Letters from Oxford

Week 8; Day 5

2007-11-30T12:21:00.000Z

It is the last day of the term in Oxford. It is such an incredibly strange feeling to be here with absolutely no work to do. I spend so much time being caught up in academic work that I forget what it's like to have free time. I should be going back to Stanley Road to finish my packing, but there seems to be a lot of things going on at Regent's throughout the day that I didn't want to miss. I have been here since 9:30 this morning because I had to come in to do my end of term interview. I went and hung out with Caitlan for awhile and we went to the post office, then I went to the JCR because they were giving Christmas presents to the staff. It is now about 12:20 and lunch is at 1, then I think I might be going out for coffee with friends from here and last minute postcard shopping, then back to Stanley Road to finally pack some more and get ready for Advent service. I have to be at that service at 5:30, then there is Advent dinner at 7:00, and a bop after that which I'm probably going to skip because of packing. It is one of those days that seems very hectic, but I also have lots of free time. It is such an odd feeling because I have been so excited about going home, but I'm also realizing how many friends I really have made here and how attached I've become to Regent's. I had never actually realized how much of a routine I'd settled into and how I'd gotten used to seeing friends from here.

I should backtrack and explain about the last week or so in Oxford. Last Friday night I went to formal hall with Caitlan and Jeanne and hung out for awhile afterward. The JCR was completely decorated for Christmas and it was wonderful to take pictures with the tree and eat Christmas cookies. I love the holiday season and seeing all the familiar sights and sounds of Christmas has been awesome. The city is also now decorated for Christmas, so it's really nice to see all the trees and lights everywhere. I'm really excited about the Advent service tonight because I think it will get me even more in the mood for the Holidays.

Saturday was a wonderfully hectic and social day. I met Caitlan at her flat around noon and we made a very American lunch with the food we were trying to use up before the end of term. We had grilled cheese and American ramen noodles. Then we had to cook mashed potatoes for 40 people for the MCR Thanksgiving dinner. Caitlan bought a 5 pound bag of potatoes and it actually took a big portion of the afternoon to get them ready. On our first taste we thought they were going to be horrible, but we decided to great cooks and kept dumping in butter, milk, and salt with no regard for measuring and they actually turned out to be really good. Then we walked to Matt's (one of the MCR members) house, where the MCR Thanksgiving dinner was being held, so that we could make gravy from the turkey droppings. It was the first time I've made gravy from scratch, but we did a pretty good job. The dinner was fabulous and it was really nice opportunity to see and talk with everyone.

Saturday night my Stanley roommates had planned a dinner at Aziz, an Indian restaurant, to celebrate the end of the term and Katy, Becca, and I leaving Oxford for good. It ended up taking much longer than we expected, but it was really nice to go out with everyone. I didn't think I would like Indian food because I'm normally a pretty bland and very picky eater, but it was wonderful. Now I'm hooked on it and thinking I should go in Lexington when I get home.

Since I had been out on Friday night and all day Saturday, I should have spent Sunday working on my essays for 8th week, but since it was my last weekend in Oxford I decided I needed one last day trip. Caitlan and I went to Blenheim Palace, which is just north of Oxford. It's the palace where Churchill was born and where he proposed to his wife, so it has some cultural significance. It also has beautiful grounds. It has been so long since I had just walked around outside and thought about completely non-academic things like interesting trees. It was a very nice break. We actually made it back to Oxford way earlier than we anticipated, so I ended up having the evening to do work as well. It was one of the highlights of my time here.

After that, most of this week has been dominated by academic work. My last 20th century tutorial had been scheduled for Tuesday, but it was moved until Wednesday. Nonetheless, I tried to get the essay finished a bit early so I would have more time to work the other one due during 8th week. I was writing on the characterization of women in Truman Capote's novels and short stories, and it was such a nice break for the other things I had been working on during the term. Capote was writing through the 1980s, so he's practically contemporary, and his work isn't filled with lots of elements of modernism. It was also fun because my tutor let me borrow some DVDs that related to my tutorial, so I spent some nights this week watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and Infamous (a newer movie about Capote's life and work on In Cold Blood). I knew a little about Truman Capote going in, but I've decided he might be one of my personal favorites. My tutorial went really well. My marks have stayed fairly consistent throughout the term, but I'm happy with what I've done and my tutor seemed to be pleased with my progress. In the end, I think I have grown a lot in my reading abilities and how I interpret work in general. I was actually really sad for that tutorial to be over. Most of my feedback will come from reports written by my tutors. One report was written in 7th week but for some reason the computer is not letting me access it, so Regent's is supposed to email me when it becomes available.

My other essay for the week was originally due in on Friday, but my tutor had to push our meeting forward to Thursday afternoon. This caused some major stress early on, but we adjusted what I was reading and it actually worked out very well. Because it was on Thursday instead of Friday, I've had today to think more about packing and absorbing the last little bit of Oxford culture. I was writing on the assertion of power in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam and in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. I had read Webster for my last essay, so my reading load was a little lighter this time around. My tutor said that I had made tremendous progress in my use of quotations of the text and in interweaving them throughout my argument. I had time to edit this essay more thoroughly and I was really proud of it going into my tutorial; my tutor actually said that she really liked it. I received some verbal feedback from her about the tutorial in general and she seemed to be very pleased. I had much less background on this topic, so I felt like I didn't reach a high level of academic achievement with it, but she said that she was impressed with how hard I'd worked and the progress that I had made, so I am very pleased with the outcome. I did get to read her report and it turned out well, so I'm very happy with how my academic work has gone. I came here with academics in mind and that has always been at the forefront of my time in Oxford, so I'm really glad that it turned out like it did.

The next day and half are going to be very hectic, so I feel like I'm just weathering the calm before the storm at this point. I'm going to try to do as much packing as possible before Advent tonight then I'll finish up when it's over. I have arranged for a taxi to pick me up at 4:30 am tomorrow morning; I am catching a bus at 5:15 into London, then I have some time to make it through airport security and everything. My actual flight leaves at 11:10 am and I should be landing in Cincinnati by around 3:30. My family and Geoff should be waiting at the airport and I have been promised Cracker Barrel on the way home, so I'm very excited for that. This is the first time I'm flying on my own because Dr. Taul was with me the entire time on the way over, so I'm really nervous to see how I navigate the various forms of transportation between here and Cincinnati. But, I have made it through 9 full weeks completely outside everything I'm accustomed to and I've done it on my own. Learning to travel alone at the last bit of my time seems like an appropriate ending and I'm sure I'll be all the better for it in the end.

