a day in the life

Every week or so I go over to Glasgow University. Glasgow University is sort of like the BU or NYU of Glasgow, whereas Strathclyde, which is my school, is more like MIT. Glasgow Uni is this amazing, magical, campusy place (complete with trees!). They've got an English language/linguistics department and a literature department, and their library is amazing, whereas Strathclyde is in the middle of the city centre and much less humanities-oriented. (Basically I have a giant crush on Glasgow University.)




Today I listened to a lecture about relative pronouns in the morning and spent my afternoon reading original texts from the 1600s. While this is not the book I actually read (predictably, the special archives collection won't let me take take pictures); I was actually reading about Early Modern English Women's social roles. Last week I was granted access by Oxford to download their full-text Old English and Middle English databases; which means now I have the entire written (documented) early English corpus on my computer. Also today I met with one of the big people in corpus linguistics and a few weeks ago I met with someone who headed the Oxford English Dictionary's recently-published Historical Thesaurus project, both at Glasgow University.

YOU GUYS HOW IS THIS MY LIFE I DON'T EVEN KNOW

and you in your autumn sweater

It's starting to feel like autumn around here, which is exciting! Previously it was just raining and being warm a lot. Now it is cold and raining! No, just kidding, we've been having some really sunny days lately.

I really like Glasgow a lot - I can see myself being here for a long time, I think - but for now I live in the city centre, where there are no trees. No, that's a lie, I can see a couple trees on my way to my office, but it's not the same as a Proper New England Fall. (Glasgow Green, where I took this picture, is a park about 10 minutes away from where I live. Sometimes I go over to Glasgow University and get jealous of the beautiful West End of Glasgow, complete with trees everywhere.)

I've lived in New England for 22 years, and while I think I am pretty much over homesickness at this point, but I do find myself being surprisingly homesick for New England fall. I think living in New England ruins autumn everywhere else for you.

the dream of a common language

The Scottish accent is famously a pretty dense thing to decipher. It's a British English accent, but with more to it. I don't know how else to describe it - and on top of that, the Glasgow accent is like the Extra Super Mega Scottish Accent. It's like listening to Sean Connery talk every day. (Some people are less mumbly.) After living here for about 5 weeks I'm starting to not notice it anymore; it's starting to sound pretty normal to me. Ordinarily this would be a terrifying concept to not notice something as big as an accent, but I am generally taking it as a good sign - This is a vast improvement over my first few weeks here, when I understood about 45% of what was being said to me at any moment in time. Though I'm a native speaker of English, sometimes I may as well not be!

Here's a fairly accurate clip about the Scottish accent:


Anecdotally: the other day I was skyping with A, who is in South Korea, when a guy with a fairly standard Glaswegian accent came by to look at our shower and reported back to me that there was nothing especially wrong with it...and A was dying - "DOES EVERYONE SOUND LIKE THAT?!" Yes. The answer is yes.

You wouldn't think this, but American English and British English are more different than you'd expect. Scots English is different enough from British English (it even has its own dictionary: The Dictionary of the Scots Language) but from what I can tell it's close enough to British English for my general purposes.

There are still a lot of words I don't quite "get" yet, and I feel ridiculous saying almost all of these things. Here everyone would say "loads" where we would say "lots", and the word "wee" is liberally used here to describe something that is small. "What's on?" is equivalent to "What's happening?" or "What's going on?". I have to remember not to ask for "a bathroom", as I will be directed to a shower room; I need to ask for a toilet instead, and "loo" is often thrown around instead. Then there are the things I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around: I keep calling the kettle the teapot, and if I am looking for push pins, I am looking for "drawing pins", which go in a "notice board", not a cork board.

There's an interesting article floating around that discusses how language is directly influenced by the people speaking around you - I can guarantee this is is true. I am trying to let some Britishisms into my language though - I can hear myself trying to replicate the intonation patterns of native UKers, and I'm catching myself describe things as "quite _____", more so than I usually would. Especially in an international setting - where most people have learned British rather than American English - it's often easier to use Britishisms as common ground.

