Why yes, thanks for noticing, that IS a humorous reference to the stereotypical southern act of chewin' tobacco, underneath a label for Newcastle Brown Ale, collected by chance into one photo- what could sum up my experience in North Carolina more?!
A fun time had by all with Emily's housemate/friend/lover Lily coming to stay for the week. She got to see and taste all the Raleigh highlights and even go some places I haven't been yet, including Duke botanical gardens. A far cry from the grassy area outside Alexander Hall on NCSU campus, i'm told.
But anyway, down to what I really meant to write about. I was just looking through course options for next semester at Manchester, since module selection is coming up. Happy to see there is a bit more creative writing-based stuff in there than in the past two years, and I'm growing confident that I may even manage to get to the end of my degree having never studied Chaucer at university level- fingers crossed!
It has been making me think a bit more about impending graduation into the real world and, yep, what the hell i'm going to do with my life. One thing I've noticed here in America is that everyone in English seems to have this whimsical idea of one day graduating college and becoming 'a writer'. What is that?? How is it that I have gone through higher education and nearly completed a degree in English Literature and yet this intriguing choice of career has never been offered to me? Is it something that only Americans do? I have heard of journalists, novelists, poets, PR and advertising teams... but never have I considered packing up my pens and pencils and jazzy WH Smiths notebooks and running away to become 'a writer'. I was under the impression all these years that you had to kind of have a real job and do a bit of writing on the side to ever be published. You know, like those incredibly wealthy successful authors who used to secretly scribble away in a book during their toilet break working at Starbucks' scummy downtown competitor or whatever.
If i'd known you could just whack a label on your forehead and use it when you did your taxes or met professionals at parties to avoid the pang of guilt at being effectively unemployed, I might have thought twice about bothering with university.
But oh well. Better get my CV in to Starbucks when I get back to Newcastle.
Listening to: Decatur, or round of applause for your Step-Motther! by Sufjan Stevens.
Listen here
Haha! So so so very many of these 'writers' over here in Japan...
ReplyDelete'Creatives' who are incredibly 'sensitive to their surroundings'.
Like the blog - interesting to hear what NC/America's like from an English perspective!
So Asia is in on it too? Is this a conspiracy?
ReplyDeleteI would also love to hear about Japan from a British perspective, particularly considering the past few months... Let me know if you have a link for me!