First Week

Today marks the end of my first week of a real Oxford term, appropriately labeled "First Week." (Next week will officially be "2nd Week" and so forth.) It's confusing when things actually refer to the weeks like that and not by the dates themselves, since it is very easy to lose track of the abstract idea of a numbered week than an actually impending date. 

This week I started my tutorials, which turned out to be much less intimidating than I had assumed. On Mondays I have Creative Writing at Wolfson College, which is a short 10 minute walk from my house. Once there I make my way to a small room consisting of two lounging chairs and a small desk with chair. The windows are quite large and between two edges of building I get a glimpse of the college's quad. Mostly though I get a full view into someone's office, which can get quite awkward if they realize they have the same view of you. I then spend the next 50 minutes reading my own stories aloud to my tutor and having her tell me what I need to work on. My focus for the 4 weeks we meet will be fairy tales, culminating in a finished fairy tale of my own composition as a final project. It hardly seems fair to the other students that my homework consists of reading Hans Christian Andersen and The Grimm Brothers and writing about strange forests while they are all stuck with philosophers and historians. 

On Tuesdays I begin my day with a tutorial on C.S. Lewis. My tutor for this one is amazing; I love her already and hope to somehow forge an actual relationship with her. She is very nice, very welcoming and very understanding. The majority of our tutorial consisted of discussing Lewis, Tolkien, and Pullman, and deploring boring allegories such as The Pilgrim's Progress. The purpose of tutorials is to have a discussion, and I feel like that might actually be achievable with her. She is also my Long Essay advisor, so most of my guidance this term will be under her and on subjects concerning Lewis and fantasy. 

After my tutorial I have an hour or so to kill before my first lecture. Lectures are very different for us here than they are in America. We get to choose whatever lectures suit our area of study and that best compliment our tutorials. There are no tests or quizzes, so it is entirely for our own enlightenment we go. This makes them infinitely more enjoyable, not having any pressure attached. We each go to four sets of lectures. Mine are: Intro. to English Lit, Medieval Literary Theory, Spenser's Poetry and Prose, and Victorian Literature/Ideas. All the professors are brilliant are definitely more engaging than most, even when they are reading straight from an outline. 

When I'm not going to lectures or tutorials I am either in the library reading for the next week or finding multiple distractions to keep me otherwise occupied. I spent a few hours yesterday in the park, writing and then enjoying some wine with another group of American students.