It’s been a month since I’ve been in London, and life is pretty great.  I’m settled into my classes, using the tube system, and the general hectic life that is living in London.  Richmond is a great university with some gems for professors!

Mass Communications & Society–It’s a great course so far that spans the role of media in the the 20th and 21st century, from the early propagation of mass consumerism to the proliferation of new technologies and today’s constant bombardment of various spectacles.  We’re starting out with more philosophical readings, like Ortega y Gasset, Debord, and Adorno. Loving it.

Signs, Image & Meaning–A class on semiotics.  It’s a really cool topic that I’m interested in.  How various symbols affect us consciously or unconsciously.  I love learning about societal views through subtlety.   I also sort of hate it because the way society views things makes me sad.

Anyway.

Video Production– Another good class that teaches technical aspects of filming as well as more artistic and creative options.  Very fun!  So far we’ve had two projects, but it’s really cool seeing how different the projects in the class are even though we have the same assignment.

Scriptwriting– This class is so much fun.  We learn the methods of writing scripts for stage and for film. We have a big group of really creative people (almost all girls), and we get to read out each others’ scripts.  Our prof is really good, and after a bit of a scheduling fiasco, I’m glad to finally be in the class.

Overall, life here is… well, weird for me.  At Quest, I am used to a very fast-paced style, reading 2-3 textbook chapters a night and writing an average of an essay per week.  Here, since I have a 4 months rather than 3.5 weeks, everything is very calm.  1-2 textbook chapters for one week for each class?  What?  Also, Vid Production and Scriptwriting are project-based, so there’s no midterm.  OH.  We have midterms at this university!  Who’da thunk it?

My first fear coming here was that I would procrastinate a lot since I’m used to doing marathon work.  I could pull doing lots of work at the last minute since every minute kind of seems like a last minute at Quest.  But luckily, I’ve spread out my work well and adapted to the multi-class term system.

My second fear coming here was that after three and a half weeks, I would need an intense break, where I fall into a coma for four days.  Well… with three day weekends every weekend, that’s not really a problem.  :]

Til next time!

Isha

I am here on exchange at Richmond, The American International University in London.  It has only been a week, but it has been pretty amazing.  The Richmond campus is tucked away in lush greenery, set in a structure designed by the architect who designed the Palace of Westminster.  So that is pretty sweet.

The Richmond Campus... where I go to school.

The Palace of Westminster, where members of Parliament go to yell at each other and make law the proper way. Hmm... can you see the resemblance?

This semester, I will be taking…

• Mass Communications & Society
• Signs, Image, & Meaning
• Video Production
• Scriptwriting

All of these classes seem really good so far.  Like Quest, the class sizes are small (about 20 students max).  The professors seem really nice, though the first week has really been just an introduction.  It has been a really weird transition for me, as I am used to immediately plunging into the class and sprinting for three and a half weeks.  At normal universities, like this one, it’s more of a long distance thing.  Let’s hope I have the endurance!  (I know… I stretched the running metaphor long past its due.  Gross.)

London as a city has been so much fun.  Four days a week, I commute from Stratford on the east side of London, to Richmond, on the west side.  It takes anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour and a half, but people watching has never been better than on the tube.  When I first arrived, my cousin handed me something that looks like this:

Holy crumpets!

I sometimes wonder if British children are born with this image ingrained in their memory.  (Kind of like how I was born with every Eagles guitar solo ingrained in mine.  Weird.)  ANYWAY, I’m slowly learning this system, which is far easier than I expected.  Still, it’s quite a feat for me, considering I only had to take one bus in Squamish to get everywhere.  The number 2.

So begins an exciting semester of adventure, learning, treachery, and woe (minus the last two things).  I can’t wait to completely adjust myself to life in England.  And to meet up with the other Questers hanging out in Wales at another partner institute.  And to update more often!

Cheers!

Isha

So quite a bit of time has passed since I last blogged.  An entire semester… and what crazy things have happened in the last few months.  To list a few:

• The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler
• Working at the coffee shop
• Finalizing my Question
• Freaking out about my Question
• Crazy Earth Oceans Space Class
• Dancing Bear
• V-Day Monologues
• Questioning my Question
• Losing my mind in Reason & Freedom
• Finding the remains of my mind and attempting to piece them back together.  With cello tape.
• Reading the Alchemist…finally
• Realizing my Question is perfect for me
• Dance parties in the middle of train-related traffic jam
• June in Squamish and Physics & Astronomy…now, with your daily dose of David Helfand!
• Summer in Squamish
• Going to London!

Quite the list, hey?

