On Oxford (part ii: Adjusting)

I think it is about time for another post. After all, I have been in Oxford over a week now. That means a number of things:
1. Oxford is a relatively safe city.
2. I have managed to go without offending any British people to the point of a duel to the death.
3. Even though there is a lot of snow here, it is not the end of the world as most of the United Kingdom seems to believe.
4. I have not gone somewhere I was forbidden and subsequently died as a result of being somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.
5. I have not given up.

That last one is the most important. In a lot of ways this has been a very daunting week. It started out fine enough. Lots of introductions, asking the same questions over and over:

Hi, what's your name?
I'm Greg
(sometimes insert: "No not Craig . . . Greg")
I'm from Bethel.
(often insert: No, not that Bethel. It's in Northern Indiana)
So where are you from?
I'm studying English. What are you studying?
My primary tutorial is Victorian Lit., and my secondary tutorial is History of the English Language. What are your tutorials?

On and on this went. There are around fifty people in this program, and I have introduced myself to all of them, some of them more than once. Such it always is at the beginning of something like this. Every now and then, a person and I would find something in common and strike up a sudden and passionate conversation: perhaps about Kant or women writers in the Victorian Era or Shakespeare or Transhumanism or Bible Quizzing. However, these were not quite common. Time and time again I just accepted that I would have to get to know people over time. That is more to my liking and my nature anyway, so I was fine with it.

The weekend was very relaxed, and I did end up getting to know people better. I went with a pack of people one day to explore the city. On another occasion, I went with a group to get a late dinner of fish and chips at the Eagle and Child: a frequent haunt of the Inklings. I saw the corner where they used to sit, but did not get to sit there myself. I also got to visit a really cool church that ends services in a moment of silence followed by fellowship with tea and coffee. A group of Brits that we met there invited us to lunch to get to know us. It was awesome.

However great all this was, underneath there was always an anxiety. We were here to study and study hard. As nice as the relaxation was, we all wanted to get down to work.

Work started on Monday. It was just the beginning of orientation, but at least it was something to do. They had given us handbooks on how the program was supposed to work, but it was nice to have an actual person explaining it to us. It wasn't until Monday that I finally found out who my tutors were, and then it was not until Thursday I found out that I had to read Jane Eyre and write a 1,500 word essay on it incorporating secondary sources and that said paper was due Monday.

That's when I freaked out a little.

I knew this semester would be tough, but having less than five days to write a paper for someone I had not even met in person yet, that freaked me out. I am a fast reader and all, but Jane Eyre is still a hefty novel, as are all Victorian novels, admittedly, but I chose this tutorial. Fortunately (and I use that term somewhat loosely), our two field trips this week were cancelled: one to St. Albens, a historical cathedral, and one to London.

Why were they cancelled you might ask?

It has snowed here in England, and the whole nation is panicking a bit. Apparently, Britain does not generally get a whole lot of snow in the winter. So the fact that they have gotten somewhere around a foot in the course of a weak is terrifying to these reserved British folks. One of my tutors said that they haven't gotten weather like this in 63 years. For me, coming from Indian, this weather seems like nothing, but it is like a Blizzard hitting San Diego here. It is so "bad" in fact, that the nation has run out of street salt.

Anyway, these cancellations afforded me plenty of time to hole away in the gorgeous Radcliffe Camera, a reading room for the Bodleian Library, and take care of reading Jane Eyre. Now that I have finished that up, I can devote my day tomorrow to reading secondary sources and spend time Sunday writing the paper.

It is going to be a very demanding semester indeed.

But I have not given up. I feel as though I will survive this first test, and I can survive subsequent ones as well: perhaps only by the grace of God, but that was enough this time, and I'm sure it will be enough in the future as well.