Sunday, January 30, 2011

My "Tutes": An Explanation of the Oxford System

I had a realization today that I have failed you, my reader, in a major way: after starting a blog inspired by my year abroad at Oxford (though don’t think you’ll be able to get rid of me after this year is concluded), I have yet to dedicate a full entry to describing what a tutorial is like.

The whole success of a tutorial depends on several factors: the tutor, the student’s work ethic, and the subject being studied. I suppose one of my strengths would be my work ethic and generally speaking I like interesting subjects—so the tutor is the variable factor in my year at Oxford. The four I have had thus far are all engaged with their subject matter, incredibly knowledgeable, and well-spoken.

The tutorial takes place in the tutor’s office or a room at his/her college usually; my tutors have been at three different colleges thus far. Each of the colleges typically has staircases lining the courtyards, leading up to the tutors’ offices. Depending on the age and wealth of the college, the staircase can be old, creaking, and freezing cold. So I’ll be given directions from my tutor, “I’m at so and so college, staircase 9, room 2,” and I’ll bike over, ask the porter for directions, climb the staircase, knock on the door, and walk into my first tutorial.

Stylistically, the tutors differ in the level of initiative they take in outlining the course: what books to read, the length of the essay, when the essay is due, how structured the tutorial discussions will be. I have two tutorials per term, my primary every week and my secondary every other week (so two essays, one essay, two essays, etc.). The essays are usually 2000 words (7-8 pages) about at least one book, up to 6 or 7 books. For my English tutorials, I usually read one or two novels and critical works written about them, as well as some biographical information about the authors. For history, I read one or two whole books, and then additional articles, chapters in books, or volumes.

The essay prompts vary as well in specificity. One of my tutors has asked really broad questions, another super specific, another has told me to read a book and come up with whatever I want to write about. Two ways of turning in the essay are utilized: either by email the day before the tutorial (so the tutor can mark the essay and discuss it in the tutorial) or by bringing a printed copy to the tutorial to read aloud or present the main ideas (which the tutor then takes to mark and brings the next time or sends in the “pigeon post”—delivered to our “pigeon hole” mailboxes in the porter’s lodge at college).

My tutors have also varied in their formalities. I had heard that tutorials can range from feeling like meeting a friend for coffee to an oral exam. So far, I’d pretty much agree with that. Luckily, only one of my tutors has felt more formal, with questions he wanted to discuss rather than basing the discussion off topics raised in my essay. One of my tutors has been far and away one of the best teachers I have ever had. She seems to genuinely care about how I am doing, facilitates a wonderful discussion based on my essay, and makes me feel comfortable to ask questions and make mistakes. A tutor has asked if I would like a cup of tea; one fidgeted with the heater throughout our discussion; some have joked about funny moments in tutorials with students they’ve had in the past; another asked for a summary of my essay as soon as I had finished reading it.

In my tutorials, I’ve ranged from feeling like I really demonstrated my handle on the subject matter well, being proud of the essay I had written, confused by my tutor’s explanations, exhausted from staying up too late writing the essay, relaxed in mainly just listening to my tutor speak, and truly engaged in having an excellent discussion over the subject. The tutorials last 45 minutes to an hour, and there is definitely a correlation between the quality of tutor and quality of essay written with how fast that tutorial passes.

In the seminars I’ve taken, office hours I’ve attended, interviews I’ve had, and oral exams I’ve survived, I feel as though I have been adequately prepared for the Oxford system. I’m enjoying myself tremendously and feel like I’m getting the hang of the tutorial system. Not having to take classes I’m not interested in, attend a lecture with 40 other students, do busy work, or spend fifteen hours a week in the classroom has been lovely. I’m hoping to essentially be a paper-producing machine by the end of the year. Perhaps that will make the weird adjustment back to the American education system that I’m guessing awaits me a tad bit easier. And hopefully now you can better envision what I’m doing exactly when I say “I’m off to a tutorial”—that foreign, fateful Oxford creation that my life here centers around.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A Day Like Any Other

Overloaded. Exhausted. Absolutely full. Exhilarated. Can’t take anymore—oh, wait, yes, I can. That’s the definition of being young and in college and studying abroad. Which explains why I am writing this at one a.m. when the one thing I absolutely need is a solid eight hours of sleep.

