Surviving School

Do you know those Tom and Jerry cartoon images where Tom has stuck his finger into a plug socket and is bolted up into the air, every hair on his body standing on end? Well, that's how I have felt for the last ten days. 

At my very first lecture last Tuesday I thought I was in the wrong place! All around me students who looked 19 (but couldn't possibly have been since this was a post-graduate course) spoke with American accents and the lecturer was explaining elementary things like where District Six was and that the boxer in the black and white photo from the 1950s was actually Nelson Mandela, not Muhammed Ali.

It made sense when I realised that the course was being run in conjunction with Brown University and that there was a large contingent of exchange students attending. The clarity lasted about five minutes before we were being told about setting up websites, creating Tumblr accounts and joining a Face Book group. All this would be used to monitor and assess our involvement!

Later in the week I was in a lecture on African Non-fiction Literature. This time the class was smaller and there was only one American voice, but listening to these young ones talk, I had the distinct feeling that I have missed out on a few steps...like studying English language and literature...

We are a group of diverse writers in the Creative Writing seminars and I am sure that we will learn much from each other and the many established authors who we will be meeting during the course of the year.

 Everyone assures me that I will be fine once I get into the swing of things. I just need to find a way to channel the adrenaline which seems to be coursing through my veins, clearly my body has been preparing for flight. My brain, however,  has prevailed and here I am gearing up for the second week.