1st week in Oxford: I'm studying at the school of my dreams. Life is unrealistically perfect. I want to see everything and do everything and explore forever!
3rd week in Oxford: Man, it feels like I've been exploring forever. Gosh I miss my Gordon friends. I'd really like to make some friends here...and I miss my momma.
5th week in Oxford: When is real school going to start already? I kinda like these people that I'm stuck here with, but I'm still going to travel alone during break and go to Ireland.
7th week in Oxford: This Oxford thing is a piece of cake! I love my tutorials. I love my tutors! I don't mind writing a 7 page paper every week and writing a creative writing piece every other week. I could spend all day in the libraries they're so wonderful! And I'm in love with my new friends here. I want to know them better!
9th week in Oxford: Wow, I'm working pretty hard here. It's tricky to balance a cappella group stuff with social activities (I adore these friends and want to do nothing but spend every minute with them) with all the papers I'm writing. I'm feeling a little tired, but the prof giving the Wordsworth lecture wears cool socks, so I'm gonna be ok...
11th week in Oxford: OH MY GOSH!!!! I'M GOING TO DIE! I HAVEN'T SLEPT IN TWO DAYS BECAUSE I HAD FOUR PAPERS DUE ON THE SAME DAY!! I BARELY HAVE TIME TO EAT ANYMORE! HOW ON EARTH AM I GOING TO DO THIS FOR THREE MORE WEEKS?!?!?!
So THIS is Oxford....
Ok, I exaggerate a little, but only on the "I'm going to die" part. Everything else is pretty accurate. Oxford is Oxford for a reason—now I understand that reason. Writing 7 pages every week might not seem like that much, it didn't to me at first, but when it never ends... as soon as you finish one paper... *BAM* the next one's in your face. A new novel needs reading, 12 more long, often tedious secondary sources to skim through. Come up with another brilliant argument for a topic you've only just been introduced to 2 days prior. Oh, and on top of that, go to lectures, come to tea, rehearse for the gigs, plan for the party, cook for the family, foster relationships, and don't forget to sleep. When does it end?
The answer is December 7th. That's when the program ends and then everybody goes back home (except for the select few of us who will be here for the last half of the year, too). I should be excited for that date. I'll get a lovely 3 week break to use however I choose. No essays. No lectures. No tutorials. No cooking for anybody but myself. I think it's called a vacation, but somehow, that just doesn't sound like a very good reward for surviving this. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place here.
This work is hard. It's draining, and I'm looking forward to not having so many deadlines CONSTANTLY hanging over my head, but at the same time... when this ends, my friends leave me, and realistically, it will be a very long time before I see them again, if ever. How can I celebrate the end of something so Beautiful? even if it does coincide with not having to write essays. I'd write an essay a week for the rest of my life if it meant I could be with these people. (Crazy huh? You'd understand if you met them).
I can't wait for this to be done so I can sleep and eat and live normally—and read for fun!!!!!—while at the same time, I never want this to end. Ah, but no matter how I feel about it, the date is approaching, and I intend to make the most of the little time we have left. Tomorrow night Felicia and I are making a blanket fort with the 3 ft high stack of blankets that's been growing in my closet :) (Explanation? Well, they bring us clean sheets every friday. We're supposed to change our sheets and leave the dirty ones out in the hall to be collected on Monday. However... I don't change my sheets every week! So I've been staking all the clean ones in my closet...but the stack has grown to be ridiculously huge. Felicia's solution? Blanket fort. I adore this girl.)
Well, I don't really have any other updates. And really all this update says is "Oxford is hard." Real insightful, Maria. Sorry, I guess I've used up all my brain power in writing essays. I know my family will be glad to hear that I'm working so hard. School work is important. It's hard, but it's important, and I enjoy it even though it's been a bit overwhelming. I'm thinking about taking an adventure this weekend as a reward for the hard week. Perhaps another journey down the Thames, although it's much too cold now to take a swim at the end of the journey. I'll just have to find something else ridiculous to do...
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Great [un]Expectations
I guess it's probably time for an update. I don't have a clever way to structure my stories tonight, so I'll just jump in and hopefully use some lovely pictures to help add some structure.
