The End Of The World... Also Known As Exam Week

I know I meant to write about break, especially after that rather exhausting entry on Easter. But everything’s currently on hold for exams, and for exam anti-stress measures in between studying.

I had my first exam yesterday: Irish studies. The exams here are all essays, written in books separate from the exam questions. I am eternally grateful to my stepmother for forcing me to learn the standard, five-paragraph essay!

Exams here are held in exam halls. I don’t know if they have these anywhere in the States. At Wilson, we just go to class as usual, the prof hands out the questions, and we do them in the time allotted to the class (1 ½ hours). Here, students from many different classes all go to a large place at a listed time – Friday, it was the PEC, the gym – where they find their letter and number on a desk in a room full of little school desks in rows. It was frightening, in a way, but not as bad as I thought it would be. The mixed groups and impersonal setting, different from the actual classroom, made, I thought, for a clearer atmosphere in which to think. And we got 2 hours. In an essay exam, an extra half-hour can make all the difference.

I think I did well – I hope I did well. We’ll see.

To get to the PEC, you walk through Botanic Gardens, and past the Rose Garden. I was excited to see that the roses are beginning to bloom. There were a couple dozen out so far, and many more in buds, in yellows, whites, pinks, and creamy flame oranges. Here are a few, for you: though I can't take photos of the Ulster weather, of the light sun and rain - or of the gardeners, photographers, and schoolchildren that appear and disappear in the gardens here. They're like fairies in baggy jumpers.

                                                 

Friday night, Maureen and I went to the Queen’s film theatre to see a rather dramatic documentary about an Irish dance competition. It was fun. I know that dance is a lot of work, and that a lot of people never have the chance, physically or financially, to do it at a professional level (me among them), but I didn’t realize just how extreme Irish dance – any kind of dance, once it becomes competitive – can be. I’ll stick to being an amateur, go raibh maith agaibh!  

And It Just Keeps On Ending...

I've now completed my second exam, and yes, I'm still terrified. I've never seriously doubted my ability to pass a class to this extent... I seriously fear for my future. It doesn't help that I've found it impossible to look for work from across the Atlantic, so I don't know what I'm going to do when I get home this summer. It's a pity - I was doing so well, health-wise, in control of my diet, but now the stress-sickness has hit again. I've only been able to eat one meal today. But it hasn't stopped me from "experiencing life abroad," or however you'd put it: I did have Sunday lunch and tea at a kind church member's house (more about Sunday later! It was exciting - there was more than tea) which - though I spent a few hours not studying - is probably the only reason I haven't had a major breakdown during exam week, and why I haven't spent the equivalent amount of time staring at the wall and having small, silent panic attacks.

All I'm praying for, for myself, is that I pass my classes with high enough grades to keep my GPA at scholarship level. If I can graduate college, it will be a miracle, and it will prove to me once and for all that I can do anything. If I drop out of college, I don't know what will happen. I don't know what will happen inside my head.

Anyway... I'll end there. You're all probably sick of being my accidental therapists!

Behold, The Essays Have Been Soundly Vanquished

I have successfully completed my first two scary essays! They weren’t, in my opinion, very good – as the library is unfamiliar, the internet is erratic, my computer is... um... pick an adjective to describe a mental disease of your choice... and, of course, I’m lazy as a cat on a sunny windowsill.

But the important thing is, they’re finished, multiple copies have been delivered to offices with cover sheets, things have been signed, and I did address the question in the correct number of words, so I should pass.

My first essay was on the varied ways anthropologists, over the years, have defined law and legal systems and how they have argued for (and against) the universal presence of law in human society. No, we didn’t choose our topic. But it was interesting, though difficult – most of it was spent up in trying to summarize a century’s worth of thinkers’ definitions of law. Yes, including dear old Malinowski –

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Bronis%C5%82aw_Malinowski

- and his “body of binding obligations regarded as a right by one party and acknowledged as a duty by the other.”

*twitch twitch*

My second essay was on the extent to which the Irish revolution was a sectarian conflict. This, in my opinion, is an unanswerable question. Of course it was, as much as it was a political one, a historical one, an economic one, etc. etc. etc. That is, which Christian sect was an important element within the defining characteristics of the conflicts’ sides. Does that make sense? Probably not. We’ll see what McGarry says. Maybe he’ll look kindly on me, as I referenced one of his books?

My Professors:

It just occurred to me that I’ve yet to introduce my professors. I have several... I’ll try and describe them, just so you can know what it’s like in class here (except, without all the actual schoolwork, because you 1) don’t want more of that, or 2) you graduated, and you don’t deserve it).

My primary Irish Studies professor is named Dominic Bryan. He’s one of those teachers who wears T-shirts to lectures and waves his arms and jumps around a lot. He’s here, he told us, because he was a bad student. The only university that would accept him was in Northern Ireland, because this was in the Troubles and the schools here were so desperate for students they’d accept anybody.