That said, I definitely can't replicate a Scottish accent at all. I sometimes still catch myself being very embarrassed when I speak, because my accent is so flat and boring and very, very American, while a good Glasgow accent is so sing-songy, and all the back vowels are dipthongized. (If you are not a linguisticky type person, this means that they actually have two vowel sounds smushed together. [iu] for /u/ sounds are the most noticable, though /o/ and /a/ have some pretty good ones too. I can't find you a page about this that doesn't involve a lot of knowledge of phonetic background information, but you can probably find something accessible on youtube.)

While I can use a lot of the lingo properly, I can't help but feel like I must sound like an idiot with my ridiculous American accent. (Thankfully, the phoneticists around me say I don't have much of a Boston accent but more of a Canadian accent - looks like Mom's Canadianness rubbed off on me more than I thought! I don't hate Boston accents, but now I am very glad to not have too strong of one.)

today in adventures in grocery shopping

YOU GUYS LOOK WHAT I FOUND. This really is A Thing here!
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In the United Kingdom, most people go out for lunch, getting a sandwich/snack/drink combo for about £3, but for whatever reason, the UK is insistent that mayo must go on everything and that vegetables are a sort of rare event. I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment, so I bring a vegetable-filled mayo-free sandwich for lunch to my office instead. Since I essentially sit and read all day, I try to go for a walk around lunchtime down The Death Hill, just for a change of scenery. I usually just go to one of the corner grocery stores and pick up a yogurt. (UK food has a reputation for being pretty terrible - this is only 85% true; it took me about three weeks to find a vegetable that wasn't a potato here and I almost cried with happiness the first time I found a bag of spinach in a grocery store - but god damn this country can do yogurt well.) I am pleased to report that in this particular Sainsbury's, spotted dick lives comfortably next to the yogurt. I think this could be a fairly terrible accidental purchase.

Help, I'm Alive!: A One-Month Retrospective

[editor's note: Two years ago in late July, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland for a weekend, with food poisoning. Today I am back there on a hike with some Germans, hopefully without food poisoning. Through the magic of the internet and auto-posting, I present the following.]

You guys, I have been in Glasgow for a month! I can't believe it's been a month already. Things are going so, so well - this blog has sort of shown the ups and downs of the first few weeks of moving to a new country by myself, but I definitely feel like each day is better than the last. There's a lot of things that I am still working out - like what side of the street and which side of the stairs to walk on. (This is more complicated than you'd expect.) Sometimes I still have difficulties figuring out where I would go to buy things - we don't have Wal-Mart or Target or CVS here - but this is getting better. Some days I wake up and just really want to see something instantly recognizably American, like peanut butter and jelly or the word "eggplant", and some days I want be able to talk to someone from home and not have to wait for 7pm to be able to do so. But moving to a new place by yourself is an emotional rollercoaster, let alone a new country or a new continent! I think I am doing very well. I have tentative friends! It's all very exciting.

It's an amazing opportunity to be here, and even more of an amazing opportunity to be working with the man who invented my field in addition to meeting all these other important linguists and literary people across three institutions (Strathclyde, Glasgow University, the University of Edinburgh). I am very, very lucky. There's no second-guessing crossing an ocean to do something and the more I am getting into what I am actually doing the more I am absolutely certain this is was absolutely 100% the right choice for me. I love all the work I am doing, and the people around me are so passionate about their work, so deeply involved that I can't imagine them doing anything else. I've been in contact with all these important linguistics people - the other day I met the woman who headed the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. (No big deal or anything...only one of my life goals achieved! She was so interested in what I had done and what I am doing here.) Glasgow Uni and Strathclyde are already both aggressively courting me for their PhD program next year; I just want to tell them to cool off a little bit!

I can't believe this is my life. I am so, so lucky.

I definitely still feel like I have a giant American flag tattooed on my forehead, but with every day I feel more integrated into Scottish life. Maybe soon I will start talking with a Scottish accent. (Or at least write a blog post about it, as I keep meaning to.) Or maybe that will just have to wait for month two...

people told me slow my roll, i'm screaming out "fuck that!"

One of the first things I was told when I arrived here was "slow down." I was also told not to worry about "breakneck American speed", whatever that was.

I am beginning to understand what is meant by "breakneck American speed".