If I had been a responsible blogger, I would have given you a play-by-play of everything that had happened as it happened.  But since I was up to my neck with work, I didn’t.  Sorry friends.  But from here, we start fresh.  Regular updates, chronicling my adventures in London.  That’s right, I’m doing a semester abroad in London at our partner institution.  I am so excited to get things rolling!  I will be studying communications and media, while I’m over there.  And of course I’ll be experiencing the heck out of England.  Word on the street is, there’s some good surfing in the south.  So here we go!  Updates soon!

ALSO… my question (tentative): How can we use visual communication to influence people to consider global consequences when making economic decisions?

Whoo!

Identity & Perspective is pretty rad.  It’s a course exploring the self through modern literature.  And by modern I mean John Locke through William Faulkner.  Nonetheless, we have an AMAZING book list.  Check it: John Locke’s “Of Identity and Diversity,” Heidegger’s “Being and Time,” Paul Fussel’s The Great War in Modern Memory, poetry from World War I, Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents, William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Sartre’s “Existentialism is Humanism,” and de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. Gah, exciting.  Okay, so I might be a giant literary loser, but come on.  Reading is fun.  If there’s one thing that I learned from LeVar Burton, it’s that I can do anything…friends to know and ways to grow, so take a look, it’s in a book.

Um, fun times… I got to write my dream paper.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  Wow.  This girl dreams about writing papers?  She is such a baller.  No one can even touch her steeze.  So cool.  Well my sharp-lingoed friends, I’d just like to assure you that dreams really do come true.  I wrote a paper to “assess the merits of Sigmund Freud’s articles using Howl by Allen Ginsberg and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.“  And you know what?  I had a good time.  Once again, it threw me off how absorbed I got into the paper… I sure hope it was worth my time, I’ll tell you that much.  It was amazing getting to write about my favorite piece of literature (Howl) and talk about one of the craziest but most influential people in psychology.  Whoo!!

I also had my first meeting with my advisor, Brian about my question.  The ever-daunting quest that constantly looms in the future.  Well, it really wasn’t that bad.  In fact, I might actually be able to form my question now.  I know I wanted to save the world (original, I know), but I didn’t really know how.  I wanted to look at various trends all across the board, political, technological, social, economic, etc. and somehow use the trends to…get people to change.  Pretty vague and disorganized.  But after having a seven-minute chat with Brian, I found out that a really cool idea would be to do some type of social branding.  Invent a new “image” that can be “sold” to the public.  Sounds kind of manipulative.  It probably is.  But I want people to invest in being aware of events and situations around the world and how their own actions can impact everyone.  So I would be mixing marketing, with social psychology for the betterment of the world!  I also found this group that does exactly that with youth.  Experiential learning option??

Anyway, I am really excited for the block to be over, so that I can get back to Denver and spend the holidays with my family…but I’m pretty sad about not being able to see my friends for a few months.  We have two blocks off for the Olympics, since Quest is housing people for the Olympics.  There’s a few really cool study abroad blocks, like Spanish in Argentina, evironmental studies in Borneo, fine arts in New York, and a few others.  Personally, I’ll be back up in Squamish for the Olympic blocks, TAing for the French class that will up be here in January and working away.  I’m pretty stoked, not going to lie.  We’ll see how living up here as a faux-adult works out.

Cheers,

Isha

Sorry about the lack of updating, but there was no way that I could have even tried to find time to update last week with all the work I had to do last week.  Our third explication for class went pretty well.  It was different because we did not really discuss the text in class, so we were kind of on our own for this explication.  Like all other explications, it was incredibly difficult to start, but the Sunday before it was due, Brian, our tutor, and his wife Kiersten, the Learning Commons coordinator, stayed until 1:00am Monday morning, just helping us understand the text, write the paper, and edit.  Our entire class was astounded at their dedication.  Brian was sick, but still made himself available… where else can you get such commitment to helping students understand!?  I can’t think of ANY other place.  It was one of the most touching things I’ve seen.  It really makes me appreciate the attention I’m receiving here, and how easy it is to make the most of my university experience at Quest.

