School

A Scamp on a Hike

Posted on by erranteditor

or, A Scamp in the Rain

Today seemed like a good day for a hike. I wore a dress for the first time, was able to find a place to study in the library, and even found a job that I am qualified for and would make me enough money to live off of while I am here. All that good karma had me feeling good about myself, so when the girls asked if I wanted to go for a hike up Arthur’s Seat, I jumped  at the chance. The view from the top is supposedly amazing, and I thought it would be a great way to spend my last day before classes start.

The walk from the dorm to the base of the mountain is about three minutes, and it was windy, but only slightly overcast. The hike up the mountain is rocky steps and steep turns. It is medium to hard in some places, and if you are not ready for it, it can be quite difficult. About halfway through the hike it started to rain. Not just a light sprinkle, but a full rain. A proper Scottish rain. I got wet real quick, and suddenly my sweatshirt, leggings and trainers were not enough to keep me warm. The wind was blowing the rain sideways, so there was not much I could do to keep myself from getting drenched. Despite the wet and the cold, I enjoyed the climb. A year ago I would not have been able to make the trek. I didn’t weigh enough to support myself through the climb, and thanks to the Lupus, I probably would have died about a third of the way up. I am proud to say that had the weather not crapped out, I would have made it to the top of the mountain.

On my way up the mountain I was able to do a lot of thinking. I thought about the last hike I had been on. It was sometime in April. I was with a guy that I attempted to date the previous summer. He can be an asshole, and he tended to treat me like crap more often than not, but he was one of the easiest people to talk to, and he was also great for a deep and meaningful conversation. I thought a lot about that hike because their were two things that were very very wrong with it: 1. I was trying my damnedest to get back together with David. He wasn’t having it, but I had no business hanging out with a guy who only really wanted in my pants when I was fighting tooth and nail for a second chance with a boy who didn’t want a whole lot to do with me. I was using the boy to make myself feel better because I was not making any strides with David, and that wasn’t fair to anyone involved. 2. Dude knew how to get under my skin. He told me on this hike that my feelings of irrelevancy that I was starting to feel as my moved to Scotland became more real were completely justified. He told me that the world was going to go on without me, and that I made it almost impossible for being to want to love and connect to me so I would be gone and forgotten in no time.

Now, before you all start feeling sorry for me and thinking that I let his words have any effect on me, don’t worry, they didn’t. Everyone who I really care about has reached out to me at some point or another, and a few people that I know through school, but not quite on a personal level have reached out to me and offered me tips, hints, and a friendly ear with my woes of living abroad. I talk to my best friends everyday, and everyone keeps sending me fun cards and care packages. Granted, I have only been gone for about two weeks, but I feel loved and that is all I care about.

Tomorrow is my first day of school. It is strange to think these days were behind me, but I am excited to wear my new dress and awesome shoes and take on the world of academia yet again.

A Scamp With A Photo

Posted on by erranteditor

I hate having my photo taken. I always look a bit awkward and messy, or my glasses reflect the flash and you can’t see my eyes. Given all of that, I still found myself at a photo shoot today for the School of Education. I wasn’t going to go. I didn’t think I really needed to be in the photo. I thought I was going to stick out like a sore thumb against all of the other people in the program, but since my afternoon was free, I decided that I should just do the opposite of what Kim would normally do and have my picture taken. I’m glad I went. Organized chaos would be too kind a word to describe the process, but I found a couple of the girls from my emphasis and we tried to make sure we were next to each other in the picture. It makes me feel better about all of the group assignments that is bound to come, and it makes me feel generally good about how hard the year is going to be.

Although I hate having my picture taken, the one thing that I am sad about is my lack of pictures so far in my journey. I carry my camera with me everyday, but feel like a tourist. There is beauty everywhere I look here, but I have yet to really capture it. I’m also not in any of the pictures. I miss my mom with her camera taking pictures of everything from the food to the hotel room (uggghhhh, now I am never going to hear the end of that). I would love to take pictures with me at the various places that I visit during the day. The view from the main library is amazing. I’ll go there just to get out of the cold and enjoy the view. The people that I come across also deserve to be chronicled as well. I seem to attract the Irish boys, and my R.A. (yep, I have an R.A. it is freshman year all over again) has blue and green dreads, and the girls here tromp around in itty bitty skirts when it is only 40 degrees outside. If I was at home, I would be busting out my camera or my phone to take pictures and mock the people around me, but here, I feel silly doing it alone.

Classes start first thing on Monday, and I am a little anxious to get started. I want to get in a routine and be busy, so that I will focus less on what I am missing at home. It will also make the year go quicker. I thought my program would be done by May, but it turns out it is  just the classes that end in May, and then I get to work on my dissertation. My program doesn’t end until late August, and graduation isn’t until November. This means that I would not be able to take a teaching job in the States, or start the EDD program at Fullerton.

I guess that means I will just have to finish my PhD here….oh darn.

 

A Scamp in the City

Posted on by erranteditor

Bonus points for anyone who knows the reference in the title.

