A Student’s Manifesto

The second week of tutorials has come and gone and, having now experienced the first of my bi-weekly hellscapes, in which three papers are due over seven days, I feel that I can adequately take a step back, reflect, and clarify my mission for the rest of my time here. Before that, a few observations are in order that might help the reader understand the Oxford academic environment.

Firstly, Oxford is not a liberal arts school. Full-time undergraduate students apply to a specific degree program, or “course”, which fully defines the subjects they may study in tutorials during their time here. While some of the courses – like Philosophy & Computer Science, or the ever-popular Politics, Philosophy, & Economics – are by nature interdisciplinary, they nonetheless aim towards a very specific and narrow academic goal, to be achieved in exactly three years. The inability to explore non-major electives, to combine majors and minors in unique ways, or to switch courses easily all indicate a general orientation towards relevant careers, rather than towards broad, inclusive knowledge sets and general critical thinking skills. (That’s not to say that Oxford students lack these – they tend to be highly intelligent and motivated, but have to pursue breadth on their own time, as it were.) When electives are freed up during the later years of study, they are intended to allow for increased specialization. This of course inverts the American model of taking broad electives early and concentrating on a major later on.

Secondly, the nature of the tutorial system restricts the creativity of the average student. In American colleges, we generally have assigned readings, lectures, class discussions, and, in technical fields, problem sets. TA’s organize study sessions. All of this is largely formative – it often has little or no impact on our final grades. Our grades (especially in the humanities and social sciences) are instead determined by a combination of papers and timed examinations, and sometimes presentations. But in these instances, the challenge is to identify some new position that can meaningfully add to the intellectual dialogue created by all of the formative activities. A typical humanities term paper will provide a brief exposition of its motivation, cover some controversies in the existing literature, and then use these as a springboard to introduce an original thesis, interpretation, argument, perspective, or paradigm into the academic dialogue. And while the exposition and understanding of the literature is the essential base of your grade, it is the quality of self-criticism in the constructive element that distinguishes great students of the material from good students of the material.*

In the Oxford tutorial, the same formative experiences do not exist, except for the reading. The only oversight that occurs is the single, hour-long conversation that you have with your tutor every week (or every other week for your minor tutorial). And the only means of demonstrating to them your mastery of the basic subject matter is the paper. Moreover, the paper can only be of limited length, since you need the time to cover it during the hour. AND the paper is covering a topic that full-time students will be examined on at the end of the year, so it is the Oxford tutor’s duty to guarantee that the student internalized the reading in a broad sense and can intelligently understand and articulate the academic dialogue that already exists. Of necessity, then, the typical Oxford tutorial sacrifices some portion of the constructive element of paper-writing for the expository elements, and this detracts from the use of tutorials as the mutual, creative learning enterprise that they at first appear to be. Instead, the structural necessities of the education system incentivize reversion to a more traditional and hierarchical model of instruction, wherein the tutor provides conventional instruction on material not covered or inadequately covered in the paper. The flip side of this is that it provides flexibility: where the student’s understanding is clearly proficient, the discussion can advance on a higher level; where the student’s understanding appears deficient or questionable, the deft tutor can intercede to correct or avoid error. I see no choice but to trust my tutors to judge appropriately, and this gives broad form to my personal manifesto:

I will give my tutors every excuse to engage creative, constructive material during our meetings.

I see this as requiring additional effort on my part to concisely demonstrate mastery of the primary subject matter, to engage conscientiously and generously all secondary literature assigned, and to devise and articulate unique and compelling additions to the scholarly discourse. In short, I can get by at Oxford by doing less work than I would do at Swarthmore, but I can only get what I want out of Oxford by doing considerably more. It is to that higher aim that I want to publicly commit myself.

