Pictures!

Since the only request I've received from my readers has been "Ooh. More library photos, please!", I've decided to oblige. For those of you curious as to what Oxford (or at least some of it) looks like, here are a number of photos:

We'll start with Jesus College:

The front entrance of Jesus College from within

Although you may have a mental image of Jesus as being quite large and expansive from this photo, it's actually one of the smaller Oxford colleges in terms of both physical size and population.

The front entrance from Turl Street

For comparison: the front of Balliol, a neighboring college

Like every college, Jesus College obviously has its own on-site library, open for its students 24/7:

A very limited view of the Upper Gallery as seen from above

Jesus' library features many snug alcoves where people can literally bury themselves in work.

Also of note though before we continue: Jesus College has a rather nice dining hall:

Moving on from Jesus College though, we exit out the side entrance onto Ship Street:

Possibly so named because they once sold sheep here.

There's not too much excitement on Ship Street, but if you look way to the back of that last picture:

Zoom!

That road all the way back there on the right behind the cyclist and with the white van is the path to the Oxford Union. All in all, it's pretty much just three minutes away from college, which is rather convenient. Also down that way, we have the much busier Cornmarket Street:

Possibly so named because they once sold corn here.

On this street, you can find pretty much anything, including sushi and fast food, Starbucks, British chains like Boots and WH Smith, as well as the local department store, Boswells of Oxford. You can even find a nearly thousand-year-old building:

Saxon Tower of St. Michael at the North Gate, built in 1040

 Cut across Cornmarket Street from Ship Street, and you'll end up at the Union.

The Union

Which has a very nice courtyard:

The Courtyard

And a rather respectable library of its own:

The Library - The Goodman Library to be precise

Hang on, make that two libraries:

The Old Library

Gotta love those Pre-Raphaelite murals

Next stop, we're turning around and heading back the other way, past Jesus College and to Radcliffe Square, where you can find the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin:

There are even more spires on the front of the church

Notably, C.S. Lewis - author of The Chronicles of Narnia - attended services and gave at least one sermon at this church. In fact, from what I've heard - although this is unconfirmed - C.S. Lewis would always exit the church from this side door:

Whereupon he would see this door right in front of him across St. Mary's Passage:

Which if you look closely...

Has a lion's face on it

And is flanked by...

A faun on either side

And then you turn down the passage and see...

A lamppost

A lion, two fauns, and a lamppost, right outside of C.S. Lewis' church in Oxford. Pretty interesting coincidence! If you see that large domed building behind the lamppost though, that's the next stop on our little tour here.

That is a nice dome.

Earlier I mentioned that we're in Radcliffe Square here, so predictably that building is the Radcliffe Camera. Inside, there are quite a lot of books on English, history, and theology as well as a number of private study areas.

And some fancy arches

And of course the nice dome

Lastly, I ventured through the underground passageway known as the Gladstone Link from the Radcliffe Camera to the Bodleian Library, the central research library in Oxford. Most of the Bodleian is actually surprisingly modern looking, but after a bit of exploration I located Duke Humphrey's Library.

Duke Humphrey's Library is the oldest reading room in the Bodleian Library, dating back to around 1450, and it houses mostly maps, music, and rare books from before 1641, including numerous medieval texts.

You may know it better as the library from Harry Potter. No, actually.

Anyway, that concludes my brief, photo-tour of the interesting bits of Oxford that happen to be really close to me. If anyone has any questions or wants any further information about anything seen here, feel free to post a comment or send me a message via Facebook or e-mail. To my fellow Oxford students: if you have not checked out the Radcliffe Camera or the Bodleian Library yet, I would highly recommend that you do so before the end of term, they are something magnificent.

Oh, but lastly, yet another shout-out to the sweetest girl in the world, Rachel, for keeping me well-supplied with Goldfish during my time here abroad.

For the Brits: not actual goldfish, they're just cheesy crackers

Coursework: Or, Why I Haven't Posted for the Past Twelve Days

Hello everybody! Again, apologies for not posting in such a long time, but believe it or not I am now more than halfway through my first term at Oxford, which more or less translates to "Okay, now it's time to start working for real." As such, it's been proving increasingly difficult to find spare time for any activities outside of my set coursework, let alone maintaining an active blog of my experiences. However, I did say at the onset that I would simply post as often as my schedule permitted, so for the time being I shall continue to be just that and I remain optimistic about posting somewhat regularly in the future.

List of just some of the many things that need doing.

Taking advantage of my presently intense workload though, I've decided to write this post on exactly what I'm studying here at Oxford University and how precisely I've gone about studying it thus far. While I realize that this will not be an especially interesting subject for some - specifically my fellow Oxford students who have taken to reading this blog -, I believe that at least some of my American friends and most of my family will be curious about the particulars of my academic work. If you are part of that former group who do not wish to hear about reading lists, tutorials, lectures, and libraries, then please feel free to skip this post; I promise my next one will be more generally appealing.