I couldn’t take any longer of an absence from my beloved blog, however. I think this is one of the best decisions I ever made, to begin writing this blog. It feels healthy and necessary and right. My life has been on-the-go every single day since I’ve been back. What is absolutely glorious about this is that unlike a good deal of my hard-working academic life before this year, what has filled those days has been predominately fun things.

I love, love, love Georgetown. I miss my life there (every post I make seems to reference the previous post—it’s not intentional, I suppose I just have a cohesive strain of blog posts) more than I can say. Nonetheless, I have a tendency to take on a lot. When I picture my schedule at school, it is of waking up, getting dressed, going to one class, another, grabbing a bite with friends, work, another class, homework, homework, application for so and so, meeting, homework, reply to some important emails, bed (maybe eight hours of sleep). Repeat.

The majority of those components of my schedule are things I love or working towards something I love. This is in no way a complaint. I think it’s part of a healing process, honestly. I walked away from last year tired, drained, questioning what I was working towards. I had put so much of myself into my application to get here, to Oxford, but what was life at Oxford going to be like? Anticlimactic? More stressful, if that’s possible?

To be honest, on a daily basis I do work hard on academics still: it's just more concentrated so I have more free time. It has been chalk full of the expected and the unexpected. I stayed up too late Friday night (or should I say Saturday morning), got up too early to spend a day in London Saturday, just sight-seeing. I went to mass the next morning, got tea with a friend, went to lunch with my beloved neighbor—to eat Wild Boar and Apple sausages, toad-in-the-hole style (a fried pancake-batter bowl) with onion rings, mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables, with a delicious, champagne-like cider to wash it down with—at a pub in Oxford, skyped with three of my favorite people in the world, ate dinner, hung out with friends, then thought “Oh, I should have done more work this weekend.”

But I’ve gotten all of my work done, as I always do. There are five, ten, twenty small, eclectic moments since I’ve last written that I’ll be reminded of someday, that sound like something out of a novel, that will come back to me with a smile (I’d love to elaborate, but this post will already be long enough). Perhaps I shouldn’t say this—maybe it will be too cheesey, too obvious, too redundant—but in some important ways I’ve gotten to experience things I’ve always dreamt of experiencing: I have a close-knit floor of friends where I live, I get to hear English accents every day, I ride a bike on the left side of the road, I play bridge every week, I went to Buckingham Palace, I bought a postcard about the royal wedding, I sat around listening to a stranger on a banjo at 3 a.m., I meet new people every week, I don’t second-guess myself quite as much.

I told myself I would just go with the flow and live this year up as much as possible (I’m nauseating myself with how cliché this whole girl-writing-a-study-abroad-blog-entry is), that I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to spend time with someone or see something because I have work to do. I will ALWAYS have work to do. It’s not as though I led some repressed life before this year, didn’t have a social life, lived in the library, etc. I think it’s just a combination of the opportunities being right in front of me and God blessing me with the right attitude and (hopefully) appreciation to take advantage of and enjoy them.

I feel liberated while I sit here with twelve books piled on my desk, errands to run tomorrow, an impossible schedule for this week. Is the work pretty much equal to that at Georgetown, though in different styles? Yes. Which means in some important ways the difference exists in my handling of my obligations, responsibilities, priorities, schedule. It feels right. It feels beautiful. I’m tired. And dreading this essay that needs to be written. I’m thinking about budgeting, buying stamps, what I’ll make for lunch tomorrow. But I’m also attending a Scottish dance at my college, having tea with a friend, taking a walk around town, and going to a champagne and chocolates reception this week. So basically, life is good. I’m incredibly blessed. I feel younger and freer than ever, even with an absurd to-do list.