• I will begin all assigned reading immediately.
• I will complete all primary sources at least three days before the tutorial.
• I will keep detailed notes on all primary sources.
• I will complete all secondary sources at least two days before the tutorial.
• I will use my notes to draft comprehensive summaries of important concepts, and, through multiple revisions, I will make those summaries as concise as possible while remaining true to their meaning.
• I will present the arguments of all sources not merely with their immediate logical implications, but also with their motivating contexts and broad effects within scholarly debate.
• I will construct criticisms, interpretations, and arguments that are subtle, that directly engage the projects of the assigned writers, and that will compel my tutors’ attention and scholarly respect.

I’ve written three papers so far, and I have 21 more to go. I will certainly fail at one of more of these goals in at least some of them, but wish me luck.

*N.B. My Philosophy of Language tutor, who studied in Scotland, assures me that the Oxford style is fairly unique to England. Apparently Germany and Scotland both educate undergraduates more in the style of the U.S., beginning broad and working towards a specialization, at least in academic subjects.

Nights on the Town

As a lifelong suburbanite, I’m used to mowing the lawn, shopping at massive superstores, and driving everywhere. Much more than differences of language, fashion, or social etiquette, culture shock has set in as a result of living in a truly urban environment. Now, I am used to college dorm life, and walking around a campus, but Swarthmore’s campus is still, at the heart of it, a giant nature preserve, with lots of beautiful, natural escapes, and a kind of sleepy reserve befitting of quiet reflection. What attempts we make to recreate the active nightlife of the young urban college student or professional is an isolated exception to the pattern of a small, highly integrated student body, which nonetheless exists with a relatively low density. The city is, stereotypically, more anonymous, but this is true only to the extent that you are more likely to meet new people. The flip side is that the city is more adventurous, because with new people and new settings packed into such a small space, one is more immediately challenged to engage with a more diverse set of activities and lifestyles. Retreat into loneliness is possible, but more difficult, since a small impetus can more readily draw you back into a social life. It’s different, but, relief from lawn-mowing aside, I think I might like it.

A pattern of recent events convinces me of this, but two in particular will serve to illustrate my point.

Thursday, January 23: The JCR Bop

As I mentioned in my last post, a dance party here is called a “bop”, and last Thursday night the Hertford Junior Common Room (that’s the college’s undergraduate student body) hosted its first bop of the year in a rented-out club downtown. Of course, being an impeccable student with a distaste for dancing, I insisted that I would stay in and read in advance of my double-dose of papers early this week. But a quick trip down to the pre-party gathering on the first floor found me taking an ever-longer study break, first to the college bar, and then to the club itself. And, to surprise, I actually enjoyed it for a while, mostly thanks to the great group of friends who dragged me out to it. In the absence of 40 people I knew I would see in class the next day, I found myself strangely less self-conscious about dancing and chatting. And while I won’t be rushing out to the clubs every weekend, I’ll count it as an evening well spent. It stands as a nice reminder that certain prejudices we might have about ourselves (like the idea that I don’t do bops), can and should be challenged from time to time. The energy, density, and people of the city make that easier.

Saturday, January 25 – Sunday, January 26: A trip to London

On Saturday afternoon, I hopped on a bus to London to meet up with Tamar, Bill, and Ciara (my aunt, uncle, and cousin, respectively) for dinner and a show. Now we’re a pretty hike from London, but the bus system is so well developed that I only needed to walk down to the Oxford station, jump on with £11, and spend the next 90 minutes reading, just as I would in a chair back in my room. A five minute walk from the last stop, I met my family at a great Korean restaurant, confusingly called Lime Orange, directly across the street from the theater. We had a great meal, and then walked right across the street to the show – a live performance of Wicked. 🙂

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The next morning, we stopped at the British Museum. I’ve been there (briefly) twice before, but it’s still one of my favorite morally ambiguous places on earth. Note that on my third visit, I finally resisted taking photos of the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles, but saw tons of other cool stuff, too.

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Next, we headed over to the exhibit on ancient Mexico, which centered primarily on Aztec sculptures, reliefs, and art.

Upstairs, they had a special exhibit on Chinese jade since 5000 B.C.