Today marks the half point of my first term of Oxford tutorials. In the last 4 weeks, I've read 5 novels cover to cover, I've spent DAYS in the library reading secondary material, and I've written 4 2,000-word essays and 2 short stories (which are still in the process of being edited). These have been some of the most lovely weeks of my life. It would be impossible to record everything that's been happening, but I will attempt to give some highlights. Ah, where to begin?! How about my actual tutorials.
In Oxford, we don't have classes like back in the States. I go to whichever lectures I want whenever I want—none of them are required by Oxford although my program requires me to go to any 3 every week. And then every week I read lots of books about a certain topic, write a paper on the topic and then go discuss the paper and the topic with my tudor. (They call them tudors instead of professors here) I have two "tutorials" (meeting with tudor) for this term. The first is Victorian Literature with the magnificent Emma Plaskitt. She's an amazing tudor! She's unbelievably brilliant, but she never makes me feel like I'm dumb. She's such a lovely person that my meeting with her is one of my favorite parts of the week.
I'm also taking Creative Writing with a splendid gent named Kieron Winn (he writes legit poetry. Look him up!). I only meet with him once every other week unfortunately, but our time together has been challenging, enriching and incredibly enjoyable. In our first meeting he accidentally told me that I must have psychological issues. Of course, he was actually saying that the character in my short story had to have a psychological problem to make sense, but what he didn't know was that my short story really happened...and the character he was critiquing was me...
"She just doesn't make sense psychologically! Maybe if she didn't have a father or something, then her actions would make sense. I mean, do you know someone who would actually do this?" I've never been one to take pleasure in other people's discomfort, but I couldn't help but love every second of Dr. Winn's discomfort when I informed him that I did happen to know someone who would actually do the things in the story. She would, and she did! He put two and two together, "Oh God.... she's not sitting across the table from me is she? Oh God! I'm so sorry... I... I really hope you have a father..." His reaction was golden. What better way to start a friendship? :)
So that's been great. I'm working hard, learning lots, and loving it! The Radcliffe library which is a funky little building apart from the main Bodleian library is my favorite spot to work thus far
This is the outside of it. It's super fun because there's a sign on the pathway leading up to it that says "No Visitors,"so there are always a bunch of tourists crowding around the gate around it taking pictures of it—since it's so cool looking—and I just walk right by them and past the sign because I'm not a visitor here. I've been granted entrance to the magical building. It's exciting for me every time I walk down that cobblestone path.
Then this is the inside of the building. The dome has the most beautiful decoration painted onto it, and the windows let the beautiful sunlight pour in (when it exists). There are windy staircases and walls and walls of the most lovely, old smelling books. It's an English major's dream.
Alright well enough about work. What have I been doing to entertain myself? you might ask. That's a great question. Allow me to shed some light on the subject.
This is what I've been doing. I've been spending every waking minute (and some minutes which should not be 'waking') with the beautiful friends I've made here. When I came to Oxford, I was ready for hard work, I was prepared for feeling homesick, I was even prepared to take on some extra stress about the direction of my life, but I was in no way prepared to fall as deeply in love as I have with these incredible people. I have been so blessed by these friendships, I often find myself completely overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of it all. I could go on and on about why I love each of them, but it would take forever.
The above picture is of something immensely dear to me which we've come to call "family dinner." I told my friends that I wanted to cook an Italian dinner for them all some time and now it's become a weekly deal. Sunday lunch/dinner is family time. We're all split up into food groups of 4-5 people who take turns cooking for each other during the week, but on sunday all the food groups come together and we eat together—it's just like sunday dinner at Nonna's. Our first family dinner, I cooked an Italian meal (complete with cantaloupe, just like Nonna always had), and we enjoyed each others company and ate until we were stuffed...then Morgan fed us the most delicious chocolate cake in the universe!! SO good! This past week I made Irish stew like my Irish momma taught me and we invited Simon (dean of student affairs...or something like that?) to join us with his family. His daughter of 7 helped me make the Irish bread. She was pretty proud of her work. I genuinely had fun with her. I forgot how fun it is pretending to be 7!
Other than eating ALL THE TIME, I've also been drinking lots! As in, I've been having LOTS of tea and coffee! I've officially learned to like tea. Success. Tuesday afternoon is tea time with Simon when people from my dorm building (aka my family) and the other SCIO house (aka beautiful people that I haven't had the pleasure of getting to know as well) all come together into Simon's lovely little office and order the tea of our liking with secret code names (I always order a "Fat Cow") and sit together, eating more and simply enjoying each other's company. It's another favorite part of my week.