Thank you, God.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Jump, Hop, and Skip to Homes 1, 2, and 3

I feel like one of those people on TV that has a rain cloud hovering over his/her head: between the hail storm in September when I tried to fly over, and the snow and ice in Kansas right before I left (which was the first real snow this winter), to the blizzard in Atlanta—my connection to get to DC enroute to London—bad weather has been following me around when I travel; I just can’t shake it off.

My original plan had been to fly to DC and spend a day at Georgetown before flying to London. When Atlanta’s airport (which I hate even in good weather) closed for several days, my flight to DC was pushed back four times. I went to the airport, checked in, went through security, waited at the gate, and then they cancelled the flight, making a trip to Georgetown impossible. In order to make my flight to London, my mom and I had to find a new ticket with a different airline to get to DC in time. So I flew early the next morning to Denver, then to DC, and finally to London.

I’ve mentioned before my three homes, and this trip back to England has in a way touched upon each of them. That my break at home could be a hybrid of all three of those places really excited me—what could be better than that?

When I was packing my backpack before flying, I was digging through my front pocket and stumbled across my keys to Oxford and my British phone. It was the weirdest feeling of suddenly remembering I live another life, if that makes sense. One would think that would be obvious, when I was packing to go back to England in the first place. But I always have this problem of feeling like I am going to a vague somewhere; it’s hard for me to conceptualize the actual destination. I knew I was going back to Oxford, to my life here, but it took the keys and phone, like portkeys, to transport me back to a vivid consciousness of my friends, my dorm, the spires of Oxford, the streets, the trains, the accents, the food. Suddenly I became ready and excited, anticipating an exhausting return that admittedly had me wishing the keys and phone were more than just metaphorical portkeys.

I had such a wonderful break at home, one of the very best I can remember. This will be my longest time away from not only home but the USA itself: six months. Having a functioning laptop will make keeping in touch with my family and friends back home exponentially easier, I think. It feels so liberating to be sitting in my room, as opposed to the computer lab, to be typing this. My last post has more detail concerning my love for my primary of the three homes, sweet Kansas. Saying goodbye to my family was much harder than usual this time—six months really does sound like a long time.

My third and final home feels, however, quite neglected. Georgetown has been the place where I grew up, came into my own, met some of my very best friends in the world. It was probably the riskiest decision of my life to show up at a university I had never seen with my luggage in hand, with a feeling of rightness guiding me (I suppose technically the same could be said of Oxford—but I’ll spend a more significant chunk of time at Georgetown, and it was scarier the first time around). Georgetown got me, slowly but surely: Healy Hall awed me immediately, my classes made me feel alive (stressed, of course, but engaged), the dining hall was originally appealing (that quickly wore off), the people were interesting, the library lovable in its profound ugliness. I can remember climbing the Village A rooftops for the first time, kayaking down the Potomac, eating my first Georgetown cupcake, walking around the bookshelves of Riggs, my first mass at Dahlgren. The list could go on and on.

When my mom suggested me visiting Georgetown for a day on my way to London, I was ecstatic. I’d be able to see so many of my friends, eat my favorite food, have my breath catch when I walked through the front gates and saw Healy once more, trip down the cobblestone streets as I always do, just soak up all that I love about Georgetown. I thought that if I had my Georgetown fix, I’d be able to wait until next August to see my third home again at long last. I did have a reservation that seeing it again would make my homesickness for Georgetown more intense, more poignant, more alive. But having experienced the alternative, in not seeing it, I must say my homesickness for it is still quite strong. I hope my friends know how hard it is for me, despite how much I love Oxford, to not see them for months and months. I hope that in some small way, Georgetown can know how much I miss it. In the end, I sat at the Dulles airport waiting for my flight, eating Potbelly’s, and saw an ad for Georgetown University on the TV. It was the closest I’ve been to my home in quite some time now, but it felt like God reminding me that it’s still there, ready to welcome me back next year.