We toured a bit more, as well, but I don’t want to give you TOO many pictures. I hopped on the tube back to Victoria station, jumped on a bus, planned my essay for the following afternoon, and found myself back in Oxford just in time for the first debating workshop of the term. Details on all of that to come!

Woah, Brits talk funny…

I guess they did since my last post. I’ll fill in a few odds and ends and talk more about my studies late next week, after I’ve finished and presented the two papers I’m working on. For now, here’s a few rules of UK/Oxford jargon that keeps me from looking too much like a foreign rube.

• A receptionist/facilities and office manager is a “porter”.
• A campus mailbox is a “pidge” (short for pidgeonhole).
• A short conversation is a “chat”.
• A dance party is a “bop”.
• Anything upscale is “posh”.
• Anything disappointing is “rubbish”, while trash is called “litter”.
• Instead of “running in to get something” or “running over to the store”, you “pop” there.
• The more adverbs you can use, the better, especially by replacing every instance of “very” with “really quite” or “actually quite”, except that you may say “really very”.
• Replace every “first”, “second”, “third”, etc., with “firstly”, “secondly”, “thirdly”, and so on.
• A running bill is a “battels”.
• A bill to be paid is always a “check”.
• A check you are paying with is, in fact, a “cheque”.
• A terrible paper is “okay”.
• A fantastic paper is “quite good”.
• A mediocre paper appears not to exist.
• Apparently, neither do drier sheets.
• Or liquid laundry detergent.
• Or signature credit and debit cards – it’s all chip-and-PIN.
• To yield is to “give way”.
• To argue or fight is to “quarrel” or to “have a row”.
• If a British person says braces, they mean suspenders.
• If they say suspenders, they mean garters.
• If they call you a “chav”, they mean you’re a redneck.
• And if they ask you for a rubber, they want a pencil eraser.

I feel like I must be forgetting a few, but I’ll update you all with any more interesting linguistic differences as they arise.

I’ve also noticed a few things about the commercial culture here – namely, that all of the stores are very highly specialized. Even department stores with about the floor space of a small Macy’s pretty much sell dress shoes, jackets, button-down shirts, slacks, socks, ties, and belts – good luck finding a wallet or a tie clip or a pack of undershirts. Likewise, the supermarkets are really grocery stores with a couple of shelves devoted to toiletries and cleaning supplies. I can’t quite tell how much of it is urban culture and how much it is UK culture, but it’s certainly a departure from my normal suburban existence in the States.

For all of that, though, I’m settling in pretty well. There’s no major culture shock at all – just a few small things like those I’ve been listing.

Mind blast!

P.S. I just remembered another – in the Oxford libraries, you don’t adjust the height of the seat, you adjust the height of the table!

New Places

While an exhaustive account would hardly be possible, some partial glimpse of the places I’ve been seems a suitable way to reflect on a strange but enjoyable week.

This first gallery focuses on buildings in the city of Oxford, especially buildings in and around Hertford College. It strikes me that I didn’t snap any pictures of the college itself, except for the Bridge of Sighs, but I’ll include some in a future update.

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The next gallery comes from a stroll I took down the Thames, just next to my dormitory. Since rowing is such a huge sport here at Oxford, each of the colleges naturally has their own boathouse on the river. I walked as far as them, and then wandered back. I found panoramic shots to be the only way to capture the beauty of the place, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed being there. I do notice, though, that the iPhone seems to add very heavy curvature to panoramic shots, so don’t be fooled – the roof of the University College boathouse is flat.

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Finally, it rained the other day, and outside my window in the late afternoon, I saw – you guessed it – a DOUBLE RAINBOW!!! (The camera didn’t quite pick out all of the second as it faded off to the right 😦 ).

‘American Nations’ Book Review

This post is a little bit off the beaten track, but don’t worry – I have another coming later tonight about some of the beautiful places here in Oxford. For now, though, I want to give a shout out to Uncle Bill, who recommended Colin Woodward’s American Nations to me before I left the states. It made up a considerable portion of my in-flight entertainment, and I thought it worthwhile to give a brief review for anyone else who might be interested in it.