He, however, is from England. He’s got a strong London accent that sounds fabulously out of place in NI.

Quotes:

“Northern Ireland doesn’t fecking matter! ... but it’s quite an interesting English-speaking case study.”

“It’s fascinating to try and work out when the legitimacy of the state disappears.”

“And they say, can things go back to the way they were? No! No, they can’t! History is not circular! Though Yeats thought it was... but he was better at poetry than history.”

“It doesn’t matter how big the bomb is, or how many people die... to the victims, it still feels the same.”

 “One thing I’ve noticed about Victoria Square – where’s the fecking square? It’s the roundiest* building I’ve ever seen!”

He is occasionally joined by Olwen Purdue, who specializes in most history** and who has a pretty name, and by Gordon Gillespie, who specializes in recent history and who has a funny name.

My tutorial’s TA is a stylish young woman named Mary Katherine Rallings, and she’s from, of all places, North Carolina. This makes tutorials that much more fun when she randomly references the American South for non-Irish conflict examples (like, in a discussion on flying flags associated with discriminatory/violent history, a major problem here).

My Irish Revolution professor is named Fearghal McGarry. He’s the type of very intense academic who uses words like “historiography” and “draconian,”*** and “analysis” and “cyclical,” the same way most people use “and” and “but.” It’s actually very interesting – he makes some good connections between macro and micro studies. His books, which I’m reading, tend to focus on micro studies using primary sources and, through them, to try and understand the huge political and ideological events occurring way up on a national/international scale.

He’s so Irish, he doesn’t pronounce the sound “th.” Read “d” for every “th”... I love listening to his accent.

Quotes [the ones with short words]:

“ ‘History is written by the winners’... and it’s said the losers write the songs.”

 “While they arrested a lot of people, it wasn’t very effective, because they arrested all the wrong people.”

[On the Irish Declaration of Independence and its stance on violent resistance] “There’s wiggle room.”

“They beat up the local police with sticks, which is as good a way as any to prove your manliness.”

“Northern Ireland is like a slot machine to the British government. They keep putting money in hoping it’ll pay off someday.”

“There’s no nice way of showing forty men going into a house and shooting two men in front of their family.”

He sometimes alternates with Marie Coleman, who wrote a book on County Longford and is studying Cumann na mBan.

My Politics, Law and Power professor is named Lissette Josephides, which is one of the best names I’ve ever heard, ever. She is middle-aged (the others are much younger) and she did her fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where she almost got murdered one night, and also got a kitten. She has multiple degrees in both anthropology and philosophy, and being in class is like being back in Social Theory, except with older books, and more fun.

She wears little silk scarves, and says “as it were” a lot. She is English – extremely English. She talks like the Rather Dotty Yet Brilliantly Observant Aristocratic English Lady in some classic British mystery novel. You know?

Quotes [as it were]:

“So it’s a kind of pre-emptive treachery.”

“Gluckman’s not under ‘Gluckman’? Is Gluckman anywhere?”

“After Wali of Swat became ruler in 1926, the political system ceased to be acephalous. Acephalous? It means ‘headless.’ It doesn’t mean that they’re running around like chickens who’ve had their heads cut off, it means they have no chief.”

“Objectivity isn’t... nothingness. It’s the sum total of all the subjectivities put together.”

*Not a typo.

**Dr. Purdue on the 1798 rebellion: “It wasn’t organized, but it was enough to scare the pants off the British government.”

This is funnier when you know that “pants,” here, mean underwear.

***This is an epic word. You should all try to find an excuse to use it in everyday conversation.

Clearly, I Am Going Through Facebook Withdrawal

I swear I'll write something substantial after I finish these papers... anyway, here's your classic bad-turned-out-to-be-good example for the weekend, since I can't stick it up in a Facebook status update:


Me: Oh, I'm such a procrastinator! I've only written a quarter of this essay, and it's due Monday! *feels bad*

Microsoft Word: *shuts down and eats essay*

Me: Suddenly, I feel better about things.


So... I get to start my essay again from scratch tomorrow, and scramble to get it done in one day. But think if I'd had it nearly finished...!

Why I'm Going Slowly Insane

An excerpt from one of the books for my anthropology class, written in 1975:

"Since it had never adequately clarified the distinction between a totalising method (in which the formation of parts is explained with reference to a developing structure of determinations) and ethnographic holism (in which different 'institutions' of a society are all described and linked to one another); and since it had in general confused structural determination with simultaneity, concrete developements in the world outside pushed functional anthropology until it collapsed into micro-sociology."

Yeah. Right. Got that?

That was, I'd like to point out, a single sentence.

This is not a happy dance my brain is doing right now.

