The Scottish Chronicles: What a day

and why "What a Day", I do not know. Sometimes I think I just get too caught up in the intricacies of my life to appreciate it as a whole. I mean I have a lot to be thankful for. I'm here, in Scotland, I've recently travelled to Italy, I frequently shop in Edinburgh. I'm doing something I've always promised myself I would do - travel around the world - and I've worked hard to get here. I also have so many wonderful people back home that love me and support me, from my parents and sister to my awesome friends to my fantastic boyfriend, who's loving me and supporting me, it sometimes seems, against all odds. So why do I feel so out of my element, why is my chest constricting my breathing and my jaw tensing up, why do I feel so very very unsure of myself? Like my life is just one big question mark?

There are things I could attribute these feelings to. Classes, for one. I absolutely detest my English class, I've decided. I have always considered myself to be smart, but not only smart - a critical thinker, one that can look beyond that which is to that which lies beneath. Intuitive not only in relationships and humankind, but also in an academic sense. And to back up this belief, as Stefania jokingly pointed out to me, I've not only had ridiculously high marks for University but have even had my essays quoted by professors! But here - oh my God! - I feel like such a dumbass to put it mildly. In tutorial today, for example, I felt like I was unloading an indisguisable load of bullshit in front of my tutorial group. Everyone else writes whole essays for these short presentations, which they read off in posh English accents, wittily uncovering ironies, "gestures", "farcical and satirical elements" within a text that I simply found amusing. I don't want to analyze it! I just like it! It doesn't help, of course, that all of the other students have been studying English literature for the past three years, they are all familiar with Chaucer and Jonson and all those fine chaps. But it's more than that. I feel like the entire educational system here if foreign to me, that I am a fish out of water. I try to read these texts by deciphering them word for word and dragging out hidden meanings, but in truth I really don't care. But then I think maybe I'm just saying that to cover up the fact that I'm just plain not as smart as the rest of my class, that I don't share their familiary with the inner workings of Elizabethan comedy. But then why the hell should I? It's not like I was born knowing this crap, and I've definitely never studied it before. I guess it is just hard being in a setting where everyone else knows more than you about a certain subject.

The same goes for my Democracy class, but on a different kind of scale. I'm pretty sure that not everyone knows how exactly Democracy developed (or didn't) in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and so on, but it seems that if they don't actually know, they certainly like to pretend they do. I think I've just realized what the difference is between learning here and learning back home. Here, you are expected to come to class fully informed (through the hours of reading you are to have done in the four days a week that you don't have class) and able to share your knowledge with your classmates. Unlike back home, where (amazingly enough) they actually teach you in class. Why is that such a foreign concept? I don't know everything about what we're learning here. That's why I'm paying for these classes! So that I will learn! In class! The teacher will tell me things that I didn't know before. I don't think my English teacher has said one thing with the intent that we will absorb it and use it at a later date. It's more like an incoherent rambling on about the historical setting of Medieval and Elizabethan England, which we will never actually have to use in any essay or exam. There's no direction in these classes; they don't give you a textbook and say "learn this and we can talk about it in class". They say "here's a list of twenty books that generally have to do with the subject of the course. Read them and find out what you can about the subject. But that doesn't mean that what you read will ever be necessarily useful to you in the classroom or any assignments". It's almost the end of the term and I haven't had a single thing marked in Democracy! How the hell am I supposed to know whether or not I know what I'm supposed to know? I don't know! That's all I know, is that I don't know!!!!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!!

I am SO glad I'm only doing a year here. And isn't that an awful sentiment to be dominating my consiousness when I'm not even halfway through this wonderful interesting experience? Oh sigh. I wish I could just be happy with what I have, but I fear that is impossible.

I miss home. I miss snow. I miss my boyfriend. I miss crazy loud Stefania. I miss people who are crazy and loud. I miss feeling like I belong where I am. I miss feeling smart. I miss feeling accomplished. I'm not used to doubting myself, or my choices, or my abilities, or my intelligence. And it's not something I like.

I'm sure this will pass and that I'm just having a rough day. But right now, the best place in the world I can think of to be is in my little log house in the forest, with the snow falling outside, and me curled up in front of the woodstove with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book.

Oh me!

A pedestrian gazes upward in a square in Venice, Italy