Woodward’s first task is to draw a distinction that he correctly observes is foreign to most Americans: that between that “country” or the “state”, on the one hand, and the “nation” on the other. Americans, for whatever reasons*, tend to consciously identify very strongly with an country-wide self-image – that of the independent, freedom-loving, pioneering, and little-d democratic citizen. But Woodward argues that this image is a patchwork of a set of discrete regional identities that arise from the individuals who originally settled the area. For example, New England’s zeal for government intervention in health care and education is cast as a secularized continuation of the Puritan impulse to enlighten the world before the coming of Christ; the Deep South’s antipathy to pure democracy is said to arise from its settlement by an aristocratic planter class; and Appalachia’s hawkishness and extreme emphasis on self-reliance owes its roots to the Scots-Irish warrior culture that originally settled in the area.

Woodward tells a compelling story of the differences between U.S. regional political cultures, and he does so by drawing effectively on a wide array of secondary source material. The narrative that he tells is confident and persuasive, and backed up by such an overwhelming flood of examples that one can hardly doubt of at least its partial veracity. The prose is engaging, and it is a book that can be read straight through (almost) without a hint a boredom. In those respects, I find it a valuable contribution to popular history.

However, like many authors who publish such works for popular sale, Woodward is a foremost journalist and not a bona fide academic historian. American Nations is essentially a synthesis and not an original thesis.** While he does make a good effort to “define his terms”, he does not take especial care in their implicit use. Moreover, the book exists to tell us what Woodward thinks. It does not exist to give an exhaustive account of earlier, related scholarship or to meaningfully present and engage dissenting interpretations. I think that the sum of these factors poses two major challenges to the reader of this book.

Firstly, the reader must be careful not to confuse explanation with causation. Woodward’s project is essentially abductive: he begins with present voting trends and works backwards to find possible explanations. However, as he himself passingly admits, these explanations are only as refined as the phenomena that they seek to explain. Thus, Boise, Reno, and Denver are all lumped together as part of the “Far West” nation, and are said to vote similarly as a result of the same developmental legacy. In point of fact, each of these places has very distinct histories that can help explain in fine detail how and why they have their political cultures, and which, indeed, could help draw out why Nevada has legalized gambling, Colorado has legalized weed, and Idaho has neither. These histories get washed out because, ironically, Woodward is interested in answering questions about federal electoral demographics, and not regional ones. This is not to say that this exclusion is necessarily a deficiency in Woodward – on the contrary, it is his declared purpose – but the narrative style of his history creates a sense of causality which may, in many of its particulars, be false of areas and cultures that it purports to describe. We must recognize that history gives us answers to the questions that we choose to ask, and mistaking those limited answers for more general truth is easy when we impose blueprints on the past.

Secondly, if the reader is like me, they will want to understand why culture, in Woodward’s account, is so resilient over time. He observes on several occasions that the first people to populate an area, or the most recent people to have wholly conquered an area, tend to have an outsized and persistent influence on the regional culture. Given the wealth of examples that Woodward has to draw on, along with the compelling rhetoric of his narrative, it is easy to take this assertion as a truism. However, I think it is important that we interrogate the claim more thoroughly in its principles. How, for instance, are we to understand the shifting allegiances of Woodward’s “Tidewater” nation with respect to preservation of the union, or the decay of Puritanism in New England, if such important aspects of culture are alleged to remain nearly static? And what happens at the borders of these purported nations, where populations mix and ideologies become muddled? To me, these are interested questions that underpin Woodward’s intended analysis, but that he never directly engages. I think that his latest book, impressive as it is, would have been better and more thorough if it had.

