First, I must apologize (or apologise?) to any of my friends and family who have actually bothered to check my blog over the past year. I must admit, it has been rather sparse. However, here I am at my Oakland sublet with a free evening and a cup of tea, and I find that I'd rather do some just-for-fun writing than some actual work. Lucky you, this means you get to hear my stories and my lessons learned from the last year - perhaps slightly edited for diplomatic purposes.
I think that, interestingly enough, my experiences of Oxford fall mostly into three distinct groups, which only really started to overlap toward the end of the academic year.
Marston Rd
Instead of choosing to live in college, like most freshers, I chose to seek out private accommodation. Although in most cases college housing is very nice (completely different from the 3 to a room, institutionalized dormitory in which I spent my first semester at Cal), I'm still incredibly glad that I spent the year living outside the so-called 'Oxford bubble'. Oxford is its own idiosyncratic and strange little world, and I think that complete immersion in it would have been a little bit too much of a shock for my Californian self. I am, after all, the kind of person that enters a cold swimming pool by degrees.
A selection of the housemates and myself on a camping trip in Cornwall. From left to right: Tommy, Jen, Dan, Bert, and me.
I shared a nice house with a kitchen, living room, and garden with six other students. Ben, Dan, Tommy, Jen, Laura G., and Laura W. were an amazing part of this past year. All six of them treated me like family, and I will always be grateful. There were a few times this year when I really did feel like giving up and going home (something which has never happened to me before), but these kids weren't about to let that happen. They were 'wicked cool'. That brings me to another point about this house - this is where I learned most of my British slang vocabulary. By the end of the year I was starting to use expressions like "well good" and "cheeky git." The Marston Rd. kids had contaminated my speech!
Laura G. and Laura W., at the wedding ceremony of out other housemate, Ben.
My Course in Medieval English Literature
In many ways, my coursemates were the highlight of the year. They were, and still are, without exception, amazing people. I do mean that about everyone, even the few who were, shall we say, less than personable. There were fifteen of us on the course: seven Americans, seven Brits, and one German. Brian, our resident Rhodes Scholar, started things off by scanning all of the recommended articles on our course list and emailing them to everyone in the group as .pdf files. The rest of the year followed in this vein ... we planned study groups, shared resources, went for numerous drinks and dinner sessions, and generally acted as a support group/resource pool for each other. This "we're all in this together" attitude paid off, and I'm happy to say that I think our little band of miscreants produced some of the most impressive work of any MSt. group to date.
The medievalists celebrate finishing our dissertations with a picnic on the Trinity lawns.
Trinity College
I've had a lot of trouble getting people in the States to understand exactly what an Oxford college is for. Let me explain:
- Oxford has thirty-nine, separate, self-governing colleges. Yes, these are part of the main university.
- Every student at Oxford belongs to both a college and a faculty. A faculty is like a department - there is an English Faculty, a History Faculty, a Law Faculty, etc.
- Lectures are organized through the Faculty. Tutorials (a one on one or two on one session for undergraduates with fellow in their field) are organized through the colleges.
- Colleges are responsible for student welfare: they provide food, housing, a college library, and each college has its own chapel with its own pastor.
This coming year, I'm the Welfare Officer of the MCR at my college. MCR stands for Middle Common Room, which serves as the name of both a physical room in college, and the body of postgraduate students at Trinity, of which I am a member. As Welfare officer I am in charge of general health & happiness for all of the Trinity postgrads ... although as one of only two committee members at the moment, chances are I will be taking on quite a few other responsibilities too, at least during the first few weeks.
Olga and me, the members of this year's MCR committee. Olga is MCR president.
The members of the MCR at Trinity have been a varied and interesting group to get to know. We're a small postgraduate body - there's only about a hundred or so of us, and only about fifty of those are regular participants in college activities. But through the year we've had dinners and bops and coffee & cake, and I've very much enjoyed getting to know a group of people who come from all over the world and who study an incredible variety of subjects. I've had a particularly good time socializing with the scientists, who are always telling me intriguing facts about all sorts of things I'd never heard of before. Highly entertaining stuff.
Trinity MCR Garden
When I got back to the Bay Area a few weeks ago, it felt in some ways as though I'd just dreamed the entire year. It's hard to believe, really, that such a decadent, fascinating, dramatic period in my life actually happened ... although, I'm starting round two of this whole production in about a month's time. Reality will sink in then, I suppose. So far it's been, as my supervisor put it, "An intellectually rewarding experience." There are, of course, many more things to tell about everything that happened this year, but you'll just have to ask me about them!
Summer at a local pub - English monopoly anyone? I'll give you £400 for Mayfair.
