1.

so i made it to Edinburgh! The Pollock Halls campus is looking much like Laurier's... more yellow construction vehicles and piles of rubbish than beautiful architecture. The buildings around this area of campus aren't too historically charged... were probably built in the 70s. But the city is not far and totally makes up for the constant rumbling and reverse beeping that flows through my window all day... not that i even spend much time in my room at all! I do have a pretty magnificent view of Arthur's Seat from my room. I need to get on that... i mean literally 

The course is hectic. Only two days into the course, the lectures have been  general, comparisons of modernism/post-modernism and very open-ended. I always wondered where to go from "post-modernism" in writing and literature or whether it was even possible to get past it. The first lecturer, Professor Andrew Gibson of The University of London, proposes that we've been stuck in a cycle of modernism since the Romantic Period and that post-modernism is just another extension of this cycle. It was sad but reassuring that someone of a pretty high standing also recognizes the literary hole that we, according to him, should just keep digging as writers. Who knows... maybe there is another side we haven't reached yet.

Today the CW class attended a Masterclass led by a Scottish playwright, Douglas Maxwell. So funny and good preparation for rejection... He passed around a 2-inch stack of his rejection letters from the past 8 or so years. only a small portion of what he called a factory full of letters that make him so sick he can't bear to look at them. Understandably so. We looked at photographs and had to make up a scene based on the photograph... not my cup of tea but it ended up being hilarious for the most part. 

Hooray for a boring first entry!