For my remaining audience: as you may already know, I am pursuing a three-year course of study here at Oxford known as PPE, which stands for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Given that these three subjects cover an enormous breadth of knowledge, students take Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Politics, and Introduction to Economics in their first year and then typically drop one of the three branches in order to specialize in the remaining two. In the following two years, PPEists then select eight courses - some mandatory "core papers" and others optional - which they will then be tested on at the end of their third year in one insane week of exams that will form the sole official basis for their degree. For more information, those intrigued by the minutia of academic curriculum or just interested in PPE in general can find more information here.

Focusing in on my study of PPE, at Jesus College, we study two of the three branches each term, starting with Philosophy and Economics - or more specifically Moral Philosophy, Introduction to Logic, and Introduction to Microeconomics. However, given that the colleges' schedules for study differ completely from one another, the University offers the lectures for all aspects of all three branches at the same time, meaning that for any given week we have lectures for eight different subjects within those three fields. Aside from lectures, we also have weekly classes in logic:

This is beginning to make sense.

Weekly classes or tutorials in economics:

These are cost curves. Even our lecturer admitted that they are tiresome and tedious.

And biweekly tutorials on moral philosophy:

PPEists quickly learn that this statement makes a lot of philosophers quite upset.

Numerous readings, exercises, and occasional essays are assigned for each of these meetings to such a degree that there is always more to read and more to know on any particular topic. To clarify: classes - such as those for logic and the math-oriented bits of economics - consist only of nine or ten students, while tutorials consist of a mere four students for economics and two for moral philosophy.

In order to explain what a tutorial exactly is, I'll detail the example of my biweekly moral philosophy tutorial. For the two weeks beforehand, I go about collecting the many books and articles on the reading list for next tutorial from Oxford's numerous libraries and surprisingly extensive online journal and e-book collection. Then, I attempt to read as much as possible and somehow refine all of this information into an essay in response to some given, open-ended question such as, "Does Mill succeed in proving utilitarianism?" or "What kind of Utilitarian is Mill? Is there a better version of Utilitarianism?" All very exciting stuff without a doubt.

Both my tutorial partner and I submit our essays the day before, and one of us presents our essay the next day, usually just by reading it aloud and taking questions. After the presentation, the professor - Dr. Levy - then leads a discussion about some of the topics present in the essay pertinent to the question at hand. As I've mentioned to many, the tutorial system was one of the main reasons I decided to attend Oxford over an American university, and I can already safely say that I very much prefer this method of teaching.

Well, that about wraps up my description of my studies in PPE thus far. In other news: last Thursday I gave a brief speech during a debate at the Oxford Union, this past weekend I acted as a judge for the Oxford Intervarsity Debating Competition, and the Library Committee and Role-Playing Game Society continue to be as exciting as ever. Doubtless these events and activities shall feature more in future posts. But until then: I'm gonna get some much-needed sleep in preparation for another day of tough, yet greatly satisfying work tomorrow.

The Oxford Union

Apologies for not posting earlier everyone; I don't know where the past week went to be entirely honest. From my first tutorial and beginning my study of German to yet another week of lectures, logic, and non-academic activities, things have been rather hectic. For this post though, I want to focus on a particular part of my experience thus far: the Oxford Union.

The Debating Chamber. It's like a mini-Parliament.

For those of you not familiar with the Oxford Union, it is a debating society that - predictably - primarily consists of members of Oxford University. Although it does indeed field a strong competitive debating team, the Oxford Union is far better known for the huge variety of famous speakers that it hosts every term as well as its Formal Thursday Debates. To drop some names briefly: this term's guests include Billy Joel, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Buzz Aldrin, and Jesse Jackson, amongst many, many others. In fact, I just got back from seeing Hamid Karzai a couple of hours before this post.

Hi Hamid!

As one might expect, he talked about the great progress that Afghanistan has made in the past ten years during his presidency, and then proceeded to take numerous questions from the audience. Though I'm perhaps not quite as informed about Afghanistan as I ought to be, I took quite a liking to him over the course of his speech. He spoke in a very practical, methodical, and intelligent manner, going through each specific policy area and citing statistics on how each has improved dramatically in the past decade. In this way, despite the many problems that undoubtedly still plague his country, President Karzai rather effectively communicated a reasonable optimism in his nation's future. But enough about that.

In addition to such illustrious speakers, the Oxford Union also holds weekly formal debates on Thursday, where prominent political and societal figures debate motions such as "This House Has No Confidence in Her Majesty's Government" or "This House Believes Religion Harms Society." In addition to speeches from members of Parliament, chief business people, and other prominent persons relevant to the debate, members of the Union themselves can give speak from the floor. Regrettably, I have yet do so.