Basically, if you know anybody in graduate school in the States, you know that they keep 15-20 hour days, are often wearing clothes from three days ago and look pretty ragged. Being a graduate student in the US is far from a glamorous thing - you'll often get looks of pity from other people when you tell them you're in graduate school! This is what I was expecting from graduate school in the UK - and was asking advice of people whom I had viewed as successful graduate students on surviving the journey. I had assumed that graduate school was a universal experience of intellectual masochism.

This is simply not how higher education works here. I was gearing up for 15-20 hour days of work only to find out that nobody would EVER do that! The postgrads I share an office with nearly fell out of their chairs when they heard that American grad students would work that much. In ONE DAY? they asked. They said that if I worked for six to eight hours a day "that would be a beautifully productive day" and that "I should go to the pub immediately". SIX TO EIGHT HOURS, you guys. (They do make a valid point, though - after a while, doesn't the quality of the work you produce go down? Well, yes...) Later I inquired about gaining access to the office over the weekend, and everyone stared at me. "Why would you come in over the weekend unless you had a giant deadline hanging over your head?" they asked. Because I have work to do? I don't know when they get anything done.

I try to show up at my office around 10 or 11 Monday through Friday and work until about 7 or 8 pm unless I have seminars to attend or meetings with people. When I go home I stop working. Not only is this unheard of in American-style grad school - or any American education system really, I am still being told I work too much! As it is, I am already pulling "ridiculous hours at the office"; I am almost always the first person to arrive. The other grad students think I am crazy for even attempting this.

It is arguably harder to slow down than it is to speed up. Given pressure, I think you can definitely learn how to do more work. (You might not like it, however.) But being told to do less work? I'm having such a hard time figuring out what i should DO with myself! I have a book that I have been working through slowly for one of my professors and could be working harder at, and I have other readings that I could be working on too. But no, I decided, I should take the weekend off. Or at least as much of it as I could bear. If you knew me in college, you know that I would do schoolwork every day except for Friday (I would sleep on Friday.)

So in an effort to slow down, on my first weekend after the semester started, I:
read a book for fun,
went to a farmer's market,
saw three bands play a gig,
went grocery shopping at two separate stores,
visited three art galleries,
scoped out a couple other art galleries,
looked into seeing some plays,
tried to hunt down some books I need for a class I joined,
walked to a new part of the city and back,
sent some emails,
typed up some drafts for future posts,
and read two articles and wrote a 500 word response
...all before 6pm on Sunday night. (Last weekend was quite similar.)

So much for slowing down! It's so strange to be told to relax. I've been working on it, though but I feel like I'm not not doing anything ever! As it is, I don't really have anything "due" at any specific date; I just sit and read and produce ideas. (I should point out that I don't really have classes that have things due - as an MRes student, I'm essentially a PhD student, but without the title.) I don't know what to do with all this free time. I suppose I should cultivate a hobby or seven.

I don't mind the weather, I've got scarves and caps and sweaters

I just wish I understood it.

The other day someone turned to me and said, "Oh, we're having a lovely fall!" It is sixty degrees and raining. Fall? I've been spoiled by beautiful New England autumns for the past 22 years. Living in a city often means "no trees", though. But as for the weather...


(image from thefuckingweather dot com)This is what my weather report has been telling me for the past week. Actually, this is all my weather report will tell me. (I imagine I could use a better weather website, but that takes the fun out of things.) Unfortunately, this is not the most helpful advice.

I've desperately been trying to figure out what Scotland's weather is like. Well, I mean, of course it rains; we are in the United Kingdom. But a lot of it is not intuitive. I also have rapidly figured out that I always need to have an umbrella on me - even if it has been sunny and beautiful all day, it is bound to rain at some point. It is also not uncommon for rain to happen while it is perfectly sunny - clear skies and rain (this happened repeatedly last week.)

A larger problem is that they insist on using Celsius here, which means that sometimes someone will say "It's so hot out - 22 degrees!" and I have a little heart attack for a second. (My idea of "hot" is American style 80+ F with humidity.) That said, we've been having a great few weeks in what I believe is the mid to high 60s. I have been informed that this is a "heat wave". Unfortunately this also means that sometimes it will be around 35-40 (F) and I will find people wearing just a t-shirt. I know I am not one to speak - I have questionable tastes of what is counts as hot vs cold - but even I know that 30 degrees is unreasonable for t-shirt weather.