Orientation Week

        I also feel at home with the seagulls. They’re everywhere, in the streets and perching on lamps and buildings. They’re confusing the students from inland cities, but they remind me of the ones that flock to the Williamsburg parking lots back home. I think Belfast has more in common with Tidewater cities than it does with Asheville.

There are also flocks of schoolchildren in uniforms.

          The strangest thing about the city streets, though, is the way people park. In the States, you would see people in a narrow street simply parking in the middle of it. But in Europe, they’re more... polite? Accommodating? They park halfway in the street, so as to keep it clear - and halfway on the sidewalk. When pedestrians walk around the city and there are cars driving down the street, they have to skirt tilted parked cars, like these:

        The First Day

On our first full day, we were introduced to life and school at Queen’s, and enrolled in classes. We’re encouraged to attend both the tutorials and lectures – as one Professor Niall Majury was so kind to inform us:

“Research suggests that students who do not attend lectures do badly.”

I am enrolled in three modules for 60 CATS points, which is equivalent to four courses for 16 credits. They are:

Module Title: Irish Studies 11: The Modern History, Politics, Sociology and Anthropology of Northern Ireland

Course Contents :This level 1 module will use a variety of historical, political, sociological and anthropological perspectives to look at key issues relating to Northern Ireland. The course will provide an overview of the history and politics of the state of Northern Ireland. It will use anthropological understandings of ethnicity and nationalism to examine how Unionism and Irish Nationalism developed. It will look in detail at the various political solutions which have been applied to ‘the Province’, with a particular focus on the Peace Process. It will examine the realities and legacies of the conflict since the signing of the 1998 Agreement. It will explore the development of cultural and political 'traditions' examining, in particular, change and continuity in Irish society.

Module Title: Politics, Law and Power: From Duties to Rights

Course Contents :This module is concerned with politics in different kinds of societies throughout the world. It asks what 'politics' itself is, how it is related to other aspects of social life and to what extent it can be separated from them. With particular reference to non-Western societies, it investigates how political relations are maintained and reproduced in the absence of Western-type institutions. In particular, it addresses questions of power and subordination, authority and the legitimating use of (invented) traditions, and resistance, especially in relation to gender and colonial or postcolonial conditions. International debates about human rights concludes this module.

Module Title: The Irish Revolution, 1917-1921

Course Contents :The module will explore revolutionary politics in Ireland between 1916 and 1921. Key themes will include the rise of Sinn Fein following the Easter Rising, the establishment of Dail Eireann, the Irish Volunteers' military campaign and the British government's response to these political and military challenges. The course will make use of a wide range of local and thematic studies to investigate controversial questions relating to the Irish revolution: what factors motivated republicans, how important was sectarianism in revolutionary violence, why did some areas of the country see little fighting and how important a factor was the north?

The School of History and Anthropology is one of the academic schools in University Square, a row of very thin and tall houses in a compact line, past the School of Music. It’s beside the film theatre, and the seven of us who had to register there climbed up several narrow flights of stairs to wait in the hall for the one professor who had as all. When I sat in one of the chairs, the arm popped off – it’d been balanced in place. We agreed that this was a good indication, if we hadn’t know already that this was the history building, where we were, because historians don’t mind when things are old and falling apart.

I finished my registration with everyone else in the Peter Froggatt Centre. The information we had to provide was fairly straightforward, apart from one question I had trouble with: whether or not we’d like our contact information provided to the appropriate QUB chaplaincy. I said, sure. Then I looked down the dropdown list...

...!?

At Wilson, our chaplain and chapel are, at least, nominally Presbyterian. There is one small Christian student group. Here, most everyone and everything is Christian - but split over and over into who knows how many sects. There were FOUR different options for “Presbyterian.” This isn't as surprising when you walk around the city - in the Protestant areas of the city, there's a Presbyterian church every other block. But it's still a very different arrangement than in the States (where the church every other block would be Baptist).

After that, the tour. I won’t write at length about Queen’s University and its buildings and statistics – that’s what the website will tell you. However, I can provide some website links and some of my so-far photos.

Queen's University Belfast: http://www.qub.ac.uk/

Warren Wilson College: http://www.warren-wilson.edu/external_index.php

Some pictures from around the city, mostly buildings (the gardens aren't too impressive this time of year):



7 College Gardens - my front door. My room is on the 1st floor (that is, the second) and faces the back.



 Some back views of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church. Like I said, there are churches like this one - big, beautiful stone buildings - every other block.


The corner building is the School of Music.




Just in case you forget you're in the UK.





A view of some houses... not the front car parked up on the curb.




Looking up at the right-hand archway at the Union Theological College of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland.



And, because this is Belfast, all this lovely Victorian stone-and-brick architecture is set with iron bars or topped with barbed wire...