for @vestas-kitchen, who requested the ending of her fab historygirls!scosner fic that i’d read and loved ages ago. here’s how it went down in my head.
link to the fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375761/chapters/30632715
If you’re going to Bangor University, (Wales, not Maine) here’s a few things you might want to know
Hi! I’m Sian, and I’ve just finished my first year in my BA English Literature and Creative Writing course. I’ll be graduating in 2020, and I’m writing this in the summer of 2018. So, without further ado, here’s my ‘things I wish I’d known’ and just some general advice!
1- The Hills
If you’re stalking the Bangor Uni tag, you’ve inevitably seen the Bitch Hill memes. That’s still a thing. Going up and down Bitch Hill is still the quickest way between Upper and Lower Bangor, especially if you’re coming from Ffriddoedd Village. However- a building on the side of the hill, Pontio, has been finished, and it does have a functional lift.
Now, though, there’s an even worse one. It’s called St Mary’s Hill, and it leads to the St Mary’s student village. Colloquially, it’s known as Twat Mountain. I know at least two people who taxied up that hill every time they went up. It is a monster.
I will say though- depending on how much you move about, you get used to the hills very quickly. By November I could walk up Bitch Hill without stopping. Fitness and cardio are inevitable.
2- Halls
Halls are pretty cool. There’s not much to them, but depending on which one you are in, your experience can be very different. Idwal and Braint tend to be quite chill, but Peris, Enlli and Alaw are known party halls. If whatever halls your in doesn’t suit you, you can ask to move, it’s no trouble.
Fire alarms do go off about 1am- 3am for test drills. However, you’ll probably know which week, if not day it is, so you can prepare. It’s also possible to miss your fire drill by getting shitfaced in someone else’s house and turning up to halls at 4am.
Personal experience though- DO NOT HOOVER WATER. IT WILL BREAK IT. No, that wasn’t me, but I’m still angry at the guy that did it.
3- Freshers
Do what you want during Freshers, free food’s always a plus though, but please go to Serendipity. Societies at Bangor are all free, and you can take advantage of that. Personally, I’m in at least five societies- BEDS, SODA, Film Soc, Rostra and Veg Soc, and I’ve met so many actual legends through societies. If I’m honest, I recommend making friends through societies rather than halls or your course. You meet a more diverse range of people with the same interests as you.
4- Welsh
Unless you’re dealing with publicity for a society, you do not need any Welsh. Don’t feel like you need to learn it to be understood. I’ll just come out and say it- some of the locals are MASSIVE arseholes, but that’s because you’re not local, not because you can’t speak Welsh.
5- Drinks
There are loads of spots in Bangor worth drinking in. Personal favourites- Belle Vue, Black Bull, Menai, Fat Cat, Harp. As for clubs- Academi is pretty dire, but Cube is decent. I’ve heard good things about dB, but I’ve never been in myself.
And unless you’re on a team like American Football or Rugby, drinking culture isn’t that strong. It’s social, not cultural- you might go to the pub on a social or to meet friends, but no one is going to make you drink. I get the piss taken out of me for ordering free water, but hey, sue me, I’m money-conscious and people are okay with that.
6- Packing (Weather)
As much as you hear about Welsh weather, Bangor’s actually pretty mild. Yes, it’s worth an umbrella or a raincoat, but you’ll still need as many summer clothes as winter clothes. We barely got any snow, but the summer was beautiful. Never thought I’d get sunburnt in Wales. But Jan/Feb is double layer weather, so do prep for that.
7- Classes
It’s okay to miss a seminar or lecture here and there. There’s a guy in the year above me who didn’t go to a single one of his seminars for one of his modules. (Don’t recommend though.) But no-one’s going to chase you up for a missed class because you couldn’t be bothered going and sat in halls in beds eating Pringles. (Not a true story, I swear.)
8- Shopping
No matter how much money you plan to save by walking to Aldi, if you live on Ffridd site, you WILL shop at Morrisons. But it’s really not all that bad. There’s usually an offer on the student foods- butter, pasta sauce, etc, and bread’s actually cheaper there so it turns out okay.
9- Housing
If you want to find a house with new friends, do it as soon as humanly possible. Houses go quickly in Bangor, and I advise you use Daffyydd Hardy rather than Varsity- which is a notoriously bad landlord.
However, if you’re not too fussed, you can leave it right until the end of the year and pick up a room that hasn’t been filled in say, a four-bed with three people. But don’t stress. You will find somewhere to live.
10- Reading Weeks and Holidays
Reading weeks are sort of like half terms. You get five days off, but there’s usually something due on Friday for your modules. Most people go home for reading week, but a fair few stay.
I cannot emphasise this enough, go home for Christmas and Easter. Bangor is desolate, everyone goes home for at least two weeks. You will go stir-crazy from boredom, and just hang about in your flat because everyone you know has just sort of fucked off.
11- Varsity and Aber
Once a year, everyone goes insane. That week is Varsity.
Bangor and Aberystwyth have a sports rivalry, and every year, there’s a uni-wide competition between every single sports club. Seriously, it’s like the Triwizard Tournament but with more partial nudity. (Apparently, it’s fun.)
My advice here is to not go out for a week and hide, and ESPECIALLY do not go to Academi during Varsity, as if it’s Bangor’s turn to host it’ll be packed with Aber students.
So yeah, that’s my masterlist. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, feel free to message me :)
Filmed live at London’s Bridge Theatre during its limited run, don’t miss Alan Bennett's ‘rousing chorus line for the NHS’ (Observer) in your local cinema. T...
Irwin: I’m proud to identify as morosexual. I’m attracted to dumbasses and dumbasses exclusively. Once a boy wrote the world’s dullest essay and now I dream of kissing him under the moonlight
Dakin: I had some thoughts about the philosophy of Kneeshaw
Irwin, already taking off his glasses: Dakin, you’re so fucking stupid
there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”
have i told this story yet? idk but it’s good. The Orangutan Story:
my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?
wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.
background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.
so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—
then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”
some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.
much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.
so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.
my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
'Because he loves me more than all the world.' @vestas-kitchen - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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