extract from an email i sent:

"So, my impressions so far, 2 ½ weeks in:

I’ve found that the class seems to have already split into three: the slightly geeky, the outgoing and the ones who fall into neither group. Cliques have formed very quickly and there is a good degree of pretentiousness and arrogance; people looking down their noses or just being downright unfriendly (yes, I’m talking about the self-styled “cool” group).

Although I fall into that no-man’s land of associating with either group, I tend to know and associate with the Loud group better, and I find it strange that there has been such a split in the sexes. From my point of view – perhaps it is different within the groups – there’s the Loud girls group, and the Loud boys group, and although they socialize together, they also stick with their own sex a good deal of the time (thinking of the oh-so-girly-let’s-call-five-different-people-before-I-decide-what-to-wear-pyjama-party-having-ditzy-squealy-giggly exclusive girls group, and the boys with the obvious ringleaders who make juvenile jokes in lectures and do things just for the effect, as if we were still in high school. Yes, I really am this intolerant.)

To be honest, I find many of them to be fairly immature, regardless of age. I don’t know if this is due to having an older group of friends back home, or having grown up in a city of equal size to NY (London) I find myself being a little blasé about the whole city experience (especially having been here before), but I find their fear of escalators and inability to use the subway and lack of adventure somewhat tiresome.

I feel a lot of them don’t – and perhaps won’t – experience the proper New York which is surely part of the reason they are here. They seem to hang out in groups of Brits, always going to the same old places (Dorrians, Fat Blacks) – and if it’s not the same place then it’s the same location (“Let’s go to The Village!”) (you can hear them capitalize the T and the V when they say it).

Since I’ve been here I’ve been up and down Manhattan and Brooklyn. I’ve been to Soho, the East Village, the LES, Chinatown, Williamsburg, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Brooklyn Heights… I’ve talked to strangers, joined art collectives on their hippy march celebrating the “First Warm Night” and followed a brass band onto a subway car. I’ve bought a bike off a stranger from craigslist. I’ve scrawled chalk tags over parts of Red Hook, sat on a stoop drinking from a hipflask whilst a police helicopter circled overhead, I’ve backed quietly away from a game of spin the bottle involving 100+ people. I’ve gone to Printed Matter and seen Aaron Rose and Terry Richardson. I’ve made plans to go shoot at Rucker this summer (photos, not balls). I talked to a girl I never met who works freelance for Paper magazine. I went down to the LES on my lunch break, walking through a film crew on Houston St, to get a ticket for a gig that I’ll go to by myself because I don’t know anyone else here to likes the music but I wanted to go. I’ve sat on a Chinatown fire escape after midnight, drinking and people watching. I’ve navigated my way from the middle of Jersey City to Battery Park up to 9th St on my bike with only one minor mistake (almost getting on to the West Side Highway… a quick swerve to the curb, almost knocking over a doorman, and heading down the nearest side road soon got me away from that). I’ve chatted to a taxi driver – a genuine born-and-bred New Yorker – and knew exactly where I was going. I’ve been taken for a meal at Balthazar and been to the Life Café; I’ve tried to economise at the A&P and some evenings been too tired to cook so had cereal or matzo for dinner. I’ve dawdled in a second-hand bookstore I discovered in the back streets of Soho, eavesdropping on the conversation of two gentlemen who were clearly heavily involved in the theatre world (playwrights or directors, at a guess). I’ve ridden along the Hudson pathway as it was nearing dusk, transfixed by Manhattan on the other side of the river and constantly thinking Oh my god, I get to live here for a year. What is it about New York that brings this out in me? I feel – just different here. A different kind of confidence that I lack in London, that I love having here.

And I resent the MB people for taking that away from me when I’m with them. I can walk down a street here and feel ten feet tall; I walk into that classroom and feel like the smallest person there is. You try and start a conversation and they don’t even try to continue it. One of the girls [...] she’s in the girly group I described above, and she’s always seemed fairly sweet. After class on Monday, I tried to make an effort and asked how their Saturday night had been. Her reply “Good”, with a smirk. Couldn’t have been more conversation-stopping or crushing if she’d tried."


i know we made all those ally-sheedy-in-the-breakfast-club jokes before i went, but they're verging on becoming a reality with the MB lot. yikes.