I haven’t posted in awhile (sorry). That’s because life around here has been pretty busy. We’re getting into what is like our midterms time (except it happens twice per term). [Fun fact: The current term is called Michaelmas Term. No one I’ve asked actually knows what Michaelmas is.] This is the time of year when profs like to assign all their essays and presentations at once. So, this Friday I have one paper due, then next week I have three ten-minute presentations and three 2,000 word essays to prepare. Needless to say, Museum Thursday won’t be happening for awhile, nor will I be going out this weekend. Sadly, last Thursday was not Museum day either, because after sampling an array of cakes (ok, so there was an upside to the day), I had to go to another university’s library to read part of a book that was unavailable in LSE’s library (yes, we have the largest social sciences library in the world, but refuse to stock more than 3 copies of required reading for a course that has near 100 students). The way the reading system works here is that most of the reading is single chapters from books or articles, so you’re not supposed to buy any textbooks. Often the reading is available online, but sometimes you have to go to the library to find it. So, I went all the way to the SOAS (another uni) library to look at the book, and it turned out I only needed 10 pages out of it. Worse, yesterday I went into the Government student common room (yes, I finally have a study room just for my major–Mary probably remembers griping about all the science majors getting common rooms but not us social science people) and found a copy of the book I went all the way to the other uni for! On the positive side, I liked SOAS’s (admittedly small) campus–it was pretty campusy for Central London, and they had light-up palm trees outside the main building! Who can argue with light-up palm trees?
SOAS campus: light-up palm trees!
So I had nothing interesting had happened lately, but I kind of lied…I did have a really fun Halloween that involved a Brazilian nightclub, being dressed as a baby, and a bunch of bananas! I’ll post on that soon. 🙂 Hope everyone else had a fun Halloween!
Caitlin Gu 