Week 7; Day 3

2007-11-21T17:17:00.000Z

I officially only have two essays left before I am finished with my courses here. On the same note of my last entry, the past few days have been incredibly hectic from an academic standpoint. I felt as though I just got extremely lucky this week and I'm not certain what I would have done if I didn't get so lucky. I got up early on Saturday morning to go into English Faculty and check out Nabokov criticism. The English Faculty is only open from 10-1 on Saturday, which is a bit frustrating. But I checked out my criticism, made it back to Stanley, and began working on Lolita. I made it through 80-100 pages before I had to start getting ready for the opera. Then I woke up on Sunday and spent the entire day reading. I finished Lolita (about 200 pages) then started working on Pale Fire. It's hard to judge Pale Fire in terms of pages because of its form, but I got through roughly 150 pages of it on Sunday. I wanted to stay up and finish it on Sunday night, but my body thought otherwise so I ended up going to sleep and vowed to get up early on Monday morning to finish it. I woke up at 6:30 and realized that reading was not happening as I literally couldn't keep my eyes open. So I took a "nap" (if it counts as one that early in the morning) and was finished with it by 12:30. I was at an absolute panic at this point; my tutor has never given me a strict deadline on when my essays are due. He generally expects then no later than early Tuesday morning and I always try to send them in on Monday night. So, I was thinking that the best case scenario would be that I read criticism all afternoon, outline, and write as much as humanly possible before going to sleep on Monday night. There was no way I felt comfortable asking for an extension and I felt like I had the capacity to write well on the topic if I just had the time. After a minor tearful breakdown in my room, I checked my email to find a message from my tutor asking to move my tutorial to Wednesday because his son was sick and he wasn't going to be in college. He said he thought it might give me some more time on a difficult essay. So I spent Monday going through criticism and all day yesterday writing. I ended up writing around 10 pages Nabokov's literary use of obsession in Lolita and Pale Fire.

I felt confident in my essay going into my tutorial this afternoon, but it was definitely an instance where my tutorial was more focused on things that I didn't write about than things that I included. I had looked at the structure of the novels, analyzed specific passages, and tried to show correlation between narrators. My tutor pushed me to focus on the nature and root of my narrator's obsessions and what that says about life in general (is it about art, experience, etc.) It was something I hadn't even considered in the structure of my essay, but it made the topic much clearer. So then I wondered if my essay wasn't up to par- and was beginning to feel pretty bad about it, seeing as how I'd had extra time to work. But my tutor said that he didn't look at this essay as a regression in the least and he pointed out that in the past two weeks I have been dealing with what is generally agreed upon to be very difficult authors (Faulkner and Nabokov) and that their difficulty was probably why I felt I hadn't fully mastered the topic. And despite my perfectionism and general insecurities, I did actually get a good mark on the essay.

I think perfectionism is something I'm really having to learn to work on here. In my daily academic life, from the time I was in high school (and probably earlier) it was never okay to me to not be the best. When I was younger I equated not doing well at something with absolutely hating it, which is probably where my distaste for things like math is rooted. I am also strictly competitive academically. I have been known to be upset with myself for getting 95s on exams when I felt like I was capable of getting 100s. In general, I am much more fiercely critical of myself than others are of my work. This is something I am trying my best to come to terms with during my time here. Granted, the worst essay I've done this semester was on Joyce and I still have a certain distaste for Joyce. But on the other hand, I don't like Faulkner any less because I didn't get a perfect score on my Faulkner essay. From the very onset of the program, the Georgetowners are continually told that the Oxford experience isn't about grades; it is about learning and progress. Although I am the prototypical grades obsessed person, I am also obsessed with progress. If I don't feel like I'm learning something well, I want to know why I'm not learning it well. And learning to understand those things and fix them has been a huge part of this experience.

Next week I'm writing on Truman Capote which makes me incredibly happy. Part of my tutorial assignment is to watch the film versions of Lolita and Breakfast at Tiffany's, so I'm also excited about getting to sit back and watch DVDs and console myself by thinking that it is actually doing academic work.

Saturday night's opera was wonderful! We saw Cinderella by the Welsh National Opera. I never would have pegged myself as the opera type before coming here, but I really enjoyed it. I am finding that I really love the general feel of theaters and it's making me very happy that I'm signed up for a theater class next semester.

I have abstractly thought about what it will be like when I return home the entire time that I've been here. Now it's becoming less of an abstract thing and more of a practical thing. I'm starting to wonder if things are actually going to fit in my suitcases, working out details of when I'm going to visit Georgetown when I come home, and planning out how I want to spend my break. I've also been working on things for next semester- applications for work study jobs and spring break mission trips, scheduling things, and other general things about life in Georgetown. I don't think I'll realize how much this has really changed me until I am actually back there doing the things I did before I came here.

Week 6; Day 5

2007-11-16T22:50:00.000Z

Tomorrow makes 2 weeks until I return to the States. I keep trying to assess what I've really learned in my time here- both about myself and about my subjects- but it seems too hard to comprehend right now. I think it will take some time being home before I can fully process how I've changed during my time here. I do keep noticing that things I originally thought were difficult or confusing about being away now seem very simplistic. I spent the first several weeks missing food from home, but now I've gotten into the rhythm of eating and living here. I used to hate the food in college and now I find myself cleaning my plate along with everyone else most of the time. I also went to a different Sainsbury's (a grocery store) today and realized that it was very similar to a US grocery store. I bought some Uncle Ben's rice and it reminded me of the first time I found salsa in Oxford and bought it because it reminded me of home. I also used to be very afraid of walking around at night alone in Oxford. This still makes me nervous for obvious reasons, but since it gets dark at 4:30 here now, I have learned to adjust. I think I have learned a lot about how to handle people and how to handle myself with people. I can tend toward the introverted and I still do here, but I think I've learned to balance it with making conversation. Before I came here I could never sit at a dinner with 3 forks, a spoon, and 2 knives, and feel the least bit comfortable. But I did it tonight without really thinking about it. There are certain elements of Oxford that become so habitual that you stop thinking of what your doing as being really extraordinary. I'm glad that I've learned to fall into the rhythm of Oxford life to some degree. I feel much less like an outsider now than I did when I came here, and I think that is for the best.

From an academic perspective I'm having a very hard time immediately assessing how I've changed since I've been here. As I was preparing my Renaissance essay this week I reread the first essay I wrote for the tutorial and I was stunned at how elementary it sounded. I'm not sure if my writing is normally that jumbled or if I were just nervous for that particular essay, but I think I've definitely seen progress in what I've done. Both my tutors have reaffirmed that I have made a lot of progress since I've been here, but I guess I'll see the real results when I return to Georgetown. I felt pretty confident about my abilities when I left Georgetown; I almost feel as though I regressed in my first essays here, and I'm not sure how my work now is going to match up to the work that I'm capable of. The thing is that my Georgetown work has such an opportunity to be polished; there are always preliminary meetings with professors to look at drafts before you get your final grade and so you have plenty of time to tweak out the little things. I was very proud of my Oxford writing sample, but I also went through 8 revisions before I turned it in. Writing here is different because it is on such a tight time scale. The finished essays I turn in for a grade here are what I would think of as a first draft at home in terms of editing. I always read through and correct as much as possible, but time doesn't allow for an essay to sit for awhile and me to come back and edit it again. So in that way, I guess I have made a lot of progress because my first drafts are now more like my finals drafts at Georgetown.

I definitely feel like I've become a more well-read individual since I've been here. I've learned to read a lot, to read in detail, and to read it quickly. I didn't really realize how far my reading abilities had come until I was working on a Faulkner essay for this week. Over the summer I read The Sound and the Fury on my own and had a terrible time getting through the first section. I read it twice then trying to make it make sense and still wasn't certain. I read it again while I was here and spent the first 2 pages of my 10 page Faulkner essay analyzing the text of the first section. My tutor said that I obviously had a handle of what I was reading and he felt like I was in complete control of my understanding and arguments about that book. It was such a breakthrough to me to know that I had accomplished it completely on my own and that I could now do something I didn't think I could only a few months ago.