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*The most immediate explanation in my mind seems to be that we have lived for over two hundred years under a fairly centralized government, such that national politicians, even when appealing to localized interests, nonetheless have a stake in maintaining their appeal to a mythological national identity. Where this was tested most severely – the Civil War – Lincoln insisted that the concept of American unity was too important to abandon and, by force of arms, reasserted the common American identity as supreme above regional differences. Thus, though the regional disparities brought out by Woodward bear obvious resemblance to true divisions, they do not yet rise to the level of difference asserted consciously amongst European nations, which have had a much shorter and weaker experiment in common government. Other differences from continental Europe may also prove instructive: for instance, Americans do and for the most part always have shared a common language that facilitates common political and cultural institutions.

**That is not to say that it is an unoriginal project – precisely this type of synthesis may never have been done before.

New Structures

I keep telling myself that I’m beating the jet lag, but here I am writing at 1am again, an hour after I supposedly turned in for the night. Yesterday, I fell asleep at 11:30pm only to snap awake two hours later. I couldn’t sleep again until nearly 8am, with the fortunate side effect that my suitcases are now empty, my room is more or less set up for the term, my two blog posts for the day were outlined in my head, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a couple of hundred pages further along. If mild insomnia allows me to stay that productive all spring, I might actually be okay with it.

Tonight, I’m kept awake reflecting on the host of new faces that I’m trying to keep straight. There are 18 of us who are new to the program this term, and several others who were also here in the fall; in addition, I have met perhaps a half-dozen each of matriculated students and college administrators. It would be a tedious post to list them all, and it wouldn’t do any of them proper justice. So instead, I’ll introduce a handful of the key figures and, over time, relate stories in which they and my friends feature. Some will be unfortunately left out, but they will all show up in due course, I imagine, if we all keep hanging together, because they are all far too interesting to avoid creating a good story sooner or later. With that, a little about the support that we have here.

The Helpers

Jamie and Carol are full-time Hertford students who helped us to move in and orient ourselves in the city. James, Carol’s recently-graduated boyfriend, helped as well. On Monday, they took us to an excellent burger place and then showed us the college bar (that’s right – we have a private bar, inside the college proper). Carol took ill today and has been unable to meet with us since, but Jamie continued to chauffeur us to meetings through Tuesday and has been a remarkable resource for any questions we might have. I am indebted to all three of them.

The Program(me) Admistrators

The two most prominent administrators of our program are the exceedingly kind Dr. Josephine Reynell and the exceedingly efficient Louise Turner (of course, Dr. Reynell is also quite efficient and Ms. Turner is also quite kind).

Dr. Reynell is our head tutor, and she is the one who has patiently arranged all of our tutorials for us as we frantically played the middle men between our home departments and Oxford. We have had several meetings with her now, including short one-on-one briefings about attending lectures and coping with any stress or difficulties. She has that rare ability to make the world seem so manageable that one is transported into an entirely calmer state of mind. Indeed, at our meeting today she was talking about coping with the stress of the tutorial format. I found myself thinking that I didn’t need this sort of pep talk – I was quite alright on my own. After a moment, though, I became loose and relaxed, only then realized that I had been tense at all. (This may have something to do with the sleepless night before). It is one of those rare and remarkable feelings that I can’t quite describe, but it was something like the relief, after having been outside just long enough to stop noticing the cold, of entering a warm and comfortable home.

The Tutors

All classes at Oxford are taught in the tutorial format. For those who aren’t familiar with it, a tutorial is a one-on-one meeting with a teacher – usually a Ph.D., but sometimes a doctoral student in the later stages of their dissertation – for an hour once every week or once every other week during the term. In the very traditional tutorial format, the tutor assigns a reading list and perhaps, but not necessarily, an essay prompt, based upon which the student writes an approximately 2,000-word paper*, which the student then reads to the tutor during the tutorial. The tutor freely interrupts the reading, requiring that the student engage their comments, criticisms, and further questions throughout. During each eight-week term, a student will take one primary tutorial, which meets once per week, and one secondary tutorial, which meets once every other week, for a total of twelve papers per term.

