I feel the best way to summarize my experience in Oxford thus far would be to tell you the little anecdote of how one day when I was reading a book in one of the University libraries, on one of the pages someone had crossed out the word ‘less’ in the text and petulantly scrawled ‘fewer!’ in the margin.
Take that as you will.
So. I suppose I should explain something about the educational system here. Rather than classes, the student’s schedule consists of tutorials, which are private meetings with an assigned tutor in the subject of your choice. The term generally includes a primary tutorial which meets once weekly, and a secondary tutorial which meets once a fortnight. (My tutorials are studying the archaeology of the Roman Empire outside of Italy, and Greco-Roman religion.) A reading list and an essay are assigned for every tutorial, so that in the brief eight-week term, twelve essays are written. Additionally, there are a multitude of lectures in every subject offered daily, which are open to the general student body and, in some cases, the public. So basically, the term is what you make of it, and relies heavily upon your own initiative. Well that’s enough of the mechanics of it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
My particular college (I believe there are 38 that make up Oxford University) is Christ Church…which is a rather large and prestigious one, if I do say so myself. Excepting a certain Fish Fiasco, in which my roommate and I were clapped in shackles and hauled off to the dungeon for taking a picture of a fish in the courtyard’s fountain, Christ Church is a lovely place. For you Harry Potter fans, the dining hall was the basis for Harry Potter’s great hall, and the scene where Harry and Malfoy meet for the first time was filmed on the steps there. Lewis Carroll also studied there, and the characters from Alice in Wonderland are in one of the dining hall’s stained glass windows. Einstein taught there for a brief time as well. And the poet W. H. Auden, who wrote the poem “The Shield of Achilles”, which I read for my terrible intervie
w with Oxford some four years ago. Ironic.
Unfortunately I don’t live in the college, but rather a pit of an apartment complex, twenty minutes (on foot) from the center of town. But luckily there’s an absolutely gorgeous meadow nearby, which, as a local told us, was documented by William the Conqueror in his surve
ys of 1067/8 because every year in the winter the meadow becomes a lake, and in the summer it dries up. Pretty cool to be looking upon the same sight as people did nearly a thousand years ago. So far, my favorite places are the meadow, the botanical gardens (which are free like most of the museums here), and the rock bar that offers heavy metal karaoke on Monday nights. (Say, today is a Tuesday…)The OSAP program took a trip to London two Saturdays ago, but I felt like I only saw the ghost of the city, so I’m going to go back and explore it more thoroughly. Tomorrow’s slated for another day of Oxford exploration, and this Saturday, OSAP is taking us to Stonehenge and Bath. I’m pretty excited!
That’s all for now.
-Cindy
PS I will update this when I bloody well please.