With all that being said, this week was really trying for me academically. I think I performed well in everything that I did, but I found it to be a lot more stressful than in earlier weeks. There is a running joke in Oxford that everyone gets 5th week blues, but I think they hit me in full force this week. I feel like my work load has really picked up and I'm never entirely sure how to balance and handle everything I should. In 5th week, I had an essay due on Wednesday. So I started preparing for this week's essay then. I reread The Sound and the Fury last Wednesday and Thursday, reread As I Lay Dying last Friday, read 5 Faulkner short stories on Saturday (including "The Bear" from Go Down, Moses, which is 100 pages on its own), read all the Faulkner criticism I could on Sunday, then wrote a 3600 word/10 page essay on Monday. On Tuesday I had my Faulkner tutorial and began work on my Renaissance essay. I read A Woman Killed with Kindness on Tuesday night, Women Beware Women and The Duchess of Malfi on Wednesday. I read all the criticism and wrote 900 words of my essay last night, then wrote the remaining 1600 words this morning. I made it into college for lunch, then edited after lunch and had a 3:30 tutorial. After that I went to the grocery store, treated myself to some mindless facebooking, and went to formal hall. I have an essay on Nabakov due for Tuesday, but I normally email them in on Monday night. This means I need to reread Lolita and read Pale Fire for the first time this weekend and go through criticism so I can write all day on Monday. Then there is a light at the end of the tunnel because I won't have another essay due until Tuesday of 8th week. They don't call it Oxford University for nothing. But, all my tutorials are going well and I'm getting good marks on the essays I do get marks for. In my half-tutorial I don't get marks, but my tutor said I had made progress and she was pleased with what I had done. So at some point, hopefully, all this work will pay off.

Jesse Jackson was also in Oxford on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. I spent a lot of the day on Tuesday going to events. He did a question and answer session in the JCR and talked a lot on affirmative action, higher education, and the war. I was in the front row and at one point he stopped and was speaking in front of me so close that I sort of strained my neck to see him. It was interesting to be so close to an important American figure when I was in England. I went to a worship service at New Road and listened to him speak. I felt like the sermon was very political, but it was a good experience to see noted civil rights leader speak. It's a very odd experience to listen to a representative of your country speak about it to people who aren't from there, especially when you aren't there yourself.

I am taking a break from reading Lolita tomorrow to go to the opera with Jeanne, Caitlan, and my British friends Celia and Verity. I should also update pictures in the next few days with some from Jesse Jackson's visit, this week's formal hall, and the opera.

Week 5; Day 6

2007-11-10T10:08:00.000Z

It has been a really good and really busy week. I always feel a need to blog during the week, but then I feel like I don't want to have constant updates that no one can keep up with, and by the time I can sit down and make a long, consolidated post then I realize it's been a week with no blogging at all. Normally, this week functions a bit as my off week because I only have one essay due instead of two. This particular week seemed just as busy and hectic as the rest, which I'm learning to love!

Since I did have an essay on Friday the 2nd, I spent most of last weekend working on my Hemingway essay for 20th century. My tutorial had been moved forward until Wednesday at 4:30 and so my tutor told me my essay wasn't due on email until Tuesday night. Thankfully, this gave me an extra day to work. I was really proud of my Hemingway essay because I feel like it's a topic I've always struggled with. I struggle with wordiness in my own writing sometimes and Hemingway's style is completely about being concise. I've never felt like I've totally understood Hemingway's style and because of that I felt like I'd never appreciated it. So the question I picked for my essay was "'Hemingway expresses the most complex emotions in the simplest words.' Illustrate and discuss." It forced me to read Hemingway carefully. In the course of getting ready for my essay I reread The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and thirteen of Hemingway's short stories. Needless to say, when I went to write my 1500-2500 word essay it was a huge task to fit everything in.

As always, I went over my word limit. Except this time I actually wrote around 3500 words (in one day). When I met with Dr. Thompson, he said that he felt like the assigned word limit was too short and he was actually pleased that I had felt a need to go over. He also said that he didn't feel that any part of my essay was unnecessary, either. He told me that he could clearly see that I was doing the work and appreciating the topic. We talked about ways to use more concise examples to make my points clearer. Too often I feel like I have to allot each text a set space in my essay and Dr. Thompson is encouraging me to think more broadly in terms of points, and to blend my examples from different texts to make those points. I suppose this is a pretty elementary element to essay writing, but its something I need to work on. I did do well on my essay, though. He also told me that I have improved greatly in terms of the broadness and confidence of my essays from the time that I began. He said he's really pleased in the direction that I'm moving with my essays and that I have a great virtue in picking out my challenges and the pitfalls of my own work. He said he doesn't feel like he has to express to me what I need to change because I've normally thought on it myself. All of that was really encouraging and it made me really happy to start work on this week's essay.

Typically even weeks in the term are the more hectic ones for me. Normally I try to do at least one full day's work on my half tutorial essay the week before it's due, so that I know I have gotten a head start. Then I try to complete my 20th century essay by Sunday instead of Monday so that I have a full week to write for my half-tutorial. This completely did not work out this week. I didn't get the title for my half-tutorial essay until this past Thursday and by that point I felt like I needed to start working on my 20th century essay. Then since my tutorial wasn't until Wednesday, I felt like was late on starting my 20th century work on Thursday. So the timing of this week has left me feeling behind and a little overwhelmed.

I am writing on Faulkner for 20th Century this week. It's a topic that I have been looking forward to since I first saw my reading list this summer and after last week's tutorial I was really pumped to try and write the best essay that I've done so far. Currently, it is Saturday morning and since Thursday I have reread all of the The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. I need to read five Faulkner short stories (one of which is 100 pages). I have checked out the criticism books that I need, but I haven't started going through them yet. I have no plans for tonight, so I'm hoping to take as many notes as possible on the criticism tonight and hopefully have an outline before I go to bed. Then tomorrow I will catch up on and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully begin writing. In all honesty, the essay isn't due until late Monday night and my second essay isn't due until Friday, so I have time. It can be conquered.

On a more social note, I had a lot of fun this week! Although I felt like I got less work done, I did feel like I was a lot more social and involved. Georgetown will have a new International Programs Director as of January 1st and she was staying in the Georgetown flat in Oxford this week. I spent a lot of time talking with her. On Wednesday I showed her where the Stanley house was and we walked around town a bit, including a trip to the market at the bus station. I tried a Sharon/Persimmon fruit and they are lovely. On Thursday she took the Georgetowners out to dinner and it was wonderful to have a time to see everyone outside of college and just sit and talk. It was really reflective to tell someone about my experience here so far and it was also really nice to have another Georgetown face here.

The next few weeks are also looking like they'll be more social for me. This week, Jesse Jackson is making a visit to Regent's on Tuesday and Wednesday. He's speaking to members of the JCR on Tuesday and also speaking at New Road Baptist. Caitlan, Jeanne, and I are all going to that. Then he's giving a public lecture on Freedom and Education on Wednesday and I'm going to try to attend that as well. Next Saturday, Jeanne, Caitlan, Celia, and Verity (two of our English friends) are all going to see the Welsh National Opera perform Cinderella. We got cheap tickets at students rates and I'm really excited! We're also planning a little dinner get-together in Caitlan's flat before hand, so that will be good. The next weekend is Thanksgiving weekend and we're hopefully going to do a meal here at Stanley and Caitlan and I might attempt a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, then the next weekend I return to the States!