The final paper was… a doozy.  I barely finished the explication, when I started working on the final.  I had found a paper by this guy, Jaques Lacan, who was a big part of the Freudian resurgence in psychiatry in the 60s and 70s.  Unfortunately, the only English versions of the paper, were in books that I found on Google Book Search, and of course there were pages omitted.  So (by this point of the class, I had completely lost my mind, and sense of… sleep?) I found the PDF of the French version, and sat and translated it, using 3 different English translations on Google Book Search I had pieced together.  I know, I am a loser.  It was a pretty tough read, but I got through it.  The paper was due Wednesday at midnight, so a couple friends and I decided to try and pull an all-nighter Tuesday night.  What started out with five of us around a table in the Library building was eventually reduced to two of us, Nick and me, by 4:30 in the morning.  At 6am, we decided to take naps for 20 minutes, one at a time.  The whole night we kept encouraging each other and talking about what we were going to eat when the caf opened at 7 am.  Finally 7:00am came around.  Nick had finished by then… I was a bit more than halfway, so I was kind of anxious, until we walked out of the library building.  It was gorgeous outside.  The sun was just rising, and there was fog everywhere, and you could barely see the newly snow-covered hills.  We went in and had the best breakfast burritos EVER (the eggs and hashbrowns were made FRESH for us), and watched the sun rise while the clouds parted.  It was pretty amazing.  Nick went down to take a well-deserved nap before class, and I went back to work on my paper.  Finishing that paper was like reaching the peak of Kilimanjaro, except without the intense physical toil.  Or the outdoorsy-ness.  So really, it was nothing like reaching the peak of Kilimanjaro, but it was quite the feat.  I counted, and I had gotten 5 hours of sleep in 60 hours.  Not healthy, but I managed.  The next day, my brother and his girlfriend came to town until Tuesday, so I never really got an opportunity to catch up on my sleep fully, but it’s all good.  This block, though still pretty intense, is easier than Phenomenology, so I’m really enjoying myself.

This block is Identity & Perspective, with Paul Burns.  So far we’ve analyzed self-portraits by Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Kahlo, read some John Locke, and read a bit of Heidegger’s Being and Time.  It’s supposed to be very difficult to read, but compared to Hegel, Heidegger’s like reading Dr. Seuss.  (Maybe a bit harder.)  He talks a lot about identity through death, coming to terms with the fact that we’re all going to die, social norms about views on death, etc.  Really lively and happy things.  On top of that, I found it hard to pay attention, with the weather that was going on outside.  It was so sunny, but at the same time there was so much fog.  Of course I HAD to take pictures of it… but they’re not so great, since they were taken on my computer camera.  Thank you photobooth! (?)

It was glorious.  Anyway, it’s been a really really interesting class and tomorrow everyone in the class is going to bring in something that we thing represents his or her identity (it can be a picture, song, item, anything).  I think for mine, I’m going to bring in my favorite Tamil saying (well, favorite in general) that I plan on getting a tattoo of.

வெள்ளத் தனைய மலர்நீட்டம் மாந்தர்தம்
உள்ளத் தனையது உயர்வு.

“As the water rises, the lotus stem unwinds,

The dignity of man is measured by his mind.”

The quote is from the Thirukural, which is an ancient Tamil work of literature from the south of India.  It is similar to the Vedas from the north of India.  It is a series of more than 1300 sonnets, all about life, spirituality, religion, duty, love, etc.  It really means a lot to me because not only is it culturally relevant (even though my family is Sri Lankan Tamil), but it has a lot of personal relevance.  The quote refers to the fact that no matter how high the water gets, the lotus stem must keep growing to reach the surface, where the lotus can bloom.  In the same way, no matter how tough life gets, man’s dignity comes from his mental energy to overcome all the impediments.
Yeah!  So anywho, this block is going to be awesome.  And then?  Winter/Olympic Break!  No school for March.  Gotta love living between a beautiful city and a beautiful ski resort town.

Cheers!

I’m super stoked because my brother’s coming up to visit this block break.  Fun times with the fam!

Yay for papers!

Isha

2) I’m in a class called “Phenomenology.”

So, the title seems fitting.

Block break was amazing.  Actually, there are no words to explain how spectacular it was. So Friday morning, everyone has breakfast together.  The day’s looking pretty gloomy, but we’re still stoked.  We head out to Live to Surf to pick up surf boards and suits, but apparently the waves were pretty big, so there was a chance that we wouldn’t have been able to surf because of liability junk.  Luckily, everything turned out okay.  So we surf the morning away in the dreariness and even some rain, which was epic.  The sun tried to poke out, but to no avail.  We then break for lunch, and some kids return to the ocean for an afternoon sesh, but a few girls and I decided to call it quits for the day and relax.  Around this time, the clouds finally broke, and it started to get sunny.  It was still pretty gustyl, but the day was just gorgeous.