There is something strangely exhilarating about being lost in a foreign city. There is something even more satisfying about accidentally stumbling onto the street you need and finding the address to your new home. In true Kim fashion it took me four hours over two days to figure out where my dorm was and only about 25 minutes to get back to the hotel. My journey took me through 2 parks, 1 sketchy housing complex (crack den anyone?) and on a walking path with what must pass here as a garden. Yesterday I left without my map so I was a bit hesitant to wander too far off the beaten path, but today I had my trusty map, and felt a little better about wandering around.

The problem that I faced was with Google Maps. It gave me the sketchy and horribly convoluted route to the dorm. There were a few times that I was tempted to stop  and ask for directions, but I didn’t out of pure stubborness. I wanted to prove to myself that I could figure it out on my own and be completely independent. I don’t know if I can describe how happy I was to find my dorm, and see how close it was to both the dining hall and to the Royal Commonwealth Pool. You can bet I am going to go there as much as I can. I was tempted to try and sweet talk someone into giving me my keys early, but decided that my time was best spent trying to find a better route for the morning. I walked back in the direction that I had started, but this time instead of going back to the walking path of doom, I stayed on the main road. The streets here tend to change names every so many feet, and after walking for about ten minuets, the street became one marked on the map…..and much to my surprise that street connected to the main street in the city. All I had to do in theory was make a right off the main road the first time and I could have avoided the adventure. I really had to giggle when I got to the main street.

I decided to wander around the city a bit more and see what I could discover. I found the train station and got to see some really pretty old buildings. Today was sort of my last day to sight see for awhile. Once I move in, I am booked solid for the next couple of weeks and then classes start. I am looking forward to being busy because being cooped up alone in a hotel room is starting to get old. There are still a lot of things that I need to work out, like a job and a phone and a doc who will fill my prescriptions, but I will work on one thing at a time and hope that the school will help me fill in the rest.

Little Lost Scamp

Posted on by erranteditor

8 months ago I decided that I no longer wanted to live in San Diego. I had finished my master’s degree and was ready to move on and put  this place behind me. Thanks to the economy, and my desire to work in a field where English teachers are a dime a dozen, I was forced into taking a full-time gig in San Diego and abandoning my escape plans. I had put the idea of a PhD. on hold and settled for a crappy night job in hopes of having the time to hunt down permanent teaching gigs and working my way out of San Diego. The longer I was out of school though, the more I itched to be back in the classroom. For the first 23 years of my life I had staked my entire identity on being a student. It was the only thing that I knew how to do really well (besides sarcasm) and I found myself getting lost in a world of routine schedules and lonely night shifts. Five months into the new job working nights and I felt like a zombie. I didn’t get to see my friends, I wasn’t learning anything new, and I slowly losing my sense of self. When it became clear to me that a full-time teaching gig was not on my horizon, I decided that the only way I was going to become a better candidate for jobs was to get another degree.

My family likes to joke that I am a perpetual student, and if I could be one, I would, but I honestly felt like adding another skill set to my bag of tricks would make me stand out in a job interview. I began to hunt for programs that I could complete onlline, and in a short amount of time, so that I could teach a wider variety of classes and make myself more marketable. At first I wasn’t looking for PhD. programs, I was just looking at certificate programs and classes that would allow my to teach reading or ESL classes. None of the programs I found seemed that interesting, and as people around me settled down to get married, have kids, or start their careers, the only thing I found myself wanting to do was run as far away from here as possible. I started looking into teaching English abroad, and possibly going to school. The first place I looked at was New Zealand. It is a well known fact to those who love me that I have a thing for sheep farmers, and New Zealand seemed like the perfect place to go to find a hot sheep farmer to sweep me off my feet. While I was thinking about school, I was also thinking about the upcoming family vacation to Ireland. They have sheep farmers there too, so I figured applying to school there wouldn’t be so bad either. Further research into the schools there and the types of programs they have led me to believe that I wouldn’t be a good fit, so I googled “Colleges and universities in the U.K.” University of Edinburgh was one of the returns, and once I saw that they had a literacy program, and that the application process was free, I figured that I didn’t have anything to lose by applying. I didn’t really know anything about the school, and I had never been to Scotland, but I figured it wasn’t costing me anything more than 500 words to apply, so I would have nothing to lose.

I submitted the application at Thanksgiving, and didn’t give it another thought. I applied for a handful of full-time teaching jobs in Orange County and I started working with my mom on a new way to teach developmental writing. It wasn’t until the end of February when U of E emailed and asked for some more details that I even thought about the application. The only thing that I said when they emailed me offering me a place in the program was “I got in” The first person I called was my mom, and when she didn’t answer, I left her a rambling message that made no sense, and then I called Kelly. After that I text everyone I could think of telling them I got in. I could not sit still. Work no longer seemed important. I got in. I had my escape route.

When I finally did talk to my mom, she immediately started talking about all of the things that practical people think of when applying to school. How was I going to pay for it? What was the cost? Where was I going to live? When did I have to give an answer? How did I know I could live there? I didn’t have any answers beyond “I got in” and at that moment, I didn’t care. All I knew was that I had gotten into the University of Edinburgh and I hadn’t been that happy or excited about anything in years. I knew that there was no way I was going to turn down the offer, so, despite my mom’s misgivings, I accepted the offer, site unseen.

So now I have six months to nail down a place to live, find funding, get a job, and make a list of the all of the places that I want to visit and all of the things I want to see while I am living in the U.K.