I've also been told that winter here is "miserable", which to my New England brain translates to "wet, snowy, and cold as fucking hell." My office is on this gigantic mega-hill (as seen below, though I assure you, google maps will not do it justice, increase the incline by about 45% more. Today I saw three cars stall out while trying to park).
I asked the English department if I will need to buy ice picks for wintertime. They assured me that no, I will not need to do this. I don't see how this is possible.

through the roof n underground

This is the the Glasgow Underground, affectionately nicknamed The Clockwork Orange, as it goes in a circle every 8 minutes. It is wildly efficient, and it has the added bonus of BEING IMPOSSIBLE TO MESS UP BECAUSE IT IS A CIRCLE.

As a non-city person I was nervous about having to learn a whole new train cycle. I get the T in Boston, it's easy enough, but it took me a long time to figure out. I am not very...directionally oriented, you could say; I get lost while driving around my hometown. As you can imagine the idea of learning a new train schedule and which train goes where and how long it will take was incredibly daunting.

When I first arrived I was told that I would be going to Glasgow University sometimes and I would have to take the underground, and I sort of nodded and said "Yes", hoping that it wouldn't be anything complicated. You can imagine how happy I was when I looked at the following map:

I only have to go a few stops in one direction - from Buchanan St to Hillhead. Going back is just as easy! I sort of alternate my time between Strathclyde and Glasgow Uni, so I'm getting more and more comfortable with it. (Glasgow is a walking city - you could definitely walk from one end to the other in under an hour - but the underground is much more efficient sometimes.)

What is hard about the underground, however, is not knowing the etiquette for riding the trains. Do I make eye contact or should I study my shoes? Should I smile at the cute girl who just got on? I know in France, you would never make eye contact on the metro, but in Boston it's kind of okay. Usually I just sort of read the newspaper over the shoulder of whoever is next to me.

everything in its right place

My office is in this building. It is one of the ugliest, out-of-place buildings I think I have ever been in.

My office is on the 7th floor and from it I can see all the way past the West End from my desk. It's an amazing view.

Tonight I went up to the 14th floor and saw all of the city as the sun set and night fell - it was beautiful. I thought to myself, "I live here. This is my city."

This is the first time I've truly felt like it's not some sort of weird interim thing - I really am here, and this is really what I am doing. I have worked so hard to be here, and being here finally feels absolutely right.

I still love you, New York

One of the first questions people ask me when I open my mouth here is "Where in the States are you from?" I'm not particularly upset by this question - while I certainly don't sound like I could be remotely native to the United Kingdom or even any other part of Europe, maybe it means I am temporarily fooling them by looking kind of European, and I will accept that. (This is very unlikely, however; more to come on this topic, stay tuned.) I usually say Boston, and I either get a bit of a blank stare while they try to recall where that is, or an excited "Oh, BOSTON! My friend/sister (choose one) lives there, I was just there a few years ago!"

Often to counter this question, I ask people where they would like to visit in the States - not because I especially love America but I think it tells me a lot about what other people know about my (our) country. I think it also says a lot about the person I am talking to! I could ask them where in the UK or Europe they would want to go, but most of the time, they have already been everywhere they would have wanted to go, which sort of ruins the fun in that. At least the States are comparatively exotic and/or harder to get to!

Almost everyone I talk to wants to go to New York City and San Francisco. A lot of people seem be really interested in Las Vegas and Florida, too, though I am vehemently trying to talk them out of this, as I think both of these places are miserable. Texas is a pretty popular place, too.

It's really interesting to see that everyone sort of romanticizes the same parts of a country - how many people in the States dream of moving to NYC or San Fran? And everyone tells me that Las Vegas looks inviting because it is "so shiny and magical looking". (I still don't understand Florida.) Part of the draw, I've been told, is the intriguing vastness of American cities. European cities are so compact - I was so surprised to hear that I could walk from one side of Glasgow to the other in under an hour! Occasionally I get someone who says they want to see some nature - they want to see the Grand Canyon or the Rockies and the northeast in the fall, but even they want to see NYC. Washington DC may be the capital of the United States, but everyone loves New York.