An overwhelming feeling of homesickness always seems to come over me on early Saturday mornings. I guess it's because even when I'm at home, I normally see Geoff and my parents mainly on the weekends. At home, even when I do work on the weekends, it has a sense of total separation from the rest of the week. Here, since my days are less structured, the weekend feels like just two more days. I always picture myself at home eating a big breakfast with my family or at school waiting for Geoff to come get me so we could go and eat or go to Half-Priced Books or something. I have felt this way on the weekends since I arrived here, but I think it's almost getting worse because home seems so near and yet so far away. I only have 20 days left in Oxford, and I can't exactly decide how I feel about that. The somewhat interesting thing is that my Christmas break will be almost 6 weeks long. My break is only 2 weeks shorter than the term that I have spent here. That becomes a definite comfort when I'm feeling homesick. I am in Oxford; I'm not at home and I just need to teach myself to deal with that.

Week 4; Day 7

2007-11-05T00:27:00.000Z

It has been an amazingly social and fun weekend for me. I think this may have been the best weekend so far.

Friday, November 2:

Friday during the day was all about my Renaissance tutorial. This tutorial in general had been such a source of stress for me in the past few weeks. My tutor doesn't give me formal marks on the essays which is common in some Oxford tutorials, but also leads me to be overly paranoid as to how I'm progressing. I'd felt like I had been working really hard on my Elizabeth I essay and I was really worried that I had the potential to blow all the work I'd done by not actually performing well in my tutorial. I had read so many things and taken so many notes that it seemed nearly impossible to narrow it down into a 2500 word essay. I actually saw my tutor in the hallway in college on Thursday and mentioned that I was worried about the word limit on my essay. She suggested narrowing my essay down to a few things and making a list of other things I'd read to talk about in the tutorial. This made me feel much more comfortable. This particular tutorial is really structured around exactly what I want to learn, so I started to view it as a way for me to take charge of what I was doing. At the end of the night on Thursday, I was 75 words over my word limit and still had to write a conclusion. The essay was due at 3:30 on Friday. I woke up early and worked on it at home and managed to narrow things down. In the end, I was 90 words over but I fit my conclusion in. Since my tutor has suggested making a list for the tutorial, I went ahead and wrote down all the things I wanted to discuss with her, including how I was feeling about my readings, what I felt were the strengths and weaknesses of my essay, and general things I wanted to work on.

When I arrived at my tutorial I explained to her what I had done and she seemed really pleased. Instead of reading my essay aloud as I normally would, she just took it and said she could read and comment on it outside the tutorial. Instead, we went through everything I had prepared on my list. It was incredibly helpful and it made me feel good to know that my work was apparent while still getting all my questions answered. She also gave back my last essay with several comments. It turns out that there is a very high level of feedback in this tutorial (and probably in Oxford in general). When I write I have a bad tendency to be too wordy or to construct sentences in poor ways overall. I also have a tendency to repeat ideas instead of linking them properly. I had realized both these things and so had my tutor. She went through my essay and marked specific examples which were really helpful. During my tutorial, she also pointed out ways for me to construct my argument more effectively. It was one of the best tutorials I've had so far and I think it will really help me. I feel a lot more at ease about this tutorial in general now as well; we talked about my progress and she said it was obvious that I was working hard at being involved in my work and that I should just keep up what I'd been doing. That's definitely a stress-reliever.

As soon as I left my tutorial, I met Jeanne and we headed for the bus station. We actually made it in time for the 4:35 bus and soon we were in the top front seat of a double decker bus heading for London. It took a lot longer to get into the city with Friday night traffic, but we made it by around a quarter til seven. We took some pictures outside the big Wicked signs and made our way to our seats. They were pretty good seats considering that we bought them the night before; we were in the upper section but not super far up and we were dead center. I had never been to a Broadway type show before and it was fantastic. I found it to be incredibly funny and intelligent and I am completely in love with the soundtrack. It was really wonderful show. When it was over, we went back into Victoria train station and I had my first American fast food in Europe. McDonalds chicken nuggets and fries never tasted so good. We caught the bus back into Oxford and I was back at Stanley by about 12:30 am. It had been a long day, but a really rewarding one too!

Saturday, November 3:

I ended up not making it to bed until about 2:30 on Saturday morning, so I told myself I would sleep in. I woke up on my own at 8:30 and forced myself to go back to sleep for another hour. I finally got up, had breakfast, and hung out around the house for a little while. I made it into Regent's library by around 1, though, and got a solid three hours of reading done. I took a bus back to Stanley in time for our 5 pm organizational meeting for our BBQ.

Things started to go downhill pretty quickly. We had bought enough food for 50-60 people, but then we realized there was the potential for about 70 to show up. We had also planned to have a bonfire in our back yard, but the people who were supposed to supply the wood let us know they didn't have any around 4:50 when we were expecting people by 7. Several frantic telephone calls, two trips to the co-op, and one trip to Tesco later we had enough food. But we still had no light or heat in the backyard and no way of cramming 70 people into our three downstairs common rooms. Jeanne and Ula finally decided to go and knock on our neighbors doors and ask if they had anything they wanted rid of that could be burned. It actually produced pretty good results! In the end only around 40 people ended up coming but we had the bonfire and now we have plenty of leftover food. It was really nice to have everyone in our house and it was a good time to get to see and talk with everyone from Regent's.

Sunday, November 4:

This morning I went to Oxford Community Church because one of my housemates was being baptized there. The service lasted for two hours, but it was a really excellent worship service! Several people from Regent's turned out to support Mike and it was really nice to have them all worshipping in the same place together. It was a very contemporary service that reminded me much more of something I would participate in back in the States. The message was excellent and really easy to follow. It was definitely a blessing in itself. It has been a total realization for me that it is my responsibility as a Christian to put myself in worship situations to help me grow. My experience going to different churches in Oxford has really made me want to find a church in Georgetown, something I still haven't done in 3 years of college life. I love my church at home, but I really do need somewhere I feel comfortable going when I'm at school. It's really been on my mind a lot while I've been worshipping here and it's something I want to get serious about when I return to the States.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I feel like I'm not as ahead of my work for this week as I would like to be. I finished a novel and read 12 short stories today, but I still have a lot of work over the next two days if I'm going to have my essay up to par by Tuesday night. I also did two loads of laundry today and managed to fall down a flight of stairs in the process. I'm completely okay and I didn't even drop the load of laundry I was carrying. I just felt really silly and my bottom is probably going to be pretty sore for the next few days. There are no bruises yet, though, so I'm thankful that it wasn't worse.

Week 4; Day 3

2007-11-01T20:48:00.000Z

I am currently updating via the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian library. The only problem is that I can’t seem to get my internet to work either with my Ethernet cord or the wireless connection, so I am actually updating into MS Word to be sent into Blogger later today. Working in the Bodleian is one of the daily highlights to my time in Oxford. I really enjoy working in light and bright environments and the Upper Reading Room is filled with windows and tons of lights. I feel very relaxed here and I think that helps my work to come out better. The workstations are also really big and decently private, so I feel like I get a lot accomplished.

