keep the customer satisfied.

[cloakandswagger]

I can be incredibly happy without seeing a single soul but my dad and my dog. Said dad thinks this is weird, anti-career behavior that suggests the loss of fundamental social mechanisms, but in an indulgent, look-at-my-daughter-the-sociopath way. (He also thinks I am the only twenty-something that listens - frequently and fondly - to classic rock.

Comments

[yrpreciousheart]

I guess I'm new around here, and thusly you get an introduction.

Hi! I'm Gillian. Less than a month away from being legal drinking age in my home country (US), despite living in a country where I've been legally allowed to drink/smoke/buy prostitutes/gamble for 3 years already (UK). I'm a university student at my...fourth university? I just can't seem to stay in one place long enough to actually get a degree. Sad, I know. I finally settled on (and will be finishing next year) a degree in Comparative Literature and Linguistics, after which I will either sell my soul to the corporate world because life sucks in a recession, or I will continue going to school until the economy bounces back. It all depends on if the money runs out. ;) Ideally, I want to be a Historical (Classical) Linguist of some sort, with a specialty in something relevant to anthropology or archaeology (my true loves, had to leave my previous university in Denver because they didn't have a linguist anthro degree, or any linguistics courses. Humph). I'm dating a Philosophy grad who is selling his soul (a bit) in order to become a lawyer, and he'll be pushed from the legal nest in two years time.

I ramble, clearly, and this all sounds much more interesting than it all is - I'm a broke American student in London, which is an expensive city, who whines about being bored frequently and reads too many books (if that's possible?).

:D

[cloakandswagger]

Hi Gillian! After reading The Last Samurai, by Helen Dewitt, I’ve had a growing interest in languages. Do you speak any, beyond our friend English? If your department is anything like the Comparative Literature department at my old university, I think you have to learn a language in order to, you know. Compare. XD And there ends my understanding of the discipline. What’s it like? And man, after my time in Ireland, I can sympathize. Europe is not cheap. Did you make friends with Brits, or settle in with American students abroad?

[yrpreciousheart]

I have reading knowledge of French and Spanish, slowly trudging along to learn Portuguese, and am...as fluent as one can be in a dead language in Latin. :D Though, to be fair, I always read translations into English then reference to the originals if necessary. My uni isn't very adamant about speaking other languages. To be honest, I prefer retellings in comparative lit - book to movie, book to tv, short story to novel, poem to whatever, sort of comparison. I don't have enough interest or experience in multiple cultures to really suck the marrow out of cultural comparisons. But, I have to admit I have always leaned more towards my linguistic side of my degree - the literature aspect was kind of a bonus. :)

I've made friends with the hodgepodge that is Britain, really. I have...one properly British friend, and all of my other friends are what you find in London - Bengali, Portuguese, German, etc. 'British' is kind of a relative term now. ;)

:D