Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

Well hello, family, friends, Qualls, and anyone else who chances to read this brief update on my days at uni.

Classes

Here at UEA I have each of my two UEA classes for two hours once a week, my Dickinson Humanities course once a week, and Art Society once a week for two hours. Here is a brief layout of my days:

Monday: Revisioning the Norwich School of Painters art history course, 1pm-4pm in town at the Castle Museum. We spend most of our time in the two main galleries, Crome and Cotman looking at the original works by the NSP and discussing the ‘genre’ of landscape art, its development, relevance, and current state. There are a total of eight students in this seminar course, and I am the ONLY international student, and the only student who was not in the course with these seven other students last term.

Wednesday: Cultural Theory and Analysis English literature course, 12pm-2pm in the main arts building. This course is about 15-20 students, all second year lit, philosophy, or art history majors. I am one of MANY Americans in the class. It seems like this course will look at various literary theorists (YAY!) and work towards answering the question, what is culture?

One of my still life drawings from Art Soc

Somewhere else during the week my 310 Dickinson Humanities course will meet for about two hours. And on various days Art Society (Art Soc) meets for two hours of open studio to work on various projects the club has set up. The first week we met we did telephone with drawing where two students drew the still life and the the rest of the students lined up behind them and drew another student’s drawing and so on and so on. After that we broke up into pairs and drew each others’ portraits. This week we was Life Drawing where we had a nude model. I worked with charcoal. She did various poses (which I thought could have been better) for increments of 5, 10, and 15 minutes while we all drew her.

Housing

Me after the Rubix Cube Social posing near The Village sign

I live in Courtyard A which is one of several dorm style buildings in University Village. My flat is a long hallway which branches off into a kitchen/common space, and six single bedrooms. I live with two other girls, and three other boys.

The bed nook of my room

There is one other international student in my flat and he is from Kazakhstan. I cook myself and several other of my friends dinner every night. We eat out very infrequently to save money. We get our stipends once a week and usually food shop that same day.

Town

Our program provides us with a year long bus pass. I take full advantage of that and ride the bus for about 20 minutes at least 4 times a week into the city center of town. There I can find several Starbucks, thank goodness, shopping malls, grocery stores, and various other cosmopolitain things.

Thus ends the update. Enjoy!