Term is in full swing now. This was the first day of Third Week.
THIRD week, people. That’s out of eight. I’m already 3/8 done with Michaelmas term!
Time has been absolutely flying by; our program coordinator warned us that once it started our feet wouldn’t touch the ground, and he was right.
My primary tutorial is on 20th Century British women novelists. My tutor is fairly young (in her 30s), and we meet for one hour each Monday morning. She gives me a reading list and an essay topic, and I send her my essay on Sunday evenings. Our Monday meetings begin with me “reading out” my essay to her, and then we discuss it. Well, in theory we "discuss" it, but in reality she gives me a mini-lecture on all sorts of fascinating historical, political, and geographical context for whatever novel(s) I wrote about. Every so often, she asks me a questions, to which--since I generally don't know the answer--I reply, “uhhh I don’t know,” and then feel ashamed of my ignorance. And then, since she's so sweet and interesting, I become engrossed and forget about my shame until she asks another question.
Life in the tutorial system is about feeling humble and ignorant.
It's also about reading. LOTS of reading. For First Week, I read Charlotte Smith. In three days, I was in the libraries for about 30 hours. I would move from the English Faculty Library (which closes at 5pm) to the Bodleian (which closed at 7pm First Week, but now—thankfully—it stays open till 10pm), to the library at New College (which is open till 12am, seven days a week!). I have never read so much so quickly—well, maybe once, many years ago, when I read The Lord of the Rings. But I didn't have to write an essay about it in one day after I finished.
Second Week was even more difficult. I was reading Maria Edgeworth, and—unlike First Week—my essay question was about TWO novels. That meant twice as much criticism to read, and twice as much support to sort through in an essay. Also, my secondary tutorial began that week. My secondary (which meets every other week) is Creative Writing—Fiction. I meet in my tutor’s house, about a ten-minute walk outside the city centre. Our first assignment was to write a story that evokes Oxford. I wrote about Oxford at 2:30am (it’s quite different from the Oxford you encounter as a daytime tourist), based on my observations walking to the bus station the night I left for Italy, and walking home a couple of nights during Fresher’s Week.
Now, the last time I wrote a story was when I was about 11 years old, so I was dreadfully nervous at our first meeting. He had me read it out, and then pause after two pages so he could go fix our tea. During that awful pause, I sat in his little front parlor, sweating and thinking of how horrid my writing was, while the names and faces of Aurora Leigh and Bob Dylan and Thomas Hardy stared at me from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three walls.
He returned, and I finished the reading, and then things improved immensely. After giving me plenty of praise, he gently suggested revisions. My tutor is absolutely brilliant; he can pick out the good bits and shift the bad bits with a word or two. Also, he's hilariously random, and we talked about “Americanisms” (like “trash”), and The Great Gatsby, and how British actresses in Hollywood don’t actually speak like British women (apparently they don’t pronounce their “p”s and “b”s strongly enough, it just all melts together as they push air out their of barely-open mouths), and why girls go to clubs and call themselves "girls" instead of "women" (why DO we do that, anyway? The "girls," not the clubs). When I left, as I walked over the bridge on Botley Road, I could not stop smiling as the thought, “I’m a writer. I’m a writer,” sang out in my mind over and over. It’s an intimate, frightening experience to share your writing with someone. To receive praise, to be taken seriously, and to learn how to improve—it’s empowering and exhilarating.
Over the weekend of Second Week, unfortunately, the constant coughs of my housemates finally infected me, and I came down with a horrid cold. Last week was a blur of sleeping late, coughing in the Bodleian (where it echoes dreadfully), waiting in line to buy cough syrup at the drugstore—sinuses pounding, and writing a truly mediocre essay on Jane Austen. I read Mansfield Park and Persuasion, and watched the film versions of each. That part of the process was lovely, but trying to sort through the mountains of Austen criticism to answer an overly broad essay question was not an easy task, especially in the haze of having a bad cold.