Speaking of accomplishing things, I feel as though I should be writing an essay rather than updating my blog. The essay is due during my 3:30 tutorial tomorrow and I already have it entirely outlined. I have all afternoon and tonight to work on it because I have no other obligations. It is 11:45 now and I have been working here since 9:30, so I convinced myself that I was entitled to a break. My essay is for my Renaissance half-tutorial. So far, I have found this tutorial to be one of the most challenging parts of my time in Oxford. I only have four essays and four tutorials and I feel like I really have to prove myself through those four. My last one went well in that we had good discussion and I feel as though I learned a lot about the topic, but I still feel really uncertain as to how my essay measured up. That leaves me feeling really nervous going into this tutorial; the perfectionist part of me in the back of my mind is constantly wondering if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, if I’m handing this well, and how I’m ultimately going to be assessed for it. I think the perfectionism is more the cause of my frustration than the essay itself. I am actually writing on representations of Elizabeth I in terms of her literature and the literature of others. I’m using her speeches, poems, and the famous Ralegh poem The Ocean to Cynthia. I will be really happy to be through with this tutorial tomorrow, though, so hopefully I’ll have a better since of how I’m progressing in the scheme of things.

Yesterday marked the exact half-way point of my time in Oxford. Before I came here I was told over and over that once I felt settled it would be time to go home. I had so many big plans to travel and see the country and it’s beginning to dawn on me in the final half that I’m not going to get to accomplish quite as much as I’d hoped. Every other weekend is basically booked entirely through with academic work because of my half tutorial. On those weeks I have an essay due on Tuesday, Friday, and then the following Tuesday so I feel like I have to work all weekend if the last essay is going to be worth anything. That only leaves the other weekends open for day trips and travel. Jeanne and I had planned a trip to Stonehenge and Bath, but I ended up cancelling because I had taken a pretty bad cold and didn’t want it to get any worse. I still think we’re going to go to Stratford in the next few weeks though; I refuse to spend 2 months in England and never go to Shakespeare’s birth site! We are also planning a trip into London this weekend to see a Broadway show. I have never been before so I am very excited! I’m not certain what we’re going to be watching yet, but I’m happy just to have the experience. It will also be a nice break from my academic weekend. I had planned to not work on Friday night because of Formal Hall- we’re going to London instead, so it doesn’t cut out of any valuable work time. I have 4 weekends left in Oxford. This weekend is Broadway and the Stanley BBQ, the next weekend is open, the next weekend will be filled with academic work, and the final one is open.

The Stanley Road BBQ is this Saturday night. In case I haven’t explained this before, Stanley is actually a form of campus housing. The house is owned by Regent’s Park and they place 10-12 students there every year. Typically American students (visiting Georgetowners especially) and 2nd year students live there. Because it is the same as a residence hall in terms of affiliation with the college, the college gives us a budget to throw a party there once a term. We have a pretty big back yard and we’re going to have a bonfire, so it should be a lot of fun. It will also be nice to not have to go into college for an event because they’re coming to us!
I feel like I haven’t taken enough pictures since I have been here. I think when I’m through with my essay for Tuesday I am going to go back around the city and take more detailed pictures of places I frequently visit and love. This week it has really been occurring to me how fast this experience is going by- I feel like I want to work even harder than I already have in my tutorials because I know these are the last ones. This is the time when my progress really counts and I really want this experience to ultimately mean something on an academic and a personal level.

Update: I am now actually in my room where I can post what I wrote earlier today. It is now 8:46 pm and I have written about 2000 words of my essay. I only have 500 words left and there is one last thing I want to convey. I actually ran into my tutor in the hallway at Regent's and discussed my thoughts a bit with her. She suggested cutting out extra things and making a list of things I wanted to talk about in tutorial with her. She was very understanding and told me she was happy that I was enjoying my reading so I feel slightly more comfortable about it than I did earlier today. I am planning on finishing all the writing up tonight and then taking some time to seriously edit during the day tomorrow. I print off my essay and read it aloud to her, so I don't have to have it done until our 3:30 meeting. I hate cutting things close though, so I would really like to be entirely finished by lunchtime. To be really comfortable, I would like to be finished tonight but I think it might be better for both my sanity and my essay to take a long break from it after I finish writing and look on it with fresh eyes in the morning. We'll see how it goes.

I find it amusing how much I look forward to going to the grocery store here. I'm trying as hard as possible to conserve money whenever I can because the exchange rate is so bad, but I did spend 12 pounds at the store tonight. It is enough food to last me for quite awhile though, so I sort of felt justified. I'm not sure that it's totally balanced though: 2 cans of Pringles (they were buy one, get one free), 2 cans of Heinz ravioli (no Chef Boyardee here), a can of cream of chicken soup to cook my rice in, canned pineapple, canned strawberries, raisins, milk, orange juice, bread, and a box of cereal. Not too bad for the basics.

And, finally, Jeanne booked our tickets earlier today to see Wicked tomorrow night! I have heard that Wicked is amazing, but we thought it was going to be much too expensive for us to get tickets. They dropped in price today, though, because it's so close to time for the show and so we were able to get them. I'm very excited! It feels incredibly odd to me that I have never been to a big city in the States at all and yet I'm going to Broadway in London. It's one of those fun and bizarre things about being here.

Week 3; Day 4

2007-10-25T21:04:00.000+01:00

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.

Week 3; Day 3

2007-10-25T00:09:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I have not forgotten the blog and I'm planning a quite long, comprehensive update in the next day or two.

I made my first visit to the Bodleian library today and it was beautiful and amazing.

I have a tutorial tomorrow and then one again next Tuesday and next Friday.

I am still alive and doing well :)

Week 2; Day 3

2007-10-16T13:51:00.000+01:00

It is already Wednesday of Week 2 of classes. This means I have now been in Oxford for 2.5 of my 9 weeks here. By the end of this week, I will have completed 3 of my 12 tutorials- 1/4 of the way finished with my Oxford studies! It's amazing how quickly large chunks of time slip by here; I have been in the library since 9:15 this morning and it feels like no time has gone by at all.

I had my second 20th Century Fiction tutorial yesterday. In many ways, I was even more nervous going into this tutorial than going into my first one. My assignment was to work on three books from James Joyce's Ulysses. As usual, I had a list of questions and I chose to explore a quote how the alienation and randomness of Ulysses ultimately presents a greater sense of diversity and communion. I was proud of myself in that I felt like I had organized my work week well. I began writing on Sunday; this left me a full day to tie up any loose ends and edit. Yet despite my jump start on the work, I still didn't feel like I was doing well. I felt as though I continually rewrote my opening paragraph and kept editing the same sentences again and again. I actually emailed my piece in early, around 10 pm on Monday night, just so I couldn't worry myself with editing it any more.

