When was the last time you’ve felt old? Mine was on Wednesday when one of my university colleagues called me a ‘real adult’. Apart from that, I just loved my first week at Goldsmiths although at the very beginning it was not clear that I would. First of all, Goldsmiths is situated in New Cross, an area described as ‘diverse’ in the many Goldsmiths folders, with the term ‘diverse’ being abused to mean (as it is done a lot these days) ‘not particularly well off’. Nevertheless, I don’t hate New Cross nearly half as much as I thought I would. In fact, I have managed to tone down my dislike of the place to such a level that I’ll be living in the area (yes, I am no longer homeless!). The first thing I noticed about the campus was that the main building is conveniently located opposite Costa Coffee and another café that proudly states that it ‘COST-a you less’. Unfortunately, said café also look-a kind-a dodgy, so I guess I’ll stick-a with Costa coffee, not only because they are less likely to give me food poisoning but also because they readily took my old 5-Pound note that had been turned down by the guy working the till at Waterstone’s.
My first task was to acquaint myself with the building, so among other things I went to what was advertised as a library tour, but turned out to be a two-people cabaret. While person one (Natalie, whose name tag not only informed you about her name but also alerted you to the fact that you could ask her ‘stuff’) pointed out that the library was where the books were and the helpdesk was the place where they help you, her colleague (whose name I didn’t gather) accompanied Natalie’s comments with a sort of pantomime in which she swirled around a lot, swiped cards through card readers and gleefully pointed at the machine that lets you take out books like a model pointing at the new Mercedes at a car fair. By the end of the tour, I would not have been surprised if she had sat on one of the machines and given us a lascivious look. Although the campus is much bigger than I thought, I did extremely well when it came to finding places, except for the one time I accidentally went to the men’s room. Also, I proudly noticed that my English is coming along nicely. Among other things, I learned that ‘the marquee on the college green’ is nothing but fancy speak for the big white party tent on the lawn.
On Wednesday, it was time for the induction at the Institute of Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (commonly referred to as ICCE – pronounced the same as ‘ice’). Being part of ICCE not only makes me – you guessed it – an ICCycle, but also the elite of Goldsmiths students. Unfortunately, there were quite a lot of ICCycles present (really, it was the most packed hall I’d ever seen and I come from the University of Vienna, so that’s saying something), which made the lecture hall uncomfortably hot, a circumstance that would be commented on over and over again during the following two hours. The first words came from the programme convener, who confessed to us that he went to art school to escape doing anything sensible. (Are there any other reasons for going to university?) Also, he pointed out that the staff were here for us, but at certain times they were not. If we were to contact them, we had to use our brand-new Goldsmiths email address, which made it easy to track us down, because if our personal e-mail was fluffycuddlybunny@hotmail.com, the staff would be unable to find us. (Lack of research skills, I say. Lack of research skills!) The department would soon experience a week of controlled chaos when the staff were going to unhelpfully move. After graduation, we would forever remain a cherished part of the Goldsmiths family because alumni relations were of great importance to the university, so whenever the staff went somewhere, they ended up buying dinner for a lot of people. The temperature in the room was due to the fact that good ideas were incubated at the university.
Afterwards, a good many other people introduced themselves and their research areas. These ranged from luxury (not interested because not my strong suit) to failure (very much interested because very much my strong suit). One person from Sweden told us she was mainly interested in Eurovision, which is easy to understand, given that Sweden always wins the Eurovision Song Contest. Another person said that in addition to operating the door (he had been opening the door for late ICCycles for the past hour and a half), he was in semi-retirement, but tried to keep himself alert by teaching at Goldsmiths, because keeping yourself alert is important (mental note taken!). The representative of the Students’ Union decided to keep his introduction short because ‘it was roasting’ in the lecture hall. And yes, it was rather warm in there, but on the upside, the temperature in the room gave me the chance to witness a real-life meme spread. One person, who was either hotter than anyone else or less willing to suffer, started fanning herself. Five minutes later, about a third of the people in the room were fanning themselves with whatever they had available. Booklets were dug out of bags, notepads abused, one person even folded her piece of paper into a makeshift fan. That one was immediately followed by another meme spread. One person made an announcement and suddenly, every single one of the lecturers had to announce something, among other things a guest lecture on the aforementioned topic luxury, which we needed to attend because we were going to benefit from it. And suddenly, day one of the induction was over and we were told to leave ‘relatively quickly’, although nobody told us why.
On Thursday, there was a scheduled 3-hour induction for anyone studying Arts Management and Cultural Policy. This one was even more informative than the previous induction, because we were told what culture is (‘Culture is everything and nothing’), were acquainted with the difference between high art and popular art (‘High art is for the snobs’), were informed how to do good PR (‘Don’t sell rubbish’), were let in on the fact that fundraising is not that difficult (‘Do exactly as we tell you and you’ll make money’) and were taught that in order to conduct a good interview you had to know when to stop with the dog questions. These useful insights were interspersed with two rounds of introductions by the students. While I did my utmost to inform my colleagues that there were no kangaroos in Austria, but loads of mountains that are alive with the sound of music, other people mistook the classroom for some kind of forum to voice their concerns and insecurities. Just a word of advice here to my younger colleagues: if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing in this course, you might want to keep that to yourself. Last but not least, those of us who are on the music pathway got a short introduction to the music department, which consisted mainly of reading a booklet. When I asked if I could audit undergraduate courses from said department, I was told that would be no problem. The lecturers might be glad to get someone with a more mature perspective (there we go again).
All in all, there were many moments during the induction that pleasantly surprised me. But what most surprised me was that the programme convener chose to read to us from the mission statement of the department. Having worked on more mission statements than I would care to remember without getting depressed, I know that these are generally dreary and eye-wateringly boring documents. Little did I know that I was in for a treat. The mission statement of ICCE is not only beautifully written but extremely inspiring. And this was what convinced me that I’ll be very happy here. If the department I’ll be studying at manages to turn one of the most boring forms of documents into an inspiring and beautifully crafted statement, I know I’m in the right place.