To end on a good note, however, Oxford has thoroughly won me over as well. I’m so content to be here, I feel like I have so much good in store for myself this year. I’ll drag you along for the hopefully many wonderful adventures in my remaining time here.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Ya, Ya, Ya, "There's No Place Like Home"

The night stars welcome my eyes back to Kansas every time. It may take a day or three depending on the weather, but each trip they are there, beautiful as ever. I’ve been in many states, several countries, and two continents, but nowhere, nowhere compares to here, my homeland, in the beauty of the night sky. Maybe one day, when I’ve seen a bit more of the world, somewhere else will compare. Maybe.

My best friend has told me that she thinks of sunsets as God’s love letters to us. While I completely agree, I feel as though His love letters to me are the stars. They reach me a little deeper, a little more completely. One of my favorite poems, “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron, captures some of the beauty of the stars, beginning

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

The night sky I imagine while reading this poem is of Kansas. It’s impossible to feel closed in and hopeless while looking at a clear Kansas sky, I think. The world seems endless, the magnitude of God’s power and grace tangible in their infiniteness. If one thing in this world can make me breathless again and again, it is the stars.

Thinking of my love of the night skies in Kansas made me think a bit broader to my love of Kansas overall. My sister had me listen to “Fly Over States” by Jason Aldean, where he sings that the people who dismiss the Midwest of worth have “never… caught a harvest moon in Kansas” (among other things) and if they had, “they’d understand why God made those fly over states.”

I’m entering into some cliché territory now, but it has occurred to me this year that it’s funny how similar all of the places I’ve lived in, visited, and explored really are. The biggest similarity between them is, of course, the people. But beyond that, there are similar needs, jobs, stores, streets, technology. Admittedly, the first thing I notice in a new place is the differences; I automatically compare a place to what I’ve seen, what I’m used to, what I already love.

But it is funny to me that I am almost constantly in a state of denial that I’m in Europe, England, Paris, Prague, Venice, etc. It always feels like I’m in a vague somewhere that’s just not here, home in Kansas. The place feels different, other, not bad but new. At the core of those feelings is a muted recognition of the similarities between smalltown, USA and bigtown, Europe.

I do not mean to downplay the cultural differences between here and there: merely, I am trying to understand my own difficulty in classifying, identifying, recognizing the places I visit while I am in them. I guess I am proud to realize that while I have naturally been picking up on and highlighting the differences between cities and cultures, I have also been subconsciously comforted by the realization that these differences are less important, less prominent than they may initially appear.

I love my favorite drink concoction at a gas station here in Kansas; I love too cream tea in Oxford. Nothing feels as liberating as driving while home, but the train system in Europe astounds me in its breadth; driving through the Flint Hills and riding a bus through the Scottish Highlands each evoke a sense of freedom in me. Discussing politics around a family meal reminds me of political discussions I’ve had in a warm, bustling, cozy English pub. The London Tube reminds me of the DC Metro; the library at Oxford of that at Georgetown; one Titian painting in Vienna of another in Paris. The sun kisses my skin warmly on both continents; the foggy sky follows me from London to Kansas to DC.

Each place touches me differently, in terms of intensity and style. But now that I’m stopped, resting on break, perhaps a tad bit bored, I can think back leisurely over all the places I’ve been thus far, of the dreams I had of them before, the chunks of reality I actually experienced in them, and the memories I carried back from them. I’ve told friends this break, impulsively rather than intentionally pompously, “the last time I had this tea was in Prague”; “the last time I had this soup was in Paris”; “the last time I heard this song was in Munich.” The similarities and connections pop up again and again; they are what stick with me. Years and years from now, when my memories of this year are blended cleanly and smoothly into one beautiful quilt of moments and images, I anticipate it being these connections which allow me to maintain the faceted beauty of a true year abroad.