Life at Oxford

Every day I wake up and try to convince myself I’m at Oxford.

Perhaps that seems silly: how long can it take for one to realize where one lives? I’m going to be here for a year and still….I feel separate and apart from time and place. It isn’t that I feel like I’m in Kansas or DC or America or Europe or England or Oxford. I feel like I’m nowhere—somewhere worthwhile but somewhere that does not exist for anyone besides me and my fellow international students who I am getting to know more and more.

It hasn’t sunk in that I’m here to stay or that I’m on the verge of starting my Oxford education. This first week of orientation, labeled “0 Week” here at Oxford, has been weird. I’ve been jumping around from activity to activity, meeting Freshers and third-years and other JYAs (Junior Year Abroad students). I don’t have much time, my room is a mess, and I’m being thrown more and more reading lists. I have pretty successfully cut myself off from pop and have been drinking loads of tea. During orientation, we all eat in the dining hall together, so I have had several English meals (all involving potatoes, which is a food group for me anyway).

Originally I had thought that I would buy a bike and ride it around, as is the Oxford student way of life. Soon after arriving, however, I noticed the proximity of the bike lane and the bus lane; let’s just say they’re intimate neighbors. And by bike lane I mean two lines painted inches apart and thrown next to the curb. The bicyclists flap out their arm and weave into traffic to get around round-abouts. They inch along, kicking off the curb in stand-still traffic. They sometimes wear intense yellow vests, dorky helmets, and legit rain jackets. I have been enjoying walking everywhere, probably an hour per day minimum. It helps further that silly feeling I’ve always had that I am secretly Elizabeth Bennet, roaming around the English countryside.

So far I visited Port Meadow in the outskirts of Oxford—it was stunningly beautiful, a natural, peaceful escape from the hustle and bustle of city centre. We stopped by the delicious little Trout Inn that is in the Meadow, where I had the best fish and chips of my life. I ate dinner at the Eagle and Child (where the Inklings held their meetings) and had drinks at the Lamb and Flag. The neighborhood Tesco’s has become my very own. I check my pigeon hole for mail at the Porter’s Lodge. My ears are caressed with “leisure,” “inquiry,” “cheers,” and “schedule” on a daily basis; while the accents are becoming less noticeable for me, they are nonetheless still beautiful.

I attended Freshers’ Fair at the Exam Schools, where hundreds of little stalls artfully beckon the overwhelmed newcomers to the Oxford community to sign-up and join the C.S. Lewis Society, Assassins’ Guild, Oxford Law Society, the Rugby team, Catholic Students, or the Drama Society. I signed up for probably twenty clubs I’m sure I’ll never participate in. It was like our SAC Fair at Georgetown but intensified.

Last night I attended our first formal dinner at Mansfield, held in the college chapel. There was a pre-dinner drinks reception with champagne, and dinner consisted of meat pâté, stuffed chicken, potatoes, steamed vegetables, toffee pudding, white and red wine, coffee, and chocolates. The chapel was beautiful, the tables lit by candlelight, the tablecloths snowy white, and the Freshers and JYAs neatly tucked in behind numerous forks, knives, and glasses. There are two formal dinners per week at Mansfield so I think that I shall try to go once a week. When else will I experience this? I am so blessed.

Currently I am very overwhelmed by my upcoming tutorials. The reading lists for each paper compare to what I would read for a final paper at Georgetown—plus a few more books. The Oxford University library system is a bit confusing and overwhelming, but I bought my first book from the UK version of Amazon, visited and made several purchases at the enormous Blackwells bookstore, and ordered my first book from the stacks at the Bodleian. I trust myself to get it all the done, but nonetheless, this is quite intimidating. Of all the adjustments I’ve made, I think the move to the tutorial system will be one of the most challenging.

Overall, I am enjoying myself tremendously and feel quite settled in. I’m very excited for the next few weeks to unfold and to finally know what it feels like to study at Oxford. Soon and very soon I shall be what feels like a college drop-out no longer.