Haven't written anything in forever. This means that this one's going to be a long one...
I learnt two things this week.
1) I'm a snob. Not of the obvious Frasier sort, but I *am* a snob.
2) I was right in the assessment that Leicester is actually quite good. I learnt this through three sub-things:
a) Leicester can be classified as a red-brick university.
b) It's actually not unusual for some Brits to aspire to attend a red-brick.
c) Leicester's really good for Criminology.
Coming from a country where there's only a handful of recognized unis, 'red-brick' turns out to have been a notion that was rather ungraspable until I actually encountered it. One university may be better at one thing than another (like Erasmus University Rotterdam being famously good at Economics and Business, like Nyenrode but without the private uni fees) but in general Dutch unis hold up well against one another.
Some ancient unis here in Britain are obviously really very good, consistently placing in the top five of pretty much any Higher Education list. My snobbery acknowledged that those were better than Dutch unis, but then also had this weird sense of what I can only term as foreign student syndrome: loving the country that you're studying in but somehow always comparing things to the way they are back "home"*. I sometimes have my doubts about the quality of Dutch unis and had figured that as Leicester is not an ancient uni, it must somehow be similar to a Dutch uni and somehow therefore be a bit questionable at times. My snobbery at its worst, I thought.
I still can't compare it to a Dutch uni; however, so far Leicester has only pleasantly surprised me. In fact, as it turned out in a discussion the other day, Leicester is in the top three for Criminology programmes in all of the UK. I should really, really not be a snob about unis.
I should not be a snob at all - I visited Her Majesty's Prison Grendon on Friday for their University day and while there I noticed some kids from Oxford, and I was feeling snobbish towards them. Not jealousy or resentment, which I know and sort of would've understood because I do tend to get that way, but actual snobbery: "look at those toffs, acting all like they own the world" - I felt better than them somehow because I'm middle class (at best). It kind of freaked me out a bit.
UPDATE: I don't mean that Oxford students are by nature toffs. I just mean that I scared myself by judging them without knowing them.
HMP Grendon itself was... I said 'lovely' to one of the officers there when he asked what I thought of the visit, and lovely of course isn't the right word. I meant to say fascinating or wonderfully educational or whatever works better, but I meant lovely as in the sense it's lovely to see that Grendon has at least some sort of positive effect on it's inmates and it was just so interesting to talk to some of them.
Grendon is a therapeutic facility and unique in its kind. There's four categories of prison in Britain: Cat A, which is high-security with highly dangerous inmates, Cat B, which is "regular" high security, Cat C, medium, and Cat D, open prison. Grendon is a Cat B but has a staff:prisoner ratio of 1:2 (instead of the normal 1:25) and all staff is trained in doing therapeutic stuff with the inmates and the inmates have group sessions every day to learn from one another. Sounds very touchy-feely-"geitenwollensokken" but seeing as the average reconviction rate of regular offenders is about half and that of dangerous offenders near 70%, and Grendon gets the dangerous offenders rate back down to about half, then that seems like a sign that it works.
It's of course very expensive, though, so it all depends on whether it's actually cost-effective.
It's a long drive from here to Grendon, though, almost two hours. The department had arranged for us to be picked up by a taxi no less (!) at 7am and we were back in Leicester around 5pm, and it was a very exhausting day - despite our driver putting on Happy Feet on the way back, we were all solidly asleep by the time we'd gotten back North of the Watford Gap.
Spent the weekend writing.
Finished my practice essay, hope it's good.
Finished (finally) my Dorian Gray Pala Conference Proceedings Paper Thing, handed that in on Monday. That means never any more stylistic analyses of a literary thing (my plan for next year is to write about threats in The Godfather, which is stylistics but not just literature), or at least, that's what it would mean if I would be able to let go. I'm not, so I'm afraid that at one point or another in my future I'll go back to this paper, rewrite it (again - that would be the 4th full rewrite and the ... 21st, I think, revision) and just continuously add more stuff to it. Make it proper. And then once, one day, when it reaches 100,000 words and I can finally let go of it, somehow figure out a way to have it recognized as, whatever, an independent PhD or something. That'd be my second PhD then (seeing as I'm still fully intending on doing a Criminology PhD after my master's)... lol, Dr. Dr.. (Just speculating here, I don't think I'll bring Dorian Gray to the full 100,000 words before I'm truly fed up with him...also, I don't think I'm particularly keen on a doctorate in Stylistics, because what in the name of our dearest good Lord would I do with it?)
Celebrated Halloween/Paper Handin with Ruth and Madison on Monday. That was nice. I wore my red corset and grey dress and powdered my face white and red lipstick and had fangs that kept falling out so I was something of a vampire.
Was informed of having an interview for a job with the uni library next week. Good. I like libraries and work's work. Fingers crossed and all that.
OOH! And I'm happy now because last week my Understanding Crime seminar group (well, every seminar group really...) got told off by our instructor for not looking at empirical papers to back up our opinions on rational choice theory and classical criminology etc., so I'd spent quite some time this week trying to find relevant empirical papers, loved the idea of the MAOA genetic variation that in conjunction with childhood maltreatment can cause adult criminal behaviour so looked up loads of papers on that and this week we were told that we'd done very well, so that's very nice. The essay assignments for this course have been put up this week and I'd real trouble picking out one of the four options for Understanding Crime, but seeing as somehow I managed to be fascinated by the MAOA deficiency research I may choose the one option that makes us compare 10 years of biological criminology with 50 years of sociological criminology, which is actually the one option that appealed to me the least when I first looked at the essay topics. It's also the option with which you're absolutely sure you'll be spending all of Christmas and New Year in the library, just reading every single research output in Criminology and the related fields of the last 50 years. In a sense, I guess, then, it's also the most relevant option, considering I still want to go on and teach Criminology in the future, and reading loads of research is hopefully going to give me so much background info I'll resemble something of a cataract whenever one of my future students asks me a question...
UPDATE: Informed both my parents I won't be home for Christmas. They took it remarkably well.
*I hate the word 'home'. Couldn't use it properly in RA because was my home in Oostvoorne, Hellevoetsluis or Middelburg? In Middelburg, home was Hellevoetsluis; in Hellevoetsluis/Oostvoorne, home was Oostvoorne/Hellevoetsluis or Middelburg, depending on context. Can't use it now either. Also because I'm suffering from another symptom of foreign student syndrome: missing stuff from "home" but actually not wanting to go "home" at all (going so far as to actively avoid any requirement to go "home"). Home is where the heart is, but what if your heart has been stretched to cover a multitude of places?
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