I’m done with exams, due to the week of rain I’ve been greeted with. The whole constantly rainy and never above 60°F even in May thing is wearing on me, I must admit.

Oh! I haven’t even told you about exams yet. Well. They were... enlightening. The university system is drastically different in many ways from Connecticut College, and this system was one of the most different. For one, my classes actually stopped meeting back on March 30th. Then there was three weeks of spring break, which seemed a little longer than necessary, but as you know I managed to spend it in an enjoyable fashion. Then, and I’m not kidding here, the exam period stretched from April 20th-May 30th. Over a MONTH of exams. And with only three classes, that being the full course load, I had only three exams, all scheduled by the university. I was relatively lucky with the spacing of my exams, as they were each a week apart, ending on May 15th. Other friends had some in the same day, or none until late May, or all right away. The University is a bit too big to care about how the schedules work out for the individual.

I never thought I would say this, but I prefer the stress. I prefer the crazed and hectic finals week where one teeters very close to insanity and consumes unhealthy food like a bear hibernating for winter than a long drawn-out process. I prefer having a week of hell, followed by watching your immune system crash after it held itself up by confusion at what was happening to you than a drawn out month of exams where stress is like a vagabond uncle who never visits. I studied for each exam the whole week leading up to it, and it was difficult because I always had the exams looming over me, and so I never felt free. I studied well, and felt great about the exams, but I feel as though with five American finals weeks under my belt, I could have done just as well with all three in one week.

The exams themselves were also fascinating. Each took place in some intimidatingly large room filled with desks and proctors. My first one was in some sort of classroom, but the second was on the floor of the main lobby of an enormous building, and my third was in a gymnasium. A full-sized gym. Coming from a college of 2,000 with self-scheduled, un-proctored exams, I was a bit out of my element. But at last they are finished, and I can go back to my honor code college of stress - or rather, purpose.

So that’s my life here. I learn folk songs, read, go for walks, sing folk songs, read some more, and relax. Oh, and I take many trips to my local bakery, and always keep a stash of bread and olive oil, since my dorms don’t serve lunch. All in all, not too bad.

My brother arrives tomorrow! We’ll head out to Northern Ireland for a weekend to visit Giant’s Causeway, arriving back on Monday just in time for my parents to arrive. They then of course abandon us to go to a whisky festival, but we’ll keep busy with day trips until we meet them in Glasgow to drive into the wilds and into adventure. Keep checking back, this trip has a few more stories yet.