Year Abroad, Part Four: Welcome Week

I’ve been in Germany for about a month now and classes still haven’t started. Yes, Tübingen University starts late, and I arrived earlier than I probably needed to. But I’ve not had nothing to do. I have a book to write (still not finished, but this draft is getting there!), and of course there’s cooking, cleaning, sorting out the last bits of paperwork (which seem to take the longest… Never mind this “your year abroad is the best year of your life!” stuff; I swear all I’ve done on mine so far is get stressed over admin). And last week (12th - 15th October) there was also welcome week!

My Least Favourite Writer Stereotype

I've come across a fair few writer stereotypes. The one where no writer can survive without a ridiculous amount of caffeine. The one where we're all awkward, introverted, anti-social shut-ins. The one where we're just generally a bit weird.

And while I disagree to some extent with all of those stereotypes (except maybe the weird one, assuming that "weird" here means "an individual, because no two humans are the same, so for everyone to subscribe to the same social norms would be ridiculous"), the one that I think I disagree with most is the one that says we're all tortured souls who convert pain into creativity.