The tutorial itself actually went really well. My tutor agreed with me that there were weaknesses in my essay, but he said he thought it was a result of me not having a lot of experience with Ulysses. Basically, interpreting the novel takes a lot of time and a lot of stamina. I didn't fully achieve this in the week I had to look over it. He said that it wasn't even really a question of my abilities as a reader or a writer, just a normal experience for those trying to make it through the text for the first time. He also said that he didn't see any underlying problems with my writing or the structure of my essays. This week was merely a problem of my encounter with the text, not my work-ethic or abilities as a student. I'm finding again and again that I really enjoy the criticism I receive in my tutorials. I always feel as though I'm being reassured much more than I am being criticized. Even though I have dreaded working on Ulysses since I picked it up over the summer, Dr. Thompson made my experience with it a relative positive one. Even though I didn't do quite as well on this essay as my first one, I didn't leave my tutorial feeling like I was any less of a student (the way I normally feel when I don't do as well as I'd hoped.) And, as Dr. Thompson pointed out, there are bound to be weeks that I really enjoy what I'm working on and work through it easily and there are bound to be weeks where I struggle. Struggling with anything is a hard dose of medicine for me to take, but I'm finding that Oxford is doing loads for my perfectionism.

Currently I'm in the middle of a very hectic week academically. I have an essay due on Friday for my Renaissance tutorial and then another essay on Woolf for my 20th Century tutorial next Wednesday. Alternating weeks of my time here (weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8) are going to be like this. To a certain degree, I actually enjoy it because I feel like I have more of a purpose in my work. I finally managed to get over my hump of sleeping in and got up at 7:30 this morning. I made it in to Regent's Library early, so I'm giving myself an Internet break before lunch. After lunch, I plan on reading and outlining all afternoon.

The question I'm working on right now is a quote: "The male poet's task is self-construction. This is achieved through the shaping of the feminine object, or 'other.'' I'm supposed to write to the prompt using love poetry from John Donne, Sidney, Spenser, and Lady Mary Wroth. It's a really interesting question and the poetry is a nice break from the novels I have been working on.

One thing I haven't written a lot about yet is the lecture system here. Since Oxford is styled around the tutorial, students generally don't attend set classes. Some students in different subject areas have specific lecture series that they are required to attend. Lectures are given every day and last for about 50 minutes (very much like the MWF class at an American school). They are arranged by topic; for example, I am going to a Faulkner lecture series once a week for 5 weeks. Even if you aren't assigned lectures, you can attend any of them in the university. It's a really great opportunity to focus in on what you want to learn in a really non-pressured setting. I have been attending some lectures that I think will help me with my courses; I've been to 2 lectures on Sidney for my Renaissance tutorial. I also went to a lectures on Conrad, Woolf, and Faulkner for 20th Century (and just for fun). I'm also going to a 2-part lecture series on Toni Morrison because I think it sounds fun. I've especially found it really interesting to go to lectures on American authors here. In all cases, they have spent nearly an entire lecture focusing on American context. It was really enlightening for me to listen to an English professor discuss contexts of the American South in Faulkner's novels- it was something I had never thought about from an outside perspective like that. I am planning on finishing the Woolf, Faulkner, and Morrison series both for fun and because I think they might help me teaching in the future.

Week 1; Day 6

2007-10-14T00:36:00.000+01:00

Yet again I am updating very late at night. I still haven't fully gotten into a sleep routine that's beneficial to my sanity. The past few nights I've been keeping very late hours and getting up around 9. Since today was Saturday, I actually did worse than that and slept in until 11. In Georgetown, I try to get up decently early (in the 7:30-8:30 range) so I need to learn to make that shift here. It is one of the difficulties of being 5 hours ahead of the States; if I speak to people from home at night I end up staying up way too late. But as long as I'm meeting all my responsibilities, it's one of those things that can be worked out as I go along.

I have made it through my first official Oxford work week! I am beginning to get into a nice routine of working. I am nearly a full day ahead of where I was last week on my essay, which is helpful since I have two due next week. I am writing an essay on Joyce's Ulysses for Tuesday and an essay on male self-construction through a feminine object for my Renaissance tutorial on Friday. As of right now, I have mainly been focusing on the Joyce essay. In very loose terms, I am exploring how Joyce presents men as a sort of diverse community. Luckily, I am not responsible for the entire novel. I am only covering three books: Hades, Cyclops, and Nausicaa. I have looked through about 90% of the criticism I wanted to look at and I'm planning to finish it up, outline, and beginning writing tomorrow. I'm finding weekends to be a really valuable work time here.

I did my first laundry at Stanley last night and it really caused me to realize how much more energy conscious the British are in comparison to Americans. Our house has two washing machines but no dryer, so my room has looked like a laundry mat with random towels, washcloths, and other clothes laying around everywhere to dry. I'm finding that here I'm much more concerned with making sure I turn off lights, conserve water, and wash things on low-energy cycles. This is a culture that does not look fondly on wastefulness. Even in dining hall I notice how everyone always clears their plates completely. As I've never been a member of the "clean plate club" by nature, I'm having to train myself to dip out very small amounts until I'm sure I like what I'm eating.

Speaking of things I have never done before, I attended my first women's football (soccer) practice on Wednesday night! I took gymnastics for a couple of years in elementary school, but beyond that women's football is my first venture into the world of athletics. From the get-go this didn't seem to start off so well; the coach told us to sprint across the gym in warm ups and of course I was trying to pull my hair up as I ran which resulted in me (quite literally) falling flat on my face. First 10 minutes of practice and Amanda can't even run in a straight line. Nonetheless, the practice overall was a ton of fun and the pressure to actually do well is very low. I keep telling myself that this is about doing things I haven't done before, so I guess being a part of an athletic team will just have to be one of those things.

Week 1; Day 2

2007-10-09T23:29:00.000+01:00

I find it entirely hard to believe that I have now been in Oxford for over a week. I feel as though I am beginning to understand the city. Last week, I would look at streets and landmarks and have no natural instinct as to how they fit together. Now that I've had the chance to look around a bit I am beginning to understand how everything fits together. It is a nice realization that Oxford really isn't all that big. I can now get to the necessary places (Regent's, the English Faculty Library, the food co-op, and the bus station) alone. When I get the chance, possibly tomorrow, I am planning to go out exploring some more. I'm really interested in the different little shops around the city. Oxford is also home to a covered market that I've only briefly been inside. The interesting thing to me about shopping here is the realization that there is no Super Wal-Mart. If I want different things, I actually have to go to different stores. As simple as it sounds, it feels difficult when you're actually trying to practice it. On a funny note, I stopped in the 7-11 near the Stanley Road house yesterday evening on my way in because I had forgotten to buy sugar for my tea at the co-op. I'm pretty certain that the men there were laughing at me because I couldn't find the sugar (it was next to the alcohol... who would have thought?) They were very nice and very helpful, though. It was odd to feel like I was the foreign one.

My Sunday day trip to London was both beautiful and wonderful! Dr. Taul, Jeanne, Katy, and I spent a few hours in the city seeing the major sites. I honestly still feel as though I haven't absorbed all the things that I saw. It is wonderful to see them and take pictures of them, but it's hard for me to put my experiences into their higher context until I really sit down and think about them. The most interesting thing I'm finding is that when I go through different reading for my tutorials I find references to things that I have now seen. Today in a class for my Renaissance tutorial we were having a discussion as to how in the 15th century the only bridge of the Thames was the London Bridge. It took me a minute to process that I was actually physically in London two days ago looking at the bridges that had been built there since. The other highlight of my London trip was my deeper endeavor into the world of public transportation. Being a small-town girl, I have never had the opportunity or the need to use the bus, a taxi, or the subway. On Sunday I had my first subway experience. It was actually very nice and extremely useful. I'm finding it interesting how liberating it is for me to begin to learn how to get around and navigate myself in larger geographic areas. This experience has definitely made me learn self-sufficiency on an entirely new level.

