Sunday, Bloody Sunday

As a part of my undergraduate program, I spent the last academic year in England studying at an English university, and I returned to the states this past June. I experienced a little bit of culture shock when I first got back, mainly in the form of being taken aback when someone would talk to me in the line at the grocery store, or wondering why there were no packages of Digestives (the best biscuit ever) down the cookie aisle of the grocery store. I was able to adjust quickly however, and my mourning period for the digestive was cut short by the realization that you can actually purchase them at specialty stores, like Wegman's. phew!

That is I thought I was able to adjust quickly, but not until I got back to college in America did I realize that there was a whole separate realm of culture shock that I was yet to face. And here I am, staring it in the face.

The Sunday.

In England these days didn't hold any weight at all, especially since during my second semester at the University of East Anglia I had no class on Mondays or Fridays. Sunday was just another day of the week whose night would probably be spent at the campus pub, hanging out with friends, or finding some tv show or movie online to watch. I did the latter a lot, thanks to the bbc iplayer, megavideo, etc.

Anyway, my point is that there was no rush to do homework on Sundays. In fact there wasn't really a great deal of work to do any day of the week, since the workload of most classes consisted of either two papers or one paper and one exam. So one week was incredibly busy, while the rest were completely devoid of homework. It's therefore strange that these 100 pages of readings have suddenly materialized in front of me and necessitate my attention. The whole idea of the weekend offering a break from the overwhelming week schedule has become alien to me, because the week schedule was never overwhelming. All in all I am enjoying this packed schedule as my mind finally feels perpetually stimulated again, but I think it's going to take a few of these bloody Sundays before I've conquered culture shock for good.

But for now...