First impressions

It's enrolment week, so I spent a lot of Monday and a little of today on campus, mostly among the quaint little cottages that house Goldsmiths' individual departments, nestled against each other along the street with the equally quaint name of Laurie Grove.

The first surprise of Goldsmiths was that it is tiny. To be fair I think many London universities are like that, but the university campus where I spent my undergraduate years was large enough for 7,000 undergraduates and took at least half an hour to walk north-south. In Singapore, universities are even larger institutions, sprawling across grounds large enough that you can go for a short hike on them.

Goldsmiths is snuggled along three streets and takes less than ten minutes to circumnavigate. I ran out of places to explore when I had to kill time between appointments.

The second surprise of Goldsmiths was that the convenor of my MA programme is also a Northwestern University alumnus. Woo!

The third surprise was that after hearing a bit about my professional background and why I'm signed up for cultural studies, said convenor promptly nudged me towards taking all the exciting but scary-sounding courses on intellectual thought and ideas. As if the compulsory course he's teaching wasn't scary enough. A little Bernard Stiegler, anyone? (No, really. He'll be teaching here in spring.)

I am simultaneously thrilled yet terrified.

On a lighter, non-Goldsmiths note: Last week I attended a public lecture by Simon Schama that gave me ideas about what to read (and maybe write) next. This week I snagged tickets for Junfeng's film Sandcastle, which is having its London premiere at the London Film Festival (woo!). And next week I'm going to see William Gibson in conversation with Cory Doctorow (double-woo!).

I suppose it's best to get all the fangirl stuff out of my system before the heavy-duty reading lists kick in.