Enhancement Week

My Professor Trevor Norris

Enhancement week is a time that the students have off from classes at London Met in order to study, work on assignments, and attend special workshops and events scheduled by the university. It is meant to "enhance" your learning experience. Many kids just skip out and use it as vacation. But I didn't and here's what I did with my week.

Monday and Tuesday I had off. I was supposed to see a play on Tuesday, but due to some miscommunication I missed it. Wednesday was the only that I had a class because Theatre of London is an international class and not a British student class, it is governed by different rules. It was fun though because we ended up doing so improv activities after the lecture which was very amusing. This was the week that I had three different projects due; it's kind of like their midterms week when all projects are due. Which is why I hadn't had much to report lately since I've been working.



On Thursday we went on a Walk of London with my Literary London class. Only five of us showed up out of the entire lecture. I think it was better and more personal that way. We did this little walk as an ode to a poem called Trivia by John Gay which the entire poem is written about how to walk through London: where not to go, what to wear, what to avoid; tips for travelers. So as we walked, he pointed out a lot of the things we discussed in lecture. Particularly sites of coffee houses. Coffee houses were very important to London culture back then. When you walked in and sat down someone would turn to you and say, "What news?" and you were expected to have something witty to say or a story to tell. They were very intellectual places and became information networks for the city. If you wanted to know what was happening, you went to the coffee house to find out. Rank was irrelevant and no one could deny you a seat. Everyone was equalized in the Coffee houses. They were actually outlawed for a time by the queen because of the freedom of news that spread there. Anyways, it was very interesting.

He also showed us where the original walls of the city extended to. We walked most of where the original city stood before the Great Fire. He showed us which parts suffered and which were spared from the flames. He even showed us housing that was virtually untouched from the post-fire development! We went to a pub that Charles Dickens frequented which was really cool and the actually tavern went from the main floor into the cellar and winded down past several rooms to sit in drink leading to another level wear you could be served with long rows of tables. It was awesome.

We saw the house of Samuel Johnson, the man that wrote the first dictionary, and the monument to his cat.

I wasn't kidding.

We walked past the Royal Exchange, the Mansion House (where the Mayor lives) and the Bank of England. Even though this sounds kind of boring it is interesting to actually see places that were discussed at length in your lectures. It creates links allowing you to understand the information better.

One thing that I thought was interesting was that there was a rock we passed that was sealed in this protective case called the London Stone. There is a legend of sorts that if this stone is removed the whole of London with physically collapse. My professor told us that England does not have any origin myths such as the Aeneid for Rome, Gilgamesh, The Illiad. They have no epic story. This is due to the fact that when the Normans invaded they stripped all of the Saxons past culture which included their mythology. This is actually the reason why Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings because he mourned the fact that his country had lost that epic mythology, so he created his own.

Sorry I couldn't get a pic of the actual stone

When we finished the tour, I decided to go and have a look at the poppies at Tower Hill. They were incredible.

The flowers were ceramic.

You could buy the flowers but they were all sold out!

 That evening, I had an Anthology Launch to attend for class. Basically it was their compilation of student creative work that they deemed the best and published it in an Anthology called "Just Met." It was fun; winners read snippets of the work aloud, food and refreshments were served. We even had a previous professor of the school, now a self-published author, come talk to us about her book and the process of becoming self-published. It was really helpful and made me want to write. I actually wrote about 700 words the next day of my short story.

On Saturday the 15th, I went to the British Museum for my own amusement. There were a lot of interesting exhibits there but I couldn't take many pictures because I left my memory card for my camera in my computer! So I have very little to show you here. I got to see a lot of Greek and Roman historical artifacts like sculptures and pottery. They also had a whole section on the Levant, Africa, every empire you could name, and medieval Europe. I was interested in the last one. They had the death mask of Oliver Cromwell's face!

This was freaky to say the least.

There was an entire exhibit dedicated to the portrayal of witches in history. The entire room was filled with drawings of hags and sensual women luring men to their doom. It's either one or the other right? They also had an Egypt room that was filled with mummies and their coffin cases.

I've never seen these outside of books

In one of the rooms, they had a perfectly preserved man lying in his shallow grave. They think he'd been murdered since there is a knife wound in his left shoulder. He is over five thousand years old! I do not have a picture of this though. I felt bad for the man, everyone gawking at his dead mummified body. It was weird because it could have been any of us. It was a human being I was looking at lying curled up in the fetal position. Rather sad.

I was just about to leave thinking that I'd seen enough for the day when I walked past their gift shop and saw so much crap that was Rosetta Stone themed. I thought, no it couldn't be. So I walked into one more exhibit and yes, there is was: the Rosetta Stone.

Yep, it's a stone.

It was kind of cool, I'll admit but some of these things in person seem to be a little anticlimactic. It was amazing though how they fit all of that tiny writing on that slab of stone. Someone was patient. Or ordered to be.

Next weekend I'll be in Paris. So get ready for those pictures.