Oxford - Michaelmas 2010
I have been vicariously reproached by my one reader (hello, Honor!) for failing to blog when I'm at Oxford. Generally, I end up being far too busy at Oxford to have the will to update this, and this was especially true last term for tragic reasons.
As a whole, though, the term has gone fantastically well. The most significant change from previous years is in my living arrangements. This year, we're in a (college-owned) house of sixteen, out of whom 9 of us are fourth years and close friends. We've never had so many of us together before, and as we've known each other so long, we've just got to know one another amazingly well and, I think, feel completely comfortable around one another. I've taken to thinking of us as a 9 person polygamous partnership with an awful sex life.
The fact of actually having a house to live in rather than dorms adds to the cosiness (or hyggelig nature) of our set up. We have a nice, big, well-equipped kitchen (by college standards) in which we often cook for one another, and more importantly a reasonably-sized common room with a dining table, sofas and TV. None of this sounds significant until you consider that, until this year, we lacked a neutral place to socialise. Being able to escape my room, go downstairs in the knowledge that at least one person will be there, and share some tea or play games or just chat is incredibly important to my quality of life, now that I realised I missed it for two years.
There are, of course, seven other habitants of the house, all of them second years. All of them are nice people, but two in particular are particularly friendly and join our group on occasion: Laila, a half-Zoroastrian physiologist who, amongst other things, watched Kaiba (a brilliant japanese anime, strongly recommended) with us, and Joe, a physicist. It's been nice for me to get to know some second years as I was in France while they were freshers and, with our close-knit group of fourth years, it would otherwise be easy to get cut off from the rest of college.
In fact, being cut off from people not living with us is a problem to some extent as we live so far from the centre of town. We're all the way up in Summertown, for those who know Oxford, which is incredibly convenient as we have a Co-op just opposite and loads of charity shops and restaurants two minutes away, but it is a good fifteen minute cycle. I've got used to the daily commute now - indeed, it helps keep me fit - but there's still a feeling of being cut off from the centre of Oxford and from my (few) college friends who don't live with me.
Visits from Oxford friends who graduated have also kept me cheerful. I was concerned about slipping out of contact with several people - and still am to some extent - but Matt, Will, Ben and Sabrina all came to visit last term, so I'm less concerned than I was.
Other things of mild interest: I kept making various types of jam, I learnt to make fishcakes (thank you Simon!), I have become addicted to caffeine, we went to see a production of Peer Gynt (it was ok) and I've rediscovered my love of the Oxford Imps (award winning improvised comedy).
Dr Steve Jones and Robert Winston both came to the Oxford Union and gave enthralling speeches on genetics and the important of sexual reproduction in producing healthy offspring and on science as a force for both good and bad respectively. I was amazingly excited about the prospect of seeing Robert Winston and was literally jumping up and down for weeks beforehand, and he wasn't disappointing, but he looked a lot older than I remembered him, which goes to show how old Child of Our Times is, I suppose.
To celebrate the end of term, Rebecca decided we should celebrate Oxmas (Oxford Christmas, 25th November or the nearest weekend) with a proper Christmas dinner - turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes, parsnips, veg, mulled wine and more. It was incredibly pulled off and, I think, a great end to a great term. I decided to dress up as Kaonashi for no particular reason and make lots of little soot creatures, but people readily forgive my eccentricities.
Oh, and to top it all off, I've somehow become good at literature while away in France. Maybe it's just because I've finally got to the stuff I really want to do - Camus, Sartre, Ionesco - but even Flaubert and Gide interested me, and my linguistics marks have been good too. So I'm assez content.
As a whole, though, the term has gone fantastically well. The most significant change from previous years is in my living arrangements. This year, we're in a (college-owned) house of sixteen, out of whom 9 of us are fourth years and close friends. We've never had so many of us together before, and as we've known each other so long, we've just got to know one another amazingly well and, I think, feel completely comfortable around one another. I've taken to thinking of us as a 9 person polygamous partnership with an awful sex life.
The fact of actually having a house to live in rather than dorms adds to the cosiness (or hyggelig nature) of our set up. We have a nice, big, well-equipped kitchen (by college standards) in which we often cook for one another, and more importantly a reasonably-sized common room with a dining table, sofas and TV. None of this sounds significant until you consider that, until this year, we lacked a neutral place to socialise. Being able to escape my room, go downstairs in the knowledge that at least one person will be there, and share some tea or play games or just chat is incredibly important to my quality of life, now that I realised I missed it for two years.
There are, of course, seven other habitants of the house, all of them second years. All of them are nice people, but two in particular are particularly friendly and join our group on occasion: Laila, a half-Zoroastrian physiologist who, amongst other things, watched Kaiba (a brilliant japanese anime, strongly recommended) with us, and Joe, a physicist. It's been nice for me to get to know some second years as I was in France while they were freshers and, with our close-knit group of fourth years, it would otherwise be easy to get cut off from the rest of college.
In fact, being cut off from people not living with us is a problem to some extent as we live so far from the centre of town. We're all the way up in Summertown, for those who know Oxford, which is incredibly convenient as we have a Co-op just opposite and loads of charity shops and restaurants two minutes away, but it is a good fifteen minute cycle. I've got used to the daily commute now - indeed, it helps keep me fit - but there's still a feeling of being cut off from the centre of Oxford and from my (few) college friends who don't live with me.
Visits from Oxford friends who graduated have also kept me cheerful. I was concerned about slipping out of contact with several people - and still am to some extent - but Matt, Will, Ben and Sabrina all came to visit last term, so I'm less concerned than I was.
Other things of mild interest: I kept making various types of jam, I learnt to make fishcakes (thank you Simon!), I have become addicted to caffeine, we went to see a production of Peer Gynt (it was ok) and I've rediscovered my love of the Oxford Imps (award winning improvised comedy).
Dr Steve Jones and Robert Winston both came to the Oxford Union and gave enthralling speeches on genetics and the important of sexual reproduction in producing healthy offspring and on science as a force for both good and bad respectively. I was amazingly excited about the prospect of seeing Robert Winston and was literally jumping up and down for weeks beforehand, and he wasn't disappointing, but he looked a lot older than I remembered him, which goes to show how old Child of Our Times is, I suppose.
To celebrate the end of term, Rebecca decided we should celebrate Oxmas (Oxford Christmas, 25th November or the nearest weekend) with a proper Christmas dinner - turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes, parsnips, veg, mulled wine and more. It was incredibly pulled off and, I think, a great end to a great term. I decided to dress up as Kaonashi for no particular reason and make lots of little soot creatures, but people readily forgive my eccentricities.
Oh, and to top it all off, I've somehow become good at literature while away in France. Maybe it's just because I've finally got to the stuff I really want to do - Camus, Sartre, Ionesco - but even Flaubert and Gide interested me, and my linguistics marks have been good too. So I'm assez content.