London: day twenty-nine

Okay, this is going to be really short as I have an entire 222 page book to read tonight (don’t worry, I read quickly and it is a fast read anyway). 

British Youth Culture was rather frustrating today as my cold has rendered me unable to speak, and yet, this was the first lecture in that class where I really wanted to be able to contribute to the discussion. We were studying the Punk movement today, and for the first time, I have had background knowledge on the subject and connections. Even though American and British Punk are quite different, they do have their similarities. Mostly, I am familiar with the effects of Punk as it is from this movement that music made its way into Hard Rock and other, smaller offshoot movements were inspired, such as Grunge. Kurt Cobain considered his music to fit under the Punk category and often cited Punk bands as having had the biggest influence on his music writing. So, since my professor is quite anal about class participation, but also because of my interest in this particular topic, I wrote out some notes and comments, things I would have said if I had only had the voice to do so, and handed it to him with an explanation of my muteness at the beginning of class. Even though he accepted it and told me that he wished more students were this considerate, it was still aggravating to sit through the lecture knowing I could participate and not being able to.

After class, I stopped by NIDO for lunch and to swap out my class books before making my way to City University. I feel like I am going to struggle most at the beginning of this course, as we really are diving in quite heavily to the nitty-gritty Biology of the nervous system. From there, though, we will eventually move more into the Psychology aspects of the course and studying how the Biology effects the Psychology. For now however, I’ve already kind of been submerged into a bit of information overload. I have not taken science since high school, and it never really has been my strongest subject. So I’ve been a little intimidated by all the memorizing that will need to be done. I feel confident that I can remember all the parts and pieces of the system as well as the various processes and such, however, it is also remembering the functions of each piece and the differentiating characteristics as well as all the smaller details of the processes that I feel I may have more trouble with. Thankfully, I feel like the beginning of the semester will be the most difficult, thus as it goes (except for the preparation leading up to our final test) I feel like I will grow more confident.

After class I stopped by the grocery store on my way back to NIDO and stocked up for the week. On my way back, I passed by two guys walking the opposite direction, probably a little older than myself, and one of them looked at me and gave me the “rock on” hand gesture across his chest and smiled at me as they passed. Today I was wearing my Nirvana shirt with my grey flannel, slouchy hat with a Pink Floyd button, torn jeans, studded boots and long black coat – took me a moment to realize that he was expressing a mutual liking for the music I was representing at the time. At first I was slightly confused as I often regard the stares of others with an air of defiance and a sort of “what are you looking at?” expression – I call it my street face. In the city, it really does help to have one so that you don’t come across as unconfident, lost, foreign, and so that even if you do get some of those uncomfortable leering looks or rude uncouth remarks from guys, it makes it easier just to keep a blank look, ignore them completely and continue on undisturbed. Sometimes it helps to have earphones in (whether you’re listening to music or not) just so you can pretend that you didn’t hear them. My point though, is that it is a little disorientating when someone is actually staring or commenting to you on the street about something positive or friendly. But it is always nice when it does happen, and this instance quite made my day.