Day 29: Musing

I like it here.

I really do.

I've been here about a month, which I think is about enough opportunity for routine to snatch away the glamour of a new place, so I feel a bit better about making that judgement.

Looking up at Great St. Mary's the other day on my way to Sainsbury's, I'd never before felt like such a stranger in a strange land, but instead of having this perturb me as, I will admit, it had upon my arrival, I felt myself metaphorically snuggle down deeper into the folds of an unfamiliar ocean.

Most of it, I think, has to do with nothing more than a change in scenery.

I like it at UCLA.

I really do.

I'd been there for three years straight, never leaving Westwood for more than a couple of weeks on break, and I was so familiar with the campus, the "culture," the shortcuts that, by the end of the last school year, I was thoroughly sick of it. It's Southern California, where everybody is more or less laid back and more or less more interested in partying it up, having fun, and just making the grade than, you know, well, understanding the things we're supposed to be learning.

A lot happened at the end of last year, and I remember sitting alone in my empty apartment wondering what had possessed me to believe I could last another five years in graduate school. I was sick of school in its entirety, both being at school and doing school things--going to class, to lab, complaining about going to class and lab, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Here, life is slower when I'm not sprinting across Parker's Piece to catch the 05:35 coach to London. But even when I am rushing to make the next train or bus or deadline, I don't feel the weight of responsibility and expectation nearly as much as I did in LA. Nobody here knows who I am or where I'm from, so I get to be anybody I want.

Perhaps surprisingly, I am almost exactly the same person I was back at UCLA, save the morning lie-ins on my off days and a thorough hatred of paper-writing.

I feel safe here.

Ensconced in my large, corner room on the fourth floor of a centuries-old building that was once home to Alan Freaking Turing, I listen to the punters chatter by on the Cam below as the evening breeze silently explodes the curtains into my face. There is something old and knowing about the dust in the corners and the curious little bugs that take up residence on my ceiling light, something restful.

It still doesn't feel real.