Naturally, getting the reading lists promptly and fully understanding the expectations of our particular tutors is of great interest to us, since these will impinge greatly both on our grades and on our intellectual experiences whilst we are here. So I was deeply gratified when I met Dr. Jordan Bell in person on Tuesday. He is the Kant scholar with whom I will take a secondary tutorial this term and a primary tutorial next term, for one continuous, extended course in Kant’s critical philosophy.

When I first met Dr. Bell in the lobby of Regent’s Park College, he exuded a nervous energy of the most extraordinary scale. While climbing the single flight of stairs and walking the hallway to his office, he managed to greet me three times, mutter “very good, very good” completely out of any understandable context no less than four times, and drop his keys twice. I confess that the thought of working so closely with this man for so long did nothing for my nerves about the coursework, but when we reached his office I found him to be suddenly quite deliberate and organized, with an obvious passion for the subject matter. If I might hazard a guess, I would say that Dr. Bell is not merely interested in his studies, but that he takes solace in them as one might take solace in the company of a dear old friend.

He seems genuinely interested in pursuing the lines of inquiry that I find most engaging, and, to the end of empowering a lively discourse, he has given me a reasonable reading load and insisted that the essays I read are to be on the subjects of my choosing and in the mode of a discussion piece. Naturally, each essay must reflect good philosophical thought, clearly expressed, but Dr. Bell, much to my relief, sees them as merely a part of a holistic process of cooperative learning. And that is the type of intellectual companionship that I came here to find. It is perhaps too early to pass definitive judgment on the course to come, but I am genuinely enthused at the prospect of the courses ahead.

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*As it happens, just less than twice the length of this post.

Room Gallery

My room is in the very nice Hertford College Graduate Center, pictured (though that shot isn’t mine). My room is on the top floor, up a blue spiral staircase, and my hall and those immediately below it are populated primarily by fellow visiting students. The remainder of the building, as the name would suggest, provides housing to the college’s graduate student body. It has a nice courtyard, but it’s rather drab at the moment -I’ll leave off pictures of it until it gets dry and lively in the spring.

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A Journey

Sunday, January 12: Preparations

Packing was difficult. In a way, I didn’t really want to go. It seemed that I was being flung too quickly back into the world of independent adulthood, when I had only just begun to properly enjoy my vacation at home. But the promise held by a term abroad and the encouraging words of my father helped to repress any anxieties, and so pack I did.

It really is amazing how much stuff we use, or think we will use, in a five-month period. I think that it is human nature (or at least my nature) to over-prepare, especially when the expectations of my new environment remained somewhat opaque. As a result, I found my two suitcases perpetually overstuffed, and had to methodically triage first a second sweatshirt, then a half-dozen t-shirts, an extra pair of winter gloves, and unnecessary socks and underwear, and finally some excess khaki slacks. To keep them under their weight limits, I then balanced and re-balanced them before giving up and moving several of the denser items to my backpack. But these tokens of uncertainty finally wrestled into place, I was prepared, materially, at least, for the journey ahead. I loaded my luggage into the car, and, together, with my parents, set off for Sea-Tac airport.

My parents chose to park the car and help me haul my baggage to check in. The clerk managed to confuse me by trying to ask roundabout visa questions, like the date of my return flight, without actually telling me she wanted to know my visa status. (Since I will be in the UK for less than sixth months, I did not need one and so was able to avoid the ~$460 Tier 4 visa application fee.) But the confusion resolved quickly, and my parents watched me through security, giving one last wave goodbye as I collected my belongings from the x-ray line. I hopped the shuttle train to the S terminal and, 100 pages of casual reading later, found myself in the window seat of a taxiing 757.

As I lifted my gaze from the tarmac to the horizon, I was struck by the metaphorical resonance of leaving behind the solid and the known for the nebulous and new. True, on my landing I would step into structures long crafted and embellished, established centuries before the first Westerner arrived in the forests of my future birthplace; but those structures would be strange to me, my place in them as yet undetermined. I found myself absorbed not only in the desire to excel at Oxford, but also in the urge to leave some positive memory to the people I would meet there.

