I have two (main) goals for this week: 1) To visit a museum (almost definitely the natural history museum that is 2 blocks from my college) and 2) to provide some more bloggage for all of you listeners at home.
I figured now would be as good of time as any to give you all the low-down about what my life is actually like here.
So here goes:
I am a Philosophy and Economics major at IU, and have been put into the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program here. We are primarily with the second years academically (although I am with some third years for Economics), which works out perfectly for me because in the second year of study at Oxford almost all PPEists drop a subject and focus on two. (Almost) everyone takes two courses per 8 week term, which is what I am doing, and for this term they are Public Economics and Logic. For Public Economics I have a tutor, Terry, who is one of the fellows in Economics at St. Anne's (read: kind of a big deal) and is a very kind and very brilliant Australian man. St. Anne's is a self-described "casual" college in that we refer to our tutors by their first names. This made me very uncomfortable at first given that most of these people have written more books that I have read, however I've warmed up to the idea. For Public Econ we have one class a week, on Mondays, 3 lectures a week, taught by various economics professors at the University, and 4 one-on-one (sometimes one-on-two) tutorials a term with Terry to defend an essay we write about the weeks topic. We got to pick the four topics that we wanted to write essays about. Out of the ten students in my Public Economics class, one is from Brookline, MA and is a third year (he went to BU Academy), and another is from Acton-Boxboro, and then there's me. Talk about random right? Anyway. The class is conceptually challenging but also very interesting because I am in the UK and the UK loves to tax and redistribute and provide welfare and do all the things that the course is about.
My other course is Logic. It is a mix of visiting students and "real" Oxford students and taught by a young professor from Nova Scotia named Brian. The class is pretty interesting but much more basic so far, and we have 4 hours of class a week and 1 hour of lecture. The lecture is taught by Volker Halbach, whose name is also on the front of the "logic manual" that we are using for the class, which he just you know, had published at the OUP (oxford university press), over the summer. There is a visiting student in that class from Marlborough, MA and another from Newton. I know, random.
I met with a Professor who works at the Ethox Center (one of the ethics centers at oxford) during the first week, and he essentially gave me an open invitation to all of the lectures and seminars he was involved in (and some he isn't) at Oxford that relate to biomedical ethics (my current career field of interest). This morning I rode my bike 3.5 miles (in the rain, ugh) to one of the Oxford hospitals to attend his class on medical ethics for some graduate medical students. It was very fun and interesting, and I also got to met the director of Ethox, just another day in the life.
Consequently, Mark, my main Ethox man (not the director) is also Australian and a basketball fanatic, and during our first meeting we got to talking about basketball. I had mentioned that I played years ago and his eyes lit up. He is friends with the women's blues (varsity) coach here and literally up and called him right as we were sitting at the restaurant, after a few minutes of "I've got this American girl here, she says she can play," he hung up and told me "Practice tomorrow at 4:30." So, I thought why the hell not and showed up for practice the next day, almost apologizing to the girls on the team beforehand about how terrible I would be (let's just say it had been a while). Well, practice ended with the coach walking up to me with a simple "You're in, see you tomorrow at 12." And there it was, I became a Blue, which is a pretty big deal at Oxford, and more importantly, accidentally achieved my childhood dream of playing basketball in college. Whoever said Disneyland(world?) is where dreams come true has obviously never been to Oxford. And we definitely have the monopoly on magic. Anyhow, the team is GREAT. The girls are all fantastic, 3 from the UK, 4 from the US (including a former all-american and rhodes scholar from Drake University), 1 from Finland, Australia, Austria, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, and Russia. Most are graduate students or Ph.D. students (anyone from the University can play), and everyone is just a whole lot of fun. We had "initiations" with the boys teams on Saturday night, think basketball-esque games with lots of 'punch' and some (very) competitive drinking, all of which was a blast, most of which was memorable. We also get a bunch of varsity "perks" like getting these little blue cards that let us jump the line (que) at all of the clubs, and getting invited to the elusive all mens varsity restaurant and bar, which would normally infuriate every feminist ounce in my body but I have decided to overlook this fact and go with it.
In other news the food is, decent, but obviously not stellar. Luckily we have kitchens and I managed to con my way into a fridge in my room. Unluckily I have no pots and pans (or actual plates and bowls) as of yet, and as some of you may know, I'm not exactly susie homemaker in the kitchen anyhow.
It really rained today for the second time since I have been here (a little over 3 weeks), which isn't bad at ALL. But so I've heard, it's just going to get worse. Eh, less tourism and more studying I guess.
Okay, this is getting a little long winded I am sorry. I realize for those of you that aren't friends with me on facebook you haven't gotten much in the form of pictures so far, so I'll try to figure how to get some of those up here soon, maybe even a video!
Later gaters,
oh,
and
GOOOO CELTICS. (I'm illegally streaming the game live here tonight at 12:30am).
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