I spend a lot of time in the Castro, if I’m out on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Sunday night you can usually fathom a guess at which bar I’m at or which show I’m partaking in, and again, I love it. Everything in San Francisco may be expensive and the bank is crying at me, sending me little updates that oh so lovingly pop up on my phone’s lock screen every time I go below a certain amount in my account, but it’s worth it, to see these things and to meet these people.

Here’s something different I’ve learnt here, something that maybe doesn’t quite transfer back to England in the same way in my experience. People here, in the circles I inhabit, really admire loyalty and when you meet someone in this space, maybe they’ve been performing or doing hair and make-up or bar tending or being the official fan director to create the perfect windswept look on stage, and you’re kind to them, because they’re amazing people who do amazing work, they are so incredibly kind back. People are more open here, they’ll tell you exactly what they think, they’ll tell you you’re wrong and they’ll tell you that they think you’re beautiful. Sometimes they’ll come out and meet you after a show, buy you drinks every week, send a bartender to you with drink tickets before a show, thank you when they’re up on stage and then sit and talk with you for over half an hour while the bar clears out and you’re the only ones left. People are kind and they make you brave. Thank you.

There are aspects of the city I don’t like though, the homelessness is horrible, it’s sad and frightening. I give people my change when I can, but sometimes that turns out worse than if you hadn’t given them anything at all, take the time someone tried to get me to wear some prison grade orange jumpsuit trousers because it was ‘very important’ to him, in such a way that I ‘could never understand’. I decided that putting them on probably wasn’t the best idea in the end and gradually made my way away, he wasn’t a bad guy though, as far as I saw, he just took it too far in the end and then decided to throw some choice words at me from down the street. People can also be very stuck in their ways, San Francisco is a diverse city, but it’s also one that’s founded on and known because of different things, some of the stereotypes are very much true. Especially in places like the Castro, where someone will take time out of their night to complain and tell you exactly why they think your identity is invalid. But then again, a city like this, the rest of the people, they make you strong enough to brush it off and be confident in who you are. There’s a balance.

Here’s a piece of advice though, if you’re going out in Van Ness or SoMa or anywhere around Powell take a buddy with you. Even if you go there with friends or get half invited by drag queens to a sketchy looking bar in the middle of nowhere where bartenders are topless and the screens play all sort of questionable things. It’s frightening around there after dark and you may end up doing what I did which went along the lines of putting a friend in a car to get him home safe and then thinking you can save some money and get the bus back but panic when people try and talk to you and get on the wrong one end up Haight Ashbury and find that nothing is running anymore, have to pay to get a car back anyway and turn up at your house at 4am in the most fog you’ve ever seen in San Francisco… It was still a great night though. Both of them.

I suppose I should talk about the classes as I guess I’m meant to be here to learn in an academic sense, and I have, I’ve learnt a lot of new things, new ways of writing and learning and interacting with people and literature. I’ve learnt a lot inside and outside the classroom. I’m taking 4 classes, ‘Literature and the body’, ‘Transgender Identities and Communities’, ‘Women and Literature’ and ‘Images of Eroticism’. My classes are interesting, my teachers are all wonderful and it is a very different learning environment to the U.K. Assignments feel much more freeing, although there’s been so many of them, but the different way of referencing, simply the authors name and page number in the text and a works cited page after it all rather than problematic and confusing footnotes puts me so much more at ease and gives me more mind space to focus on what I’m writing and not the technicalities of it all. How it should be, I think. There’s also a difference in the amount of sources or research you are expected to do and find, and for the most, as an Undergraduate, that’s none. This is another aspect that I love, I can put in extra research if it’s needed or if I want to, but I don’t have to, this makes it sometimes more difficult but, for me, a lot of the time it feels more gratifying to know that everything that’s on that page came from you and your mind and not from some critic you don’t know and just made a, probably very messy, jigsaw from their work and yours. I like the freedom of classes here, although sometimes I miss the level of discussion at UEA, I love that there are so many different and completely unique classes with Professors that are so passionate about this obscure or overlooked topic that they’ve based an entire course off of, pushing boundaries and making waves for subjects and people that are often overlooked.

This whole experience has me and the people around me pushing boundaries. Boundaries that are mental, physical, academic or personal, we’re all fighting and changing and growing, and again, I love it and I’m really proud of us all.

– Georgia Tomlinson-Spence
(@georgiarts)