Later on in the day, a few friends and I went to go visit a man named Mike.  Mike is… well peculiar, but beautifully peculiar.  He bought a big plot of land in Tofino and has been making this communal place ever since.  Homes are made out of old RVs and school buses, but also there’s plenty of space to camp.  Everything is built around and into the forest, so it’s just a breathtaking place to be.  Think childhood fantasy of a forest playground + Ewok village.  That is this place.  People come and go as they like, but no matter who is staying there at the time, the community holds together pretty strong, trading skills and food and other things to keep the cash flow down.  There’s like miles of boardwalk and all sorts of different boardwalk trails.  We came across some crazy “architecture” built into trees.  We even had a near-death experience when one of our friends slammed into a tree and fell 15 feet while on a rope swing.  (She popped right back up, totally unharmed…but we were all scared to death).  The idea of the community was really inspiring.  Having a place to live that’s off the grid is really cool.  But the fact that everyone operates as a unit was a reminder that it is possible.  A lot of problems in the world can be (coarsely) reduced to apathy and not having a strong sense of community or duty in the community.  Which is why seeing this big family work the way it did was really inspiring.

Our friend led us to this look-out area, with the most breath-taking view I have ever seen.  Pictures won’t do it justice, and neither will words, but if you can imagine… a sea of dark green trees that seem to go on forever, bright blue sky at the top, then yellow, then orange, then pink as you look further down, then ocean.  And even though the sun hasn’t quite set, the moon is out, a nice crescent, and it is bright and brilliant.  Okay, no, the words really don’t do it justice, but there was some serious beauty going on there.  More awesome, hilarious, crazy, etc. events transpired as the night progressed, all adding to what was the GREATEST day of my life.

The rest of the Tofino trip was solid.  It was sunny for the rest of our time there.  And Saturday was 350 day, so we brought out a banner that some of my friends made, and showed our support for fighting against climate change!  We got back Saturday night, chilled on Sunday.  My bestie Magdalena returned from her experiential learning block in Columbia, so it was also amazing seeing her again, and hearing all about what she learned about Columbia… about Columbian society, how capitalism affects the people so differently than how it affects us in North America, etc.

Then I walk into Phenomenology class on Monday, and the first thing that Brian- our tutor- says is “This will be the hardest book you will ever read, probably.”  I’m stoked.  Actually though, I’m really excited to have my butt kicked by this class.  Phenomenology is the science of perception and consciousness and the perception of consciousness as events occur.  It’s pretty crazy, but I’m very excited to have “absolute knowledge” by the end of this course.  (That’s what we were promised).  Last night, I had 8 pages of reading from Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.  I read for two hours, and still haven’t finished.  Um, allow me to give an example of what I’m losing sleep over.

“Although the activity that has finished with existence is itself only the movement of the particular Spirit, the Spirit that does not comprehend itself, [genuine] knowing, on the other hand, is directed against the representation thus formed, against this [mere] familiarity; knowing is the activity of the universal self, the concern of thinking.”

LOVE HEGEL.

Guess I’ll go finish the densest material since uranium.

Nice looking guy, hey?

My name is Isha, and this is my (we)blog.  It’s new.

So yeah, here I am.  Ready to share my life experiences with the world.  This is gonna be AWESOME.

Right now, I am a second-year at Quest University Canada.  Quest is a brand new university in Squamish, British Columbia…Canada.  I am super stoked to be here, because 1)  it’s one of the most beautiful places of all time and 2) this school is changing post-secondary education.  It’s Canada’s first private university, and it runs on the block schedule, like Colorado College in…Colorado.  So instead of taking a bunch of classes at once, I take one class for 3.5 weeks, have a 4-day block break, and start over with another subject.  This block break, I’m totally hitting up Tofino with the Adventure Club for some cold, wet surfing.  I’m so very excited.

Right now, I’m in Musical Neuroscience.  It is kind of insane, in a good way.  I’m learning all about the brain and its relationship with music.  Like how music affects emotions, how music affects motor skills, how musicians’ brains differ from “non-musicians’” brains, how music evolved, how the brain evolved, how we humans evolved, all in relation to music.  It’s a relatively new field, which makes it even more exciting!  So the research isn’t as extensive, but the research they have done so far is pretty legit.

As a class project we had to conduct experiments, so my classmate Olivia and I decided to measure how different genres of music affect reactions.  It was pretty interesting stuff.  But now, I’m working on a paper that discusses the relationship between music and language, and how to tell which manifested first in humans.  And by working on a paper, I mean seriously neglecting a paper.  I enjoy it and all, but the sunshine is just too good to pass up.  Especially since it could be the last day of sunshine for some time.

Squamish is rainy.  Very, very rainy.  That’s what I get for living in the Pacific Northwest-ish area, hey?  It’s beautiful, but makes it exceptionally hard to wake up for a 9 o’clock class.  Especially coming from Denver, which gets about… 300 days of sun?  Yikes.

Super stoked about school, surfing, and sun.  Gonna go catch the fleeting rays!

BLAWGGIN,

Isha