A Non-England Post

I know I haven't been posting nearly enough about England to warrant posting something not about England, but this event can't fly under the radar:

World Book Night is an amazing opportunity to spread the love of books that I'm assuming you all have to others. Basically, you send in a little application about why you want to get involved, and if you are accepted they give you twenty books to give out to light or non-readers on April 23rd to promote reading. This is a wonderful wonderful cause and I am definitely signing myself up and if you're an avid reader I think you should too. We all know what it was like to read that first book that really got to us, that made us the literary lovers that we are today. Why not share that moment with someone else?

Check out their website, this is definitely a cause worth involving yourself with:

worldbooknight.org

Cheers! (I'll try to get some more Oxford posts up sometime soon, just haven't had much time or energy to do it)

I'm very bad at this posting thing

Besides my inability to keep up with this blog in general, the internet in our flat has been downright non-existent, so I apologize for anyone checking this to find that it looks just the same as they last saw it. Let me try to think of what I can tell you about...

This past Sunday the program took us on a bus trip into London for the day which consisted of a little bus tour around the city followed by a walking tour to see places like Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and a few other major sights. We also went to the War Rooms and Churchill Museum which was absolutely fascinating. What an amazing time warp into history, the museum did an incredible job both preserving what was left of the shelter and recreating what wasn't. You couldn't help but feel all of the history in that place. Not to mention Churchill is a fascinating man. I really enjoyed that trip.

Tuesday my first Oxford essay was due, a paper on perception, deception, and disguise in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Tuesday was also the day of my first Oxford 'A'! Haha it's a very interesting system here. Besides the whole one on one tutorial, basically an independent study method, when you meet with your tutor the session basically consists of them reading your paper aloud to you and commenting on it as they go. So you hear the professor struggling with sentences that never managed to come together quite right, you see him approving of some ideas and flinching at others, it's a very intimidating process. But I'm one of the biggest proponents of reading your paper aloud as an editing technique, so after I got over the initial shock of the method I fell right into place, bringing up points that I liked in the research, things that struck me that maybe I didn't use, etc.

I am now preparing an essay due tomorrow on Seamus Heaney's poem "Personal Helicon" in which I'm talking about binarism. I know this is all very exciting to you, but trust me these are the highlights of my days.

Also, yesterday I emailed the Bodleian's "Ask a Librarian" service to see if I could possibly meet someone to talk about their system, maybe even go on a little tour, and I got a response from someone asking how long I would be here so they could match me up with someone to speak with, so I'll let you know if anything comes into fruition from that! My Shakespeare tutor suggested I try to get in touch with someone here when I told him my interest, and hearing him say that after I had been thinking and debating about it definitely set me into motion.

This weekend there are no travel plans, but that's okay because I'll have lots of work to do anyway. I also want to check out a few bookshops around here and hopefully take some more pictures. (Oh yea, sorry about pictures. I haven't been taking my camera out. And when I do I have been using my film camera mostly. I'll try to bring myself to take the digital camera out this weekend)

Cheers!

A Brief Recap...

Alright since I can't focus on my reading here is an attempt to do a brief recap of what I've done so far in my first week in Oxford.

The OSAP program is pretty incredibly in setting you up with a good introduction to the city and school. Most of the first week was spent in lectures and on tours, everything from an introduction to British Customs and Mores, to a walking tour of Oxford, to a lecture on Architecture. All of the speakers were incredibly engaging and remarkable people. So some highlights from the orientation:

1) They broke us up into three groups and sent us off with tour guides on a walking tour of Oxford at night. Our tour guide, Laura, was an older woman who I assume is a resident of Oxford. She was just so comforting to listen to. She seemed to know just about everything about Oxford, from the history of the university, to the architecture, to the local scene. She told us a bit about places that we should definitely see while in Oxford and really made me feel more comfortable about exploring the city on my own.

