Postgrad Mingles

Yesterday I went to the Arts Faculty Postgrad Seminar Series Welcome. Basically its a group of postgrads from the art department (meaning; English, film, languages, humanities ect.) come together twice a term to present papers as sort of a trial run before a conference. This is mostly helpful for PhD students who are writing a big paper but us lonely MA student are also welcome. The selling point is of course the free wine! The organizers were surprised by how many of us were from film because it was almost our whole class that came – that’s right, we were representing! It was nice to meet other postgrads (that weren’t business related) and just be able to talk about what we’re all focused on and dissertation ideas. And while there is wine there its not the main deal which I found comforting.

It’s strange not being on a dry campus. There seems to be alcohol everyone and at all the social events. The drinking age here is lower so there’s no problem like there is in the US but its still strange. Of course the difference between the seminar and the societies I’ve been considering joining are that the societies, filled with undergrads put as their main focus getting drunk. I much prefer the drink a little wine while having stimulating conversation. I’m definitely in the right place.


At the meeting though I learned a lot about my classmates and I thought I could introduce at least some of them. Andy is English, really nice and is interested in the Coen Brothers which unfortunately for me I haven’t seen many of their movies nor liked the ones I’ve seen. It was nice to see him talk about something that he actually liked. Barbara is Germany and was actually at Warwick for an exchange year and now has come back. She’s very nice and friendly but I’m not sure what she’s interested in. We’re all still really I think scared to say anything that we like for fear that others will think us stupid.                                                        

KC is the other MA American. I’ve talked we her a little bit more which has been nice. She worked for a non-profit theater raising money and lived in Pairs for a year. It’s I think a little bit comforting having another American there Peter is the American who’s doing his PhD. I’m not a huge fan of his because he never takes a breath and some of the things he says about America I think is a big generalization that i don’t agree with. A West coast-East coast thing. Oishani is from Bombay and lives in Heronbank which is across from Lakeside but we never manage to walk to class together. She’s nice until she starts nagging me to be more social, she came her though w/3 of her friends. Oli who is doing his MA but in research is really nice. We talked a bit at the seminar. His favorite color is yellow, but a bright yellow. He’s doing his dissertation on christmas movies, not sure the aspect of that but something about seasonal movies. Great topic! He got me a little depressed and depressed himself when talking about X-mas since I’ll be here alone on campus.

So that’s not all the people in my class but I don’t know that much about the rest of them. I’m getting there slowly.