The Virtues of Beacham's and Lemsip

It’s like the plague, contagious and non-particular about its victims.
It snatches people left and right, and refuses to release them from its clutches.
It is defeated only by a dedicated group of crimefighters.
It is....

The Fresher’s Flu. And it got me this past week.

My entire week has been framed by this malevolent head cold, which is still clogging and distracting me today. However, I’m not alone—one by one, every fresher has been falling prey. Our crimefighting team is made up of decongestants, Kleenex, and lemon tea, along with a few hours of sleep here and there. I guess this gloomy shift of weather--from clear skies to unrelenting rain--in addition to the sleep deprivation and low vitamin intake inherent in Freshers Week, has been enough to sideline most students the last few days. Although this hasn’t deterred the masses from partying up a storm most nights; I now understand Leeds’ reputation for student social supremacy. It’s something else. I’m just not sure I can keep up in the long term, with my wimpy Canadian “Let’s drink Smirnoff Ice” mentality... ;)

Onto something more interesting than my stuffy sinuses: I started classes yesterday! We began with a bang--or more specifically, a quiet and competently-delivered Contemporary American Writing lecture. It was an introduction to the weekly seminar class that I had today. Only ten students, and some very interesting readings. We go from Martin Luther King to Ginsberg, to Miller, Mailer, and many other important writers of the last 40 years. I’ve never done anything contemporary or American, so this is a convenient mix of the two.

I also had my first Jacobean Drama seminar, a late add for me as I had a lecture clash. My professor is really friendly (as they all have been) and loves the literary period we’re doing. He’s also the coordinator of the core Renaissance Lit module I’m doing this term, so he delivered this morning’s lecture in that as well. My seminar for RenLit was tiny- only 6 students, all female. It was a good discussion this morning however. I think I’m going to enjoy the Renaissance; I’ve only ever studied Shakespeare in detail from that time, and the era was so much more than that. The amount of creative genius present in early 17th century London is simply incredible; I’m not sure we’ve ever topped it, or ever will. I guess we’ll see...

Seminars here are so much more involved and more comfortable than at home, mostly because they’re held in the professor’s office and more often than not, said office has crammed bookshelves lining the room, framed portraits on the wall, and overstuffed chairs arranged around an old-fashioned-looking fireplace/radiator. I just tried not to ruin the cozy atmosphere today by hacking up a lung, flu-style.

As for societies, I went to the socials for BandSoc, a live music club (the event was a gig with various local bands at the Cockpit, a storied venue downtown) and for LUU Backstage, the group that does stage crew for all the shows that happen during the year. Hopefully I can work on my stage management experience with them—plus they go out for curry every Thursday!

I tried ‘er again, I must mention...although the non-spicy kind. I’m not that brave.

Doing some reading today, I stumbled upon a passage from a letter written by Adrienne Rich, a celebrated feminist writer. She refused the American National Medal for the Arts in 1997, and explained why in the letter cited here. As an MIT and English Lit major, sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly why I “read books and watch movies” for my degree—understandably, some people don’t see what careers, other than the (completely rewarding!) path of teaching, an Arts degree can lead to. Rich has one of the best descriptions I've read of why it’s so important to have “guardians of art”, as one of my English profs at UWO, Dr. Conway, put it:

“And what about art? Mistrusted, adored, pietized, condemned, dismissed as entertainment, auctioned at Sotheby's, purchased by investment-seeking celebrities, it dies into the "art object" of a thousand museum basements. It's also reborn hourly in prisons, women's shelters, small-town garages, community college workshops, halfway houses--wherever someone picks up a pencil, a wood-burning tool, a copy of "The Tempest," a tag-sale camera, a whittling knife, a stick of charcoal, a pawnshop horn, a video of "Citizen Kane," whatever lets you know again that this deeply instinctual yet self-conscious expressive language, this regenerative process, could help you save your life...There is a continuing dynamic between art repressed and art reborn, between the relentless marketing of the superficial and the "spectral and vivid reality that employs all means" (Rukeyser) to reach through armoring, resistances, resignation, to recall us to desire”

- Adrienne Rich, "Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts" (http://www.barclayagency.com/richwhy.html).

I think it shows that art is more accessible than we may think, and more malleable. You can create any career you like with art because of its adaptability to situations and its constant presence in our lives.

Whew, she’s a long one today! I hope I haven’t bored you too much with this entry! I just thought it’s an effective description. Do you?

That’s it for today... I’ll be talking to you soon!

<3

p.s. Beacham's and Lemsip are the British equivalents of Contac-C and Neo-Citron. I love B&L.