This week marked UCL's first week of classes, and I learned two things:
- I'd sooner attempt to swallow a minivan than draw attention to myself/be a disturbance to a group of people.
- I've never questioned why a world map looks the way it does.
In regards to Lesson #1: I've always hated bothering people, even if only for a second. That's been a theme throughout my life. But I've never known just how much I hated bothering people until this week. I had to go to my Art History class on Wednesday, and I got terribly lost trying to find the lecture room because a construction site obscured the normal entrance to the building. By the time I found the building that housed my destination, I was seven minutes late for class. Once I got inside, I still couldn't find the correct room. The room I was supposed to be in was 104, but the only room I could find was 104. I thought I would take a gamble and see if 103 was some weird room connected to the inside of room 104, because that's the kind of thing that I tell myself is logical when I'm desperate and sweaty and fed up with being lost. I went into 104 to find a class was in session.
The professor whose class I'd disturbed kindly told me to take a seat, which I did. It took me about three minutes to realize that I wasn't, in fact, in the room for 19th and 20th Century Art and Architecture in London. I was in some class about Modern Art. And, obviously, there was no "connecting room" inside this room. So I was just in the completely wrong room. The way I saw it, I had two options: 1.) I could face my fears and just get up, disturb this lecture for the second time, and look for the correct room and, in turn, disturb that lecture, too; or 2.) I could just sit in on this lecture, suffer in silence, and not disturb anyone.
I went with Option #2, which is where I learned this week's Lesson #1. Everything worked out in the end, though. The Modern Art lecture ended after an hour, and I went up to the professor and told him about my situation. He couldn't have been nicer and showed me to the correct room (which ended up being this tiny, indiscrete door that anyone could have missed) and assured me that everything would be fine if I just explained my situation to my professor. After a bit of waiting, the class I was supposed to be in was dismissed, and I talked to my professor. He, too, couldn't have been nicer and told me that everything was OK. He even walked me through what I missed, which he didn't have to do, and was incredibly kind of him.
In regards to Lesson #2: In my British Politics class, our professor showed us an upside down map. I'd seen this map before, and, as it had been explained to me, it was meant to symbolize the fact that there's no reason why we understand and look at our planet in the way we do. That was my professor's point, too, but he also showed us that the map that we all recognize served a specific purpose when it was made. Why is the United Kingdom front and center? Why was Greenwich Mean Time recognized as the world time standard for so long? The answer immediately becomes clear, and a whole world of questions emerge.
Our lecture was based around the question: What is Britishness? Has the United Kingdom managed to consolidate other ethnicities and cultures--the Welsh, Northern Irish, Scottish, and English--and created an identity that all of those countries can coalesce around? The answer, as most are, is fuzzy. Great Britain's imagined community can be understood as a hazy one at best. But then what do we have to say about America? After the Las Vegas shooting, multiple people from a number of different countries who knew I was an American asked me if any of my family was affected or if the state where I lived was close to Vegas. No, I'd tell them, North Carolina/New Jersey/New York/DC isn't even close to where that happened. Then they would ask me whether the gun laws in the places I live/have lived in made it safe to travel there. Don't even worry about that, I told them, it's safe to travel to America.
I thought some of these questions were funny, which they kind of are, but they're also quite sad. By identity I am an American, but does a tragedy like what happened in Las Vegas and the forces that allowed it to happen help to define Americanness? Yes, probably. To a lot of people here, I'm an American before I'm a North Carolinian or Washingtonian or New Yorker or New Jerseyan. For all they know, NC can be right next to Nevada. Is Americanness apple pie, white picket fences, and Friday night football games? I don't think so, or at least I hope it's not, because surely those who never had the privilege of living a life surrounded by those images are, too, part of America. So what, from our perspective, is Americanness?
As statues come down, knees are taken, tragedies are painfully endured, and national anxiety is stirred, it's one I am trying to answer an ocean away. It's one that back home, I hope, is being genuinely mediated on as well.