These pictures below are from a coffee date with my dear friend Nathan. The picture of my flat white is too pretty and Nathan's picture too delightful to deny them from being seen by more eyes than merely my own.
Oh, I should probably also mention that I'm in an a cappella group now called In the Pink. I'm the official beatboxer which I (along with many others I'm guessing) never would've imagined a couple years ago. Tomorrow is our first gig, and I have a solo in one of the songs. I think it's going to be really fun! I've had the pleasure of meeting such incredible girls through being in the group, and I'm really glad I'm a part of it.
Ok, one last story before I go watch a show my darling friend Felicia recommended to me...
I went to my first English dance club last weekend. It was saturday. We had just finished our weekly saturday potluck (Oh yah, that happens every week too. SO much food!!). Dave, Nathan, and Colin sat on the floor with full bellies as Felicia and I looked at them lovingly from our seats at the table. They wanted us to come to Jericho, a little hipster town a little east of where Wycliffe Hall is, to get some drinks at a "hoppin" pub. How could we deny them? At the boys request, Felicia and I snazzied ourselves up and we 6 (we were joined by our dear friend Joe) headed out towards Jericho, Felicia looking positively enchanting and me looking entirely Spanish (I can't help it when I wear red and put a flower in my hair...). The pub was as "hoppin" as Dave said it would be and we all got fun fruity drinks, except some of the guys who got more "manly" drinks. The evening was fantastic. We returned to Wycliffe and sat at Geoff's doorstep (Geoff=RA) asking for food. I laughed so hard I nearly chocked and died. But I didn't. It was great.
After we finished harassing Geoff, Felicia, Colin and I decided to get some tea and do a bit of work in the common room. After a bit of time pretending to do work, some friends of ours who are part of the OCCA (Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics) program here at Wycliffe came into the common room and announced that they were going pub-hopping. They invited us along. It was saturday and it was barely midnight, so I convinced Felicia to come with me on an adventure. This is how we got to the dance club. As we walked, the boys informed us that the place we were going was possibly sketchy... oh great. But when we got there, it turned out to be just a regular run of the mill dance club/pub. Except, without the inaprops dancing. The English version of club dancing is merely bobbing up and down. It's fantastic! We got drinks and sat around chatting until the music drew us to the dance floor. We danced and laughed and enjoyed the rest of the evening together. When most of our little group went to take a break from dancing, one of the OCCA guys—who happens to be a magnificent swing dancer—threw out the idea of swing dancing in the club. Challenge accepted. We rocked it. I didn't think it was possible to swing dance to techno music, but my marvelous lead swung me around as naturally as if we were dancing to Benny Goodman (if you don't know the reference, look him up. He's brilliant). The dancing was magnificent, the company was sensational, and the post-dancing, 2am snack of Chips'n'kebobs from the Kebob man in his little truck on the street was a perfect end to the evening. Is it crazy that this is a normal day for me? Am I spoiled?
Ok, I lied. One last story. I made a pie tonight. (See picture). I cooked for our food group tonight and asked Nathan, who happens to be a part of our group, what he really wanted for dinner. His answer was ice cream and pie—this is why I love this kid :) I had never made pie before, but I was determined to figure it out! I wanted to make strawberry rhubarb pie, but when I went to the store, they were all out of rhubarb. I thought about giving up, but my word to Nathan about making pie kept me persistent. I'd make a pie if it killed me! Ok, I'm a little dramatic. It came no where near killing me. I just changed the pie ingredients from rhubarb and strawberries to apples and strawberries. I had no idea what I was doing, but whatever I did, it worked! The pie, as you can see in the picture, did not explode and, though you can't see it in the picture, it neither caused any deaths after consumption. (Boy was it consumed!) It was a complete success, and the pie was completely gone within an hour of being done. I have more crust left over so I think I shall make it again soon. I love making pie. I plan on continuing this.
Well, now you're up to date. All is well in the world of Oxford. I'm learning, I'm loving, and I'm lynching. Just kidding about the last one. You all probably assumed I was going to say 'living' so I decided to throw you a curve ball and say something you definitely didn't expect. My creative writing tudor tells me that aestheticism is all about being shocking. I think he might be a little crazy... but I figured I'd give his ideas a try :)
Also, if you're bored, you can always send me letters. If you do, I'll post it on my letter wall by my bed :)
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