Adjusting

My goal was to update at least once a week, and I'm already behind! I'll try and be better about that. I'm sure inquiring minds want to know...at least I would hope!

Before coming here, I had some misconceptions about Oxford. Originally, I thought Oxford was a tiny town, dwarfed by the university. Not only is Oxford a small city of about 150,000 people, there is no "university" in the same sense that there is at home. Oxford University is made up of several colleges in a loose association; Mark Philpott, the senior tutor at CMRS (Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, our program), told us this in one of our orientation lectures in hopes of helping us blend in a little (and I'm sure some people know this, but it was news to me). Oxford is a city, but it's not a big city and St. Michael's Hall (our residence, and where most of our classes are) is close to the center of the city, so everything is within walking distance. I also didn't that Oxford was on the River Thames and was just merely using this title as a (clever?) spinoff to my Facebook picture albums for St. Mary's, but it is on the Thames so now it is both witty and accurate. It is also neither as cold not wet as I expected. I had a quote from Snatch stuck in my head before coming here ("London. You know, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins."), but it's been warmer than home and quite nice out most of the time.

Speaking of St. Michael's Hall, the building is quite odd. It used to be a shirt factory, which I guess explains the peculiar layout and dimensions of some of the rooms, but it also explains why there are gigantic windows all over the building, which I do like. There are also way too many doors, which all happen to be fire doors. The CMRS staff (and everyone in Oxford, really) seem to be obsessed with fire safety, but if one building caught fire they would all burn down, so I suppose it's warranted. However, because fire doors are meant to prevent the movement of heat and they do it quite well, certain parts of the building are considerably colder than others. There are other peculiarities about the building which I find a tad annoying, but the only one that really baffles me is this:

I can't think of a single reason to separate the cold and hot water into different taps, but literally every sink I've encountered in England is like this. You either get scalding or freezing water, so getting warm water to wash your face at night is a cautious dance. My room also seems to be the only one with a pillar in the middle and the only one without a sink, but I share my hallway with my roommate and one other guy so it could be worse. More pictures to follow.

As I'm sure I've explained while detailing how the CMRS program works, at least half of the 35 students here this semester are from St. Mary's. Yet that's not entirely a bad thing. I knew a couple people, had classes with some others, but some others I had only seen on campus--or not even that! Otherwise, there are a few from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, a few more from Elmhurt College outside of Chicago, and a few people from other various colleges (Catholic University, a college in Ohio, University of San Diego, etc.). I think it's both interesting and good that everyone has meshed pretty well and we all get along pretty swimmingly. There have been several large group dinners which have been a lot of fun.

In the first week I had some fleeting moment of wanting to be back at St. Mary's, but those have all disappeared. I guess I would say I've pretty much adjusted to "life" over here, but the schoolwork is a whole 'nother game. My classes consist of:

Integral Course: Renaissance to Enlightenment
Seminar: English Society and the Church, 1500-1620
Tutorials: (1) Heresy and Authority in the Middle Ages and (2) The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1700

The Integral class is made up of a one-hour lecture every other week for the first 9 weeks or so of term until the tutorials and the seminar end. Then, for the last 4 weeks or so of the semester, we have 2 lectures Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, with a 3.5 hour exam and a big paper to top it off. It's also divided in half (for now), so ~17 people are in each "section". If I'm not mistaken, we'll all be together for the last couple weeks.

The seminars are more specific classes in small groups, the smallest being 2 and the biggest being 10; mine has 4 including me. That meets once a week for an hour to an hour and a half. In my case, I have readings to discuss and a small presentation every other week, with a ~3,000 word paper at the end; the seminar runs for the first 9 weeks.

The tutorials are one-on-one classes with a professor (or tutors, as they call them here). These also meet at the same frequency and length of the seminar, but only for the first 8 weeks. There are readings and 6-8 page papers per tutorial, per week. At each meeting, you basically have to defend your paper and your argument, which I had my first experience with today. The Heresy and Authority tutorial is with Dr. Philpott, which is a little intimidating, him being the senior tutor and all. So this morning I read my paper aloud and then he pretty more tore it to shreds and really got me to flesh out exactly what I was trying to say and then examine what parts I need to work on. He then proceeded to say it wasn't an exceptionally great paper but it wasn't bad and showed potential, and to keep up the good work! So I left slightly elated and a little confused, and spent the rest of the day in the Bodleian Library (yes, the Harry Potter library).

The library system here is...different. All of the libraries, except CMRS' own little Feneley Library, are reference libraries, meaning you can't take the books out. This concept is so bizarre to me, because where I'm from that's the whole point of a library. At our induction ceremony to the Oxford University Library System (OULS), the librarian told us that back in the day Charles V requested to borrow a book during the War of the Roses, but was told it is not a lending library. She noted that he was beheaded not too long after that, and, while she was not implying any sort of causational relationship in that exchange, that meant we were certainly not allowed to borrow books. My Family, Sex, and Marriage tutor (who made me some splendid tea at our first meeting) warmly referred to the Bodleian as "the greatest impediment to scholarship in existance"; my experiences thus far haven't been too painful, but there's something to be said for being able to sit on your couch with a book, even if it can lead to unplanned naps.

Things are expensive of course, but not as much as I feared they would be. Most things costs less in GBP than they do in USD, and the exchange rate is just under $1.50 per £1, which isn't nearly as bad as the $1.90 it was about a year ago. The euro is also down to about $1.30 instead of the $1.60 it was over the summer. On one hand I feel like I should be really conservative with my spending, but on the other hand I saved all my $4,700 from last summer specifically to spend over here, so I usually end up somewhere in the middle of that road. But I do hate coins. Hate.