Excellent Exeter

Well, it seems that rain has ruined my planned day trip to Exmouth and its beaches (but I shall get there soon), luckily for my readers I'm not the type of person to give up. As such, today I happy to present my latest blog post on the wonderful location of... the University of Exeter. Yeah, it's not exactly as exotic or interesting as London or the Loch Ness (which I'll be visiting in two weeks, get excited), but it's where I've spent these past 2 and half months, so I figured it was due for a blog post.
To start, the university is actually fairly young, being formally chartered in 1955 (although precussor institutions have existed since mid 1860s). The school has three main locations: Streatham Campus,
 St. Luke's Campus, and Cornwall Campus. I'm based in Streatham Campus, so that will be the focus of today's post.
For starters here is the dorm complex where I live.

Nice right? The complex is brand new and feels extremely modern, well, at least for most of the buildings. Some are actually quite old. Here's where I live...

Not quite at nice, but still nicer than the Units. As to its age, some graffiti outside my door indicates that these older buildings been here since the late 1980s.  As it is, its quite pleasant, albeit simple, on the inside, and as with any dorm the experience comes down to the people rather than the place, and I'm fortunate to be living with some pretty awesome people.

Moving onto the rest of the campus, the centerpiece is the Forum, which was completed only last year. As you can see it's pretty impressive...

The building is massive, and includes the library, a grocery store, a bar, two restraints, a study hall, a large lecture theatre, a few coffee shops, and several classrooms. It's the heart of the campus, and several other buildings, such as the Northcote Theatre, where you can see many great performances. (In the picture below its building towards the back, next to the street)

Moving on, one of the principle academic buildings is the Amory. It's here where I have to hand in most of my assignments and it also contains a computer lab and many office and classrooms. As you can imagine, it's a gigantic building, but luckily it has a very well-designed map system.

Most of my classes take place in the building right behind the Amory, the Harrison Building, but I also have a class in the Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. From the outside the building is rather unassuming...

But the inside is probably the best example of interior design on campus after the Forum.

(Photo Credit, University of Exeter Web Page)

The building was sponsored by the ruler of  Sharjah in the UAE, who, like me, is a avid lover of history.  Maybe one day I'll have enough money to sponsor a academic building (probably not).

 

I also have class in the Peter Chalk Center. Not much to say about the building, but it serves its purpose.

Like William and Mary, the campus has quite a lot of green space in it (although no forest or lake sadly), which creates a pleasant, and almost futuristic environment, when paired with the modern buildings.

In addition, it also has quite a lot of hills, which provide some great views, while also giving one a decent workout as one walks to class.

So that's the University of Exeter. I'll probably do another one of these posts in a couple of weeks to show some of the buildings I didn't get a chance to photograph. In the meantime, I'm happy to announce I'm starting a second blog. Yes, I've enjoyed this blog so much that I wanted to create a new project to keep me occupied once my semester abroad is over. Titled 'Hobbes and Joffrey: Politics Explained with Pop Culture' it attempts to examine how political theories and concepts are demonstrated or influence popular books, TV shows, and movies. The first post, which looks at how the theories of Thomas Hobbes relate to Game of Thrones, has already been posted and I'd appreciate it if you could all give it a look at http://politicspopculture.blogspot.co.uk/. 

In other news, I've very excited for the next few weeks worth of posts on this blog. Next week I'll be taking a weekend trip to Liverpool, the place where the Beetles got their start and millions of immigrants headed off to the New World. In the beginning of April, I'll be taking a two week train and bus trip around the UK, from London to Inverness and then back to Exeter.  It's going to be a fun time, and you're not going to want to miss it.