Monday, January 13: Travelling

The sentimentality did not last long, and I believe I shall avoid Icelandair where possible in the future. Some of the distractions were beyond their control: the gentleman next to me, for instance, felt entitled to substantially more space than his seat provided, and he was remarkably inattentive with his flying elbows during his frequent searches of the courier’s bag at his feet. But others were simply absurd. For an eight-hour international flight, no meal or snacks of any kind were served. A menu featuring some plain sliders, a poorly-appointed ham sandwich, and a chicken caesar salad for €10-12 a piece was included in each of our seat-back pockets, but I never saw food delivered, nor did anyone ever ask if I wanted any. After my initial confusion at the foodless passing of the drink cart (which came only once in that eight hours), I began to question whether it was worth calling an attendant to ask to be extorted over a snack. Eventually, I decided that some combination of reading, playing games, listening to music, and attempting to sleep would suffice.

I never did get to sleep, but the trip was a reminder of how remarkably productive a mind can be when it is made just uncomfortable enough to look for solutions but not uncomfortable enough to  give up. During those eight hours, I read the latter half of Colin Woodward’s American Nations (short review coming soon), listened through all of the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love, Dispatch’s Silent Steeples, and Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, dashed off a cheesy sonnet about the concrete smallness of the world, planned most of this blog post, and made a solid dent in “A Study in Scarlet”, the first story in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I have to confess that I was rather pleased with myself.

Of course, when I got off the plane, I was starving and exhausted, it being the very end of the day to my body and the tenth hour since I had last eaten anything. I rushed to the Reykjavik airport’s cafeteria to gulp down a pre-made roast beef sandwich.

A quick note on the Reykjavik airport might be in order, as it was both an exceptional place and a report, as far as I could give one, was requested in particular. It seems to be a relatively new structure, or at least recently renovated, I would say within the last decade at most. It has an industrial feel about it, with painted corrugated steel stairways and lots of glass and hard angles. The floor is almost entirely a light-brown, laminate wood that makes it look very much like a modern loft apartment out of a catalog or a design show. It was small, but far from tiny. I suspect that it handles mostly large aircraft bound for Europe and North America. And the people, at least the handful that I encountered, were exceedingly polite. When I missed the sign for my gate and ended up at passport control, the agent not only pointed me in the right direction, but offered to let me through to enjoy the shops and restaurants just outside the terminal. Having already seen the cafeteria across from my eventual gate, I declined, but his obviously earnestness was exceptionally pleasant in my exhausted state.

When I made it onto the plane, I played deductions about the people sitting around me and found that it’s rather hit-or-miss whether I can observe enough for the game to even be fun. But at any rate, I quickly drifted off to sleep, awaking two hours later to the announcement (in Icelandic, of course, and then English) that we had begun our descent.

I don’t want to get into the people that I have met tonight, since that seems a more fitting subject for a later post on how the week develops. Suffice it to say that I made it through customs and passport control unscathed, found the bus into Oxford, and got a taxi to take me first to the college, and then to my lodging some three-quarters of a mile away. Quick shout outs, however, to Jamie and Carol, the two current Hertford students who showed us visitors around, and James, a recent graduate and Carol’s boyfriend, who tagged along for the fun. Pictures of my room will be up later tonight.

P.S. For those who wanted to know my mailing address while I’m here, it is

Griffin Olmstead
Visiting Student Programme
International Programmes
Hertford College
Catte Street
Oxford
OX1 3BW
UK

Please remember, though, that there is a six-week window from March 14 until April 24 when I will be traveling and unable to receive anything by mail. If you want to get in touch otherwise, the easiest way is via email – you can reach me at griffin.olmstead@hertford.ox.ac.uk. We can arrange to video-conference or voice call over Skype or FaceTime from there, if needed.