Tonight Dr. Taul took me to The Court Sermon at Christ Church Cathedral. I hadn't yet been in the cathedral until tonight; it is extremely old and even more beautiful. I found the service to be very formal and much more ritualistic than I'm used to. Yet there seemed to be such a confidence and beauty in the ritualism of the service. On a personal level, as corny as it sounds, experiencing a worship service in that way made me think of God as an infinitely bigger being. Of course I have always consciously known that people around the world were reading, interpreting, and discussing the Bible and religion, but actually having the experience of watching this very old traditional church service made it come alive for me. One of the readings was on the story of Jonah- something I've known and repeated since I was old enough to talk. I found such an odd and interesting since of community in brotherhood sitting in the cathedral tonight and thinking on how people everywhere truly were listening and interpreting the same God I know on a daily basis. It was also interesting for me to think that later tonight Georgetown students will be worshipping at Common Ground in a much different way for the same God. It's hard to express the since of community this brings to me in a still somewhat unfamiliar setting.

In perhaps the most exciting news, I had my first tutorial today. I felt as though this essay were in many ways uncharacteristic of me. I was still outlining well into the day yesterday and I didn't feel as though my outline were coherent enough to truly produce an organized argument. I made it back to Stanley by around 5 last night and devoted the time until around 1 am on writing, deleting, rewriting, rereading, and feeling hopelessly confused as to if I were presenting my argument in a clear fashion. After a very large cup of tea, three large bottles of water, a PB&J, a grumpy phone call to my boyfriend, and my mother's call and insistence that I get to bed I finally gave up for the night around 1:30 am. I woke up at 7 this morning and quite literally flipped on my bedside lamp and pulled my laptop and my lamp into bed with me to write my final two paragraphs, complete my work cited page, and proofread for grammatical mistakes as carefully as possible. I had emailed it to Dr. Thompson by about 8:45. I spent the entire morning running over my essay in my mind. Of course, this was a weird for of torture to me, the girl who has been known to outline steps of an essay in dry erase markers, color coordinate ink color in editing, physically cut apart paragraphs to reorder them always at least a couple hours before the deadline. I normally like to go into major events with a sense of confidence about my work- something I didn't feel like I had in this situation. So I figured I would do the next best thing and began outlining potential weaknesses and ways to improve my essay in the future on the thought that even if it were a mess, then at least I could discuss the error of my ways in great detail. When I finally walked into Dr. Thompson's office he was very kind and asked me how I'd found the process. I launched into a long discussion on how I didn't feel in command of my sources, how I wished I'd given myself the opportunity to form up my argument more completely, and how I wanted to learn how to correct my mistakes in the future. He explained that hardly any of the problems I thought I had actually applied to my essay. In fact, he actually complimented my work. His criticism was very gentle and extremely constructive and I felt as though I left both the discussion of my paper and the discussion of the book in general with a better knowledge of what was actually going on. I'm very excited to be finished with my first tutorial and I'm actually looking forward to starting work tomorrow on the two essays that are due next week.

Week 0; Day 7

2007-10-07T00:14:00.000+01:00

It is currently 12:11 am in Oxford. I should be sleeping because I have to get up at 6:45 am in the morning to go into London with Dr. Taul. However, I had two mugs of Diet Coke and two mugs of tea earlier. I am incredibly sensitive to caffeine so I feel totally wired. Luckily, I just realized that my ethernet cable does in fact stretch across the room so that I can still sit in bed and type my blog. Some habits never change.

The last few days have continued to be a series of ups and downs. My emotional roller coaster hit its peak Thursday night, but I have felt better since then. Monday - Thursday were filled with events for Freshers Week. I love these events because they help me to know everyone around Regents, but I miss the flexibility of planning my own schedule to get my work done. Most of these events were over on Friday, though, so I got a taste of planning my own days. This will especially be true next week, which is my first true week as a normal Oxford student.

Oxford is based on the tutorial system which means the work is totally independent. Normally, students meet their tutors once a week to discuss the essay they have been working on. Students typically have one week to complete their essay and must be able to discuss and defend it with their tutors in their weekly meeting. It is an excellent system in part because the entire focus is very practical. In a sense, all you are truly learning is how to construct an argument: something that will inevitably be used in work (and possibly personal) situations in the future. It is also an excellent lesson in time management. You have an entire week to look at your sources and construct your argument. This seems like a lot of time, but you have to learn how to be independent and how to handle your work habits in a way that you can produce quality work without having the benefit of particular deadlines along the way. If your essay is due the next day and you haven't looked at any of your sources, you are basically out of luck. No one is going to stop you to ensure that you will do the work; you are expected to know how to do that on your own. Another huge part is actually defending the argument you make. Tutors will often challenge you even if they think that you are correct just to see that you can stand by and properly defend your answer. You have to learn how to take others views into account without belittling or stepping aside from your own. I think that part is going to be a challenge for me.

I am in Oxford for a single term and while I'm here I am taking a tutorial and a half. From what I understand, this is a decently full work load for someone to undertake. Each Oxford course transfers into Georgetown as 8 credit hours, so I will have 12 hours from Oxford and a 3 hour independent study from before I left Georgetown. I am doing a full tutorial in 20th Century Fiction, which means that I will meet with my tutor 8 times. I am doing a half tutorial on the Renaissance time period where I will meet with my tutor 4 times. They are being balanced pretty equally; I will have two essays due in weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8 and one essay due on the other weeks. I think this should help to balance out the work load a bit.

My first essay is due this coming Tuesday. It is for my 20th Century tutorial and I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed. As I mentioned, I met with my tutor on Wednesday and received my official assignment. In this particular tutorial, I am covering a different author each week. Normally, in a period of a week I will look over the novel(s) I am covering and pick a topic from a list provided by my tutor. Then I look at secondary resources from a reading list provided by my tutor and beyond my reading list as it applies to my particular topic. I then write a 1500-2500 word essay on that topic. This week, I am writing on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I am very nervous not only because it is my first essay, but also because I feel that I have less time to complete it. Dr. Thompson (my tutor) assured me that he realizes that it's my first essay and a short week. It is also only over one very short (74 page) novel. I just feel that the flow of my week has been a bit off kilter. I didn't finish my meeting with Dr. Thompson until 5:30 on Wednesday. That night, I looked up the books I needed in the Oxford library system and wrote them all down. Oxford has an incredible amount of libraries, so it is always necessary to check and see which books are the closest to your college. Nearly all the books I needed were from the English Faculty Library which closed at 5:30 pm this week. So I went over and got them on Thursday. Despite the fact that I had read the novel over the summer, I reread it on Friday just to brush up my memory. I started taking notes on my own ideas and the primary text today and then began looking over criticism. The plan is to finish the criticism and make a complete outline of my arguments tomorrow when I get home from London and then to write and edit my essay on Monday to be finished in time for Tuesday's deadline. I know that I have it sketched out in my head, but I still feel that I am not managing my time well. I am just going to keep reassuring myself that this is my first essay and that I will get better with time delegation as I go along.

I am also telling myself that I should not feel guilty about my trip to London tomorrow. While I flew into Gatwick airport, I saw absolutely none of the city itself. I have never been to a city larger than Knoxville/Cincinnati so this is going to be an incredibly interesting experience for me. I should have more pictures and stories from London tomorrow! As for now, I think it must be bedtime.

