Fashioning a Life Pt. I

I realize at this point that I've done very little in the way of describing my daily life here in Oxford. Sadly, it's not all extravagant adventures to fabulous locations around these parts. I am, after all, here to "study" abroad. And as much as I would like to say that I explore the city every day and head out to the pubs every night, such cannot possibly be the case in Oxford. I feel like I've managed to establish an equilibrium in my activities though, and feel relatively balanced between work and play. So I apologize to those who will find this boring (and perhaps recommend skimming), but I'll share more about my classes.
My program (about which I'll share more later), although not a college of Oxford in and of itself, was founded by an Oxford alum to be something of an intermediary between the old-fashioned Oxford system and American students. On this principle, the program is comprised entirely of American students (who might provide at least some familiarity in a foreign setting), but is built upon an Oxford education system. I will take four classes in my stay here, much akin to back at Olaf. However, none of them follows exactly the same subject. The Oxford school year is divided into three terms: Michelmas, Hilary, and Trinity, each of which lasts eight weeks. Michelmas doesn't start until mid-October, and Trinity doesn't conclude until mid-June. We are now in the midst of Hilary term. As I said, each term is eight weeks long, numbered 1st through 8th (that's how they refer to everything over here, i.e. today is Sunday of 2nd week). However, there are optional weeks on either end, named 0th and 9th week respectively. Normally, 0th week is dedicated to what the Oxford students call "Collections," which are essentially recap exams of everything they learned in the previous term. Wouldn't you love to do that your first week back from break? Apparently, they're required to wear their gowns for these exams (they basically look like graduation gowns). One of the students looked appalled when I informed him that many of us show up to finals in pajamas.
As for classes, I have two tutorials, one seminar, and one integral lecture. Tutorials are where I am one-on-one with my tutor, seminars are much like they are at Olaf (about 10 people in a discussion based class), and the integral is like a traditional lecture. This is where it gets confusing. My tutorials run 1st-8th week, following the standard term calendar. So that's eight meetings, once a week. My seminar runs 0th-9th week, following the extended term calendar. So ten weeks for that one, meeting once a week. You may notice that that would mean I'm finished with class by mid-March. Well, kind of. The integral is special, since it doesn't follow traditional Oxford teaching methods. Essentially, our integral course hasn't yet started. Rather, we save that for the last month of class, once the tutorials and seminars are completed, roughly mid-March to mid-April. However, between now and then, we still have fortnightly (once every two weeks) lectures on Monday nights, as well as fortnightly (on alternate weeks of the lectures) colloquiums. Confused yet? It took us awhile to wrap our heads around the schedule.
My first tutorial is called 19th century novel. I made the mistake of saying 19th century lit to my tutor on our first meeting and she quickly reprimanded me. I won't make that mistake again. The class focuses, as you may have astutely guessed, on novels of the 19th century. At our first meeting, my tutor gave me a list of ten potential authors, and appropriate novels from which I might form my reading list for the term. The list, in order, is: Austen's Emma, Gaskell's Cranford, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, C. Bronte's The Professor, Eliot's Middlemarch, E. Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Dickens's Bleak House (which we'll cover in two weeks). Yeah, a little daunting. All in all, just shy of 4000 pages of primary reading, not to include all of the secondary material I need to wade through. You see, for every weekly meeting, I need not only have read the primary text, but also have written a research paper, 6-8 pages long. I then bring two copies of the paper to my tutorial and read it out loud to my tutor while she reads along in her own copy, making notes in the margin, scratching entire paragraphs out furiously, etc. It is more than a little intimidating. The rest of the hour and a half is spent discussing my various flaws as a writer and a researcher. I had my first encounter last week, and I will admit, that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's certainly a humbling experience, but I enjoyed the discussion nonetheless. There's something incredible about having to defend your work to someone else. And the beauty of the system is that I never feel like I'm doing "busy work." Everything I read, write, etc. has a very specific purpose, and I find that encouraging.
My second tutorial was a little late getting started (I sometimes question how ordered everything is around here) because they didn't have a tutor assigned to me for the first week. But the class is of a philosophical nature and is titled Ethics and the Good Life. We will be covering the ideas of Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, and Kant, two weeks per author. I just finished my paper on Aristotle's idea of intelligence, and have to defend it to my tutor tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed! My tutor is actually new to the job (as opposed to my other tutor, who is a seasoned veteran), still a graduate student actually. I've no idea if that will play to my advantage or not, but again, I'm remaining hopeful. This tutorial follows the same format as the other, in that I must read some primary text by whichever philosopher we're studying that week and then compose a research paper on some prompt given by my tutor. If you've done the math, you've realized by this point that, in just these two classes, I will have written 16 6-8 page papers (and with my verbosity, you know they'll all be nearly 8 pages) by the end of the first portion of our term, no less than 128 pages of writing. I don't think I'll ever be afraid of an Olaf research paper again. I've made it through the first 24 of those, so I'm on my way!
My seminar is on Shakespeare, and is a bit of a breather from the stress of the tutorials. We read a play a week for each of the ten weeks, and then simply meet to discuss. No papers. Whew. The list is: Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles or Timon of Athens (yet to be decided), Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. No worries if some of those names are foreign. I'll confess I hadn't heard of some of them either. The class essentially builds up to a final research paper (only 12-16 pages, child's play), which is worth 80% of our grade. I guess I'll work hard on that one. I've actually already determined I'm going to write it on Hamlet, and I'm busy gathering materials to write it, seven weeks in advance! In addition to the readings and the paper, we've been split into groups, each of which will give a twenty minute presentation of a play at the beginning of class.
So that's my class schedule, at least until March. We're also doing fortnightly readings for the integral course, but those aren't nearly as exciting. As you can imagine, it's a little different from back home. I spend only about six hours in class each week. That's it. Yet, I generally utilize every spare second of the day for work. Time management is a necessity if you want to stay on top of things. Thankfully, I have managed time well thus far, and that's allowed me to enjoy a few nights out of the week, and maybe head out on a little excursion on Saturdays.
Yesterday, I explored some of Oxford. A group of us picked a random direction on the map, and just walked down the street, detouring down any road that seemed to offer promise of sights and/or historical locations. We walked through Christ Church, which is probably the grandest of the colleges here. The cathedral was absolutely breath-taking, built sometime in the late 12th century. And we stood just outside (sadly, the interior was closed) the dining hall, which was the location used for the Great Hall in the Harry Potter films.
So yes, I am indeed settling down for a full three months here. The "summer camp" phase, as we've all been referring to it around here, has worn off, and the semi-permanence of our situation has sunk in. We're all realizing that we live here now, and we're fashioning for ourselves lives that reflect our goals, our joys, and our hopes. It's a pretty exciting time. Sorry for the cheesy ending, you guys don't deserve that. But I hope everyone continues to do well. Let me know how life's treating you if you get a chance! I'll always respond. Cheers!