First thoughts
Photo by Mario Klassen on Unsplash
I started writing this about 2 weeks ago. It started with:
“This week I finished my first essay in I think over 6 years? More?
I had forgotten how to do that, maybe I never really knew how to do that.
Anyway, it’s ‘week 10’ in the semester which apparently is the one where the drama starts, the hard one. I can definitely see that people are tired. I’m tired. Especially from a social-battery point of view.
I honestly can’t wait for Christmas, but also feel sad about it because it means its the end of the term with these course-mates and most likely the end of my time in Venice.
I feel my weekends have been so full that I haven’t actually had much time to enjoy and really live Venice.”
I didn’t find the time to write again since then. And today I submitted another thing - a 48 hour take home exam which consisted of two essays (and took over the whole weekend). I am not feeling great about it. I have another paper on the horizon.
I knew the course would be intense but I thought it would be the kind of intense that simply just wouldn’t really allow for a part-time job. I didn’t quite expect it to be as tough as it is. Mostly it’s because we (the students) are all together all the time. It is probably the closest experience I will ever have to a boarding school. We have lectures in a hogwarts-y monastery by the sea every day from 9am ish until the evening (with quite a strict attendance policy), but need to use all of the rest of the time to try to keep up with the reading, presentations, essays etc. We eat lunch together in the little canteen every day, we more or less all have exactly the same classes at the same time. Most of the students live with other students from the course, and very few of us have contact with people from outside the course bubble - because we live on an island and are a little more isolated, we are mostly not Italian or local anyway so that’s another barrier, and there doesn’t seem to be much time left for meeting new people. Our social batteries are running low because we are together so much (also very connected online), but also because it is a group of extremely ambitious, multi-skilled, over-achieving and sometimes competitive students.
I find I don’t get time to really enjoy the location (I have still not seen the other side of the island I live on), or really see Venice (I have still not been to Giudecca or Murano). It is sometimes jarring to be living in such a beautiful place while entering class every day to discuss some of the most horrific things to do with human rights abuses, torture, corruption, war and so on. We do get to hear from some wonderful people though. Each week we have lecturers and professionals flying in from all over, so far from Universities such as: Tartu, Queens University Belfast, Deusto, Pretoria, Mahidol University (Thailand), Strasbourg, Maastricht, KU Leuven, Montpellier, Maastricht, Danish Institute of Human Rights / Southern Denmark, University College Dublin, Bucharest, Zagreb, Cyprus, Vienna. As well as judges from the European Court of Human Rights and Inter-American Court; people from Human Rights Watch, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture etc.
I am learning loads, but I am also tired and overwhelmed. I stupidly thought that going back to study would be like a break…
The most important item in my whole apartment has become my kettle, which has more or less been the only consistent thing for me all term. A repetitive comfort that I keep returning to.
(I was so stressed/tired/absent minded the other day that I put the kettle on without thinking and poured a cup of hot water into a mug with no teabag in it, walked away, only to come back to it hours later, confused as to why one of my mugs was filled with just water.)
This week there is a film festival that I am organising at the end of the week, I have visitors, I have an Italian exam (which I am now not so sure I will go to).
I feel excited about and interested in the course, lucky and a bit spoiled; while also feeling deeply exhausted and irritated and just done. I know this course has already changed so many things for me (in a positive way), personally, professionally, and just, in my brain. This time next year I know I will be glad to have done it. But right now I am tired. My whole body feels heavy.
This evening I wanted to write for me, not the course, as a mini act of rebellion. I have said no to social plans, have a candle on, and have (ridiculously) put marshmallows in my tea.
I am going to try to stick to Sundays or latest Mondays for these newsletters again. If I can.
BBC Radio 4 - Rebecca Stott - On the Curiosity of Children
I listened to this in the morning and loved it. It’s a short story about helping to get the child next door interested in reading.
I am listening to Sentimental Garbage podcast again too.
Next time I will have a proper list of recommendations - from design studios to arts stuff, and interesting projects. But for now I need to sleep.
C.