2) One of our first days here we were inducted into the Bodleian Library, which is the University's major research library. It houses over 11 million volumes, most of which are stored underground as well as in a facility in a neighboring town. Besides the manuscripts and archives, any book published in Britain must send a copy to the Bodleian to be cataloged in their holdings. It's not a lending library, its strictly reference, and since many of those books are stored elsewhere you may need to put in requests for books to be drawn up for your use, but just to have that wealth of information essentially at your fingertips is remarkable. As part of the induction, we had to recite an oath drawn up at the inception of the institution. The benefactor, Bodleian, was paranoid about the destruction of the books, which is why there is no lending, as well as why originally, when there was no electricity, the library closed when the sun set (no open flames or gas lamps to risk a fire!) We performed the induction ceremony in the Convocation House, which is a beautiful meeting hall where English Parliament met during Charles II's reign. This whole place is just filled with so much history, you can't help but feel overwhelmed by it all.

3) The following day we were introduced to our individual colleges. Oxford University is broken down into somewhere around 42 individual colleges. I am assigned to New College, one of the oldest in the University. The grounds and buildings are absolutely beautiful. We had a tour of the campus as well as a tour of the library and how their library works. I will definitely be spending a lot of time there.

That weekend we had a free weekend to do as we pleased within the city. On Saturday I went to the Ashmolean Museum which is an incredibly museum of natural history. Five floors of everything from Ancient Egypt, to Rome and Greece, to Renaissance to art, and everything in between and beyond. I spent nearly four hours in there, and I probably could have spent even more, it was remarkable. I believe I'll be going back some time soon.

The next day I went to the Museum of the History of Science, which features scientific instruments throughout the ages. Though I am not a science minded person, this museum was absolutely fascinating. Just the care and detail that went into the construction of the accuracy of the instrument as well as the aesthetics of it is mind blowing. They had a special exhibit going on called "Time Travelers" which was all about the evolution of time, from the sundial to clocks to our digital interfaces now. It was absolutely phenomenal. Such an amazing place, and just down the road from where we live and where we study.

Since then, I've just been doing some reading for my tutorials and preparing for my first papers. My primary tutorial, which meets once a week for eight weeks, is on Shakespeare, and me and my tutor decided to focus on Shakespearean comedies which I am looking forward to. I feel like I haven't done much Shakespeare in general, but the comedies in particular are not often studied in the states, so I think this will be a cool perspective. So for my first paper I'm reading The Taming of the Shrew and discussing the ideas of perception and deception. Then my second tutorial meets once every other week for four weeks, and that will be on Contemporary British Literature. Since we meet less my tutor has already assigned me to read the poetry of Seamus Heaney (whom I LOVE) and to write an explication on one of his poems of my choice. The structure of the courses here is intimidating, but also incredibly exhilarating. They're basically our equivalent to independent studies, except I get to do two of them. I just hope I can handle all of the reading and work!

Errr this is a rather long post and I hate to bore you with all of these details (all at once at least) so I'll leave it at that for now and try to keep future posts shorter and more interesting. Hopefully there will be some pictures to come, too. Haven't really taken the time to take my camera out yet, but hopefully this weekend will change that (in between working on my papers, of course)

Cheers!

You may see a slight change in my title up there. Well, that's because for the next three months I will be studying at Oxford  University. A few friends and family were suggesting I maintain a blog about my experiences. At first I planned on starting an entirely new blog, but then I thought, this translates so well into my library science interests! Many people go into study abroad approaching it as a life experience: to travel, to see the world, to party. Yes, all of those things are important elements to this opportunity, but for me, this is all about the education (I say that as I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose).

That being said, for the next three months this blog is going to become a mix of my travel experiences and my academic ones, especially since there are no better libraries than the ones that I now have access to here in Oxford. I'm still going to try to keep some outside library news coming through the feed as well, but I want this to become a hub of my interests and experiences while I'm staying in England.

So hold tight! This is going to be a bumpy (and interesting) ride!

But for now, I have some Shakespeare to read. I'll try to post sometime this week with a little recap of what has happened so far on my semester abroad.