Week 0; Day 4

2007-10-04T17:21:00.000+01:00

It is my fourth day in Oxford and I have finally had time to write about the past few days. Today has been gorgeous; clear, sunny weather doesn’t happen very often in Oxford but the weather is beautiful right now. It is a perfect temperature as well. I had been wearing long sleeves and jackets to stay warm because Oxford weather is a sharp contrast to the 80s and 90s in the States, but today I’m happily back in my short sleeves.

I feel as though my time here has been an extreme mix of emotional ups and downs. Some moments I will be absolutely elated at the beauty of the city and the kindness of everyone at Regents, especially my housemates. Other times I feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and misunderstood. Up until today, I think most of the variation in my emotions was due to my lack of sleep. Saturday night I only slept a few hours because of nerves; Sunday night I was flying and slept for a few hours; Monday night I was locked out of my room and slept in the “collapsed bed” in the Stanley house, and Tuesday night I stayed up much too late on Skype with Geoff and went to bed at 1 am only to get up at 6:30. But last night I slept wonderfully and did not have to get up early this morning, so I finally feel as though I’m over the emotional roller coaster that always goes along with my lack of sleep. I’m very quickly going to have to learn to manage myself so that I’m sleeping enough and not overwhelmingly grumpy to everyone I know.

As for the past few days, I think I will break it down day-by-day:

Sunday, 30 September 2007:
This was the day that I flew out of the states for the first time. I had never been in an airport, much less on a plane. My family and I met Geoff in Georgetown on the way up. I dropped off the last minute books I had checked out from the GC library and went to Dairy Queen for my last true bit of American food. It was fantastic. My entourage and I met Dr. Taul (GC’s Director of International Programs) at the airport and he guided me through what I should do to check in my luggage. I was allowed two 50 pound bags in checked luggage, a 40 pound carry-on bag, and a personal bag. All four of mine were stuffed to the absolute maximum capacity. My mom, dad, sister, and Geoff walked with Dr. Taul and I as far as security and then I had to tell them goodbye.

My experience with security was much different than I had anticipated. I had mistakenly thought I would have to take out anything metal for them to look at, so I put all such things in my messenger bag and carried my laptop on my back. In the end, I only had to take out my computer and my ziplock bag of liquids and they just slid the rest in the X-ray machine. It was funny walking through the airport on the little moving things; I had so many bags piled on me and I was trying to move as fast as possible.

The plane ride itself was very uneventful. The plane was quite empty and there was no person sitting beside me or on either side of Dr. Taul, who was in the next aisle over. My favorite part of flying was watching the screen showing where we were based on GPS and showing our ground speed. It was very odd thinking how I was flying away from everything I knew and loved at a speed between 500 and 600 MPH. When the first movie began we were barely out of KY and by the time it ended we were near the tip of Canada. I couldn’t see out the window very well because of the darkness. I put on my little eye mask and tried to sleep but as soon as I thought I might be falling asleep something would happen (normally the fasten seatbelt sign dinging) and I would decide to wake up and look around for awhile. This probably happened two or three times. The last time I woke up I realized that Dr. Taul was awake and when I peeked out my window shade the sun was coming up. At first I thought it was coming up over the ocean. While it technically was, the shadows I was seeing below were actually clouds. A bit later the GPS screen told me that we were getting ready to cross Ireland and I wanted to see but the cloud coverage was much too quick.

Monday, 1 October 2007
My first day in England began on the flight. We landed at Gatwick airport a little after 9. I was quite concerned about making it through immigration and I kept checking to make sure that my passport and letter from Regents explaining that I was a student were definitely still inside. Of course, they were and the man at immigration was very nice. He asked what I was studying and I explained English literature. He just smiled and said, “Well I guess this is the place for that.” After we cleared immigration we went to find Jeanne (the other Georgetowner visiting Oxford for the first time) who was flying in from Philadelphia. I kept hearing such a mix of languages. There was a man talking to his son in German, a couple behind me speaking in French, and various accents of English everywhere. My favorite part of the airport experience was when we were watching for Jeanne to come out of her gate and meet us. There were other international arrivals coming in that gate and it was so fun to watch them run and meet the people who were waiting on them. Once our group was together we took turns exchanging currency into pounds. The exchange rate right now is terrible! My $100 quickly turned into £39. Then I tracked down a phone to call my parents and Geoff even though it was between 4 and 5 am in the States.

After we were done with that business, we took a bus from London to Oxford. It was raining by this point, so it was nice to get inside the bus for awhile and sit down. By this point, the three of us were absolutely exhausted and napped a little bit on the bus. It took me a second or two to remember that the steering wheels in British cars are on the opposite side and when I was awake I kept trying to watch for different models of cars. My favorites are the teeny tiny Smart Cars because they seem so practical. I got my first glimpses of Oxford from the bus. I remember thinking how small and narrow the streets seemed and wondering how I was going to find my way around. There were pedestrians everywhere.

We soon became pedestrians ourselves dragging our bags through the streets. It must have been funny to watch because between the three of us we had 5 rolling suitcases and 4 other bags. We finally made it Regents and almost immediately ran into Ali (the JCR president at Regents who came to visit GC last year). She took us up to the JCR at Regents and made us tea. I took my tea with milk for the first time ever and much to my surprise it was wonderful! We met some of our housemates and other Regents students and they took us around the corner to Green’s coffee and sandwich shop for lunch. I ordered a roasted chicken and pesto Panini. We carried our food back to Regents but didn’t get to eat because Bob (Regents handyman) was going to drive us and our bags to the Stanley house.

My room at Stanley is wonderful, although it was the cause of my first “incident” in Oxford. Instead of taking a nap after we arrived, I decided to unpack my stuff so I would feel at home as soon as possible. After I had unpacked nearly everything, I went to the bathroom to take a shower. Remembering that Bob had said the lock on my door was acting strange, I purposefully took my keys to the shower with me. Jeanne was still inside my room using the straigtener, so I told her to just let the door close behind her on the way out. When I emerged from the shower I went back to my room to unlock the door only to find that the key would not fit inside. It barely slid in a quarter of an inch or so and then it wouldn’t work. I mistakenly thought that Jeanne and I had accidently messed up our keys so I walked down the three flights of steps to her room. She came upstairs with me and we realized that it was literally a problem with the lock. We scoured the entire house looking for something to pick the lock with had absolutely no luck. Then we decided to call someone and see if they could help us. The problem was that we had skipped an afternoon Freshers event in order to unpack and rest up, so all of our housemates and Dr. Taul were back at Regents campus. They were planning to come and get us before the next nighttime event and so no one had arrived. And so, I was waiting for my first true Oxford event in the same clothes I had been traveling in for over a day with hair and no makeup or shoes. We had no idea how to get to Regents campus and it’s a 30-45 minute walk anyway. We didn’t know how to operate the phone system and couldn’t find numbers for the correct people. Finally, one of our housemates arrived started calling people. Unlucky for me, it was too late for Bob to come over so I borrowed some shoes and a jacket from Jeanne and went out. I ended up sleeping in the spare room on what Bob calls the “collapsed bed” and woke up to get into my room the next morning.

Now, I have a meeting in the JCR in five minutes, so that is all about the first day. There will be more soon!