Week 3; Day 4

Finally, a time to settle in and write about what has been happening in my life over the past week. I feel as though I am getting more comfortable being in Oxford. I am finally able to think of myself as actually living here, although it may be for a short time. I can now smile and recognize the streets and landmarks that I'm used to with a certain sense of pride and familiarity. I have also gotten into a nice rhythm of life. My bedroom in Oxford will never quite feel like my bedroom at home, or even my dorm room in Georgetown, but it has come to feel like more to me than just a place to sleep for the next few weeks. It is nice to look around this university and this city and feel as though I am actually a true part of it. Although I still get homesick daily (sometimes hourly) I am beginning to feel a real attachment to Oxford and see how I'm going to miss it when I do go home.

I have had a few bits of English major Oxford star-struckness over the past few days. To give a bit of background, I use outside criticism for all my essays to give them academic credibility. What I've been increasingly finding, at the suggestion of my tutor, is that the Cambridge Companions to English Literature are really helpful. They generally give a basic overview and a good feel for criticism on the author, topic, book, or whatever they're about. So I was sitting in a Virginia Woolf lecture last week and the lecturer made comment about his article in the Cambridge Companion. When I went through it later in preparation for the essay I turned in this week, I saw his article on Virginia Woolf and Modernism - exactly the topic I had been sitting in for lecture. It was really amazing to realize that I had sat through three lectures with a man who really was a good authority on the topic I was learning about. I had a similar Virginia Woolf star-struck experience later in the week. Hermione Lee is a pretty acclaimed Woolf critic- she has written lots of critical work and biographies on Woolf. I was looking through what is considered to be the best biography on Woolf and there was a note that it the time it was published, Hermione Lee was teaching at New College, Oxford. I definitely passed the New College sports ground and some other New College things on my way to the library! It is still odd for me to think that people I run into at the store or on the street very well might be highly acclaimed critics in their fields. It is one of the things that sort of took me awhile to really grasp, and it's one of my favorite things about Oxford.

I am finding that this has really been an experience of intense personal reflection for me. Oxford is very unlike Georgetown in that I spend a ton of time alone. I realize that I do have a private room in Georgetown and I have a bad tendency to fall into the antisocial spectrum of things as I'm normally in the library. But Oxford is really conducive to working on your own and so there are many days when I have little contact with anyone else except at mealtimes. It makes me realize all sorts of things about myself: my work habits, my general thoughts on the world, and just the way that I function. I'm also beginning to realize more and more how much easier certain things might feel at home once I return. I can really vividly remember not feeling totally safe walking around Lexington after dark. My boyfriend always sort of laughed at me because he spends a lot of time walking and navigating traffic in Lexington and I've always been terrified of crossing Limestone (or any big street) there. In Oxford, it is just a necessity of life. I definitely cross all four lanes of St. Giles basically every day without even blinking an eye. I have sort of had to learn how to be self-reliant in getting myself around the city, using public transportation, and things like that. I have always wanted to be really self-sufficient at home, but I think the necessity of it here will definitely carry over in my life when I return to the States.

Being here has also really made me think on what I want to do career wise. In Georgetown, I am studying middle and secondary education in addition to being an English major. I also do so many things in relation to publishing and editing: editing for Georgetown Review (a nationally published literary magazine put out through the college), writing for the Georgetonian, editing Inscape (our student lit magazine), and other sort of personal writing ventures. I've felt constantly torn between deciding on teaching full time and trying to pursue something in publishing or some other English field. Being here has really established how much I am in love with my subject area, particularly modern lit, and so I'm really leaning more toward teaching for the fact that I love being truly involved with teaching and understanding literature. I can't get the teacher mechanism out of head; each and every time I look at an essay question or read a really good bit of criticism I can't help but think how I could formulate it into a really good lesson. At the same time, I absolutely love writing, editing, and publishing as well. I'm looking into maybe doing so freelance work in the spring, so I'm hoping that I can successfully keep both parts of my life intact. It is really refreshing, though, to remember and realize how much I do love my major and really enjoy what I am studying.