It’s over now, though. Time is truly the enemy at Oxford, but once you accept that there’s only so much you can do, life is joyous. I’ve found an amazing church, St. Ebbes. It is what I would describe as an ideal church for me. The songs have lots of verses, we read a corporate prayer of confession, the preaching is challenging both mentally and spiritually, and, the people are lovely; I can’t believe how welcoming and genuine everyone is! I joined a small group, and one of my leaders is a, Irish Third Year reading English (translation: senior English major). The rest of the girls are a mix of years and majors, but we all got on beautifully. God is so good; I’m really happy to have met some British girls, since up till now I’ve only been spending time with American students.
Saturday, I went into London for the day. I met up with Bri, who was an RA with me last year. She’s an au pair in Spain for the schoolyear. We saw all of the major sights in London via bus, and ate some great food. When I arrived on the bus, Bri and her friend were still at breakfast at a friend’s house, so I went to a Pret (there’s a chain of cafes here called Pret a Manger, but everyone just calls them “Pret”s so they don’t have to attempt to pronounce French). I sat inside, reading Atonement, by Ian McEwan, and occasionally scribbling down some descriptions of the street outside (you know, in case I ever write a novel set in London). For an hour, I sat in there, absolutely blissful because I was in LONDON. Reading in a café in London on a Saturday morning, where Wicked is playing at a sparkling theater across the street, what could be better?
Sunday, I got up early to finish my Austen essay, went to St. Ebbes for the church service, and then went to a potluck lunch with the APU students. We’ve started having “family dinners” each week (Hannah, Heidi, and I were inspired after crashing the one at Dorothy’s place in Florence). This week, it was at our faculty advisor’s house. Everyone’s culinary skills blew me away; one girl brought a British friend, and she said, “Wow, if you tried to do this with British students everyone would just bring crisps.” We had everything from grilled ham and cheese sandwiches to strawberry trifle. Afterward, a few of us stayed to watch Notting Hill. ALL I want to watch these days are films set in Britain; too bad I didn't bring any!
Today, I was in New College library for about six hours (with a break in the middle to eat lunch in the gorgeous dining hall), reading a third edition of Jane Eyre (printed in 1848, I believe). It’s bizarre that you're allowed to study with books that old here. It's also bizarre that everyone actually studies in the libraries here. At home, no one goes to the library except during Midterms, Dead Week, and Finals because most students buy their books. At the Bodleian, you can’t check anything out, so you find a place to set up and stay there all day with your stacks of books. Even at the college libraries, where you can check books out, people stay inside and study.
The Bodleian is a wonderful place to study (though I prefer New College at night, since it's always warm in there). I sit in the Radcliffe Camera, under the stone arches, surrounded by dark shelves lined with ancient red and blue tomes. All around me at the T-shaped tables are doctorate students from India or China, old men with beards and mussed hair frantically scribbling notes, and blonde freshers sniffling because they’ve all caught colds from being so sleep-deprived.
And it seems that there’s always a ginger-haired rugby player or a dark-eyed European guy sitting across from me, which doesn’t help my concentration. I have to admit, I'm a sucker for a boy in the library.
The girls here wear boots, cozy sweaters, and all seem to have long, curly hair and glasses; the boys wear tweed jackets or cableknit sweaters. Everyone has a scarf, and most people have a hat. People actually dress for the weather here.
And after I take a break to go outside and sit on the stone steps to eat the nuts or granola bar I brought for a snack, it hits me: this is my favorite place to be. This city, this world of stone buildings and old books and chilly air is paradise to the girl who has always loved to read.
If you could follow me around Oxford with a camera, you’d probably catch me smiling for no apparent reason. Those are the moments when it hits me that I’m here; I’m studying in the place where great minds have been studying for 800 years. I love it, even when it means staying in the library until 11pm on a Friday night. Those moments, looking out the library window to the enormous stone chapel at New College, or turning down Turl Street on the way home to see a full moon over the St. Mary’s Cathedral, are the times when I take a deep breath and think,
This is bliss; there is nowhere I’d rather be but here.
And now, I’m going to turn on my heater, curl up in bed with some tea, and finish reading Jane Eyre.
~Jennifer the Oxfordian, professing Anglophile
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