Nonetheless, I have attended and thoroughly enjoyed all of these debates so far. Of particular note, last night's debate was on the motion "This House Believes University Education is a Right, Not a Privilege." When the last speaker for the proposition - Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts - took a point of information (read: question) from the audience, it turned out that the person he had called on had some rather strong views about his policies. Specifically, strong views that he felt the need to shout rather loudly and aggressively, in conjunction with a large, obscene banner hung from the gallery by two accomplices.

Specifically, this banner. Click for context.

So that's fun.

Even though I've yet to speak at one of these formal debates, I am still doing my best to get involved in the Oxford Union, as it is obviously a very interesting and entertaining society. To that end, I have been attending its debating workshops on Sunday evenings, from which I have learned that competitive debating in the UK is very very different from anything I have ever done before. I won't explain the intricacies of the British Parliamentary debate format here, but suffice it to say that I have no idea what I'm doing and if you want to know more, you can drop a comment or send me a message.

But in addition to slowly exploring the world of competitive debating, I have also joined up with the Library Committee of the Union as a junior member. Essentially, we meet on Mondays and decide what books to buy for and withdraw from the Oxford Union Society Library.

It is a very nice library.

Well, as you might have guessed by my increasing brevity, this post has already exceeded the time and space I had allotted it, so I must now draw it to a close. As always, feedback, questions, and comments are very much appreciated. Till next time, this House is adjourned.

The First Couple Weeks

It’s certainly been a busy couple of weeks. I had intended to post earlier, honestly, but unfortunately circumstances conspired to fill the time I had budgeted for writing to be filled with numerous events and a great deal of schoolwork. On the positive side though, this has given me a great deal to write about over the next several days, so let’s get right to it.

I suppose to start I ought to give some description of where I actually am and how I got here. Well, way back at the start of October, my father and I flew over from Chicago to London to spend the week touring around and preparing to move me into Jesus College at Oxford.

The Front Entrance of Jesus, as seen from within

After arriving in Oxford, my dad and I trekked down to the center of the city with suitcases in tow in order to begin moving my stuff to where I'd be studying for the next three years. Now I had been assigned a room in the infamous "Staircase 18" of Jesus College, where many of my fellow freshers had stayed for their interviews.

On the left, the dreaded Staircase 18

However, upon arriving, I was very pleasantly surprised; apparently over the summer they had completely renovated the building, so my room actually now looks like this:

Not so dreadful. I even have a bathroom!

As eager as I was to start my course though, the week prior to the start of term was Freshers Week, an incredibly overwhelming period of meeting new people, learning new things, and nightly outings to various clubs and drinking establishments. Those of you who know me will have already correctly assumed that I did not participate in much of the last activity. Before too long though, it was time to actually start college and given the heavily abbreviated schedule of Oxford terms compared to American semesters, that meant a lot of work very quickly.

Apparently at the end of eight weeks, this will make sense

This term, I'm studying the Philosophy and Economics portions of my PPE (second P for Politics) course, which has so far entailed Logic, Moral Philosophy, Math, and Microeconomics. Once math class ends after a couple of weeks, my schedule will consist entirely of lectures with hundreds of students and tutorials with just two or three. In fact, I just had my first tutorial today, and without getting too much into it, I can say that it was a rather engaging academic experience.

But fortunately, my course has proven rather enjoyable thus far, and there's been a fair amount of time available for fun outside of classes. I've been exploring a lot of different clubs and societies - such as the Oxford Union, the Liberal Democrats, the Role-Playing Game Society, and the eSports Society - that will certainly be detailed further in later posts as my interests develop.

In other news, I've now matriculated both to Jesus College and Oxford University, which involved two separate ceremonies featuring dressing up and Latin. In fact, for the University matriculation, we had to wear academic dress, which for undergraduate men is essentially a suit with a cape-like thing.

The PPEists of Jesus College, Class of 2016.

I do hope to post more often in the future, so again, if anyone wants to see me write about anything in particular, just leave me a comment. Lastly, to conclude, I want to give a shout-out to my girlfriend, Rachel, for sending me this awesome picture of us in China.

Miss you, Rachel!

Statement of Intent

Usually when I told someone that I was going to Oxford University for college, the typical reaction consisted of something along the lines of “Wow! That’s different.” At least with American universities, people knew what to expect: a year or two of general education, followed by a year or two of a major, hopefully accompanied by some extracurricular activities and friendships with students from across the United States.

With Oxford, people didn’t know what to expect. And even with the resources I had at my disposal, I didn’t know what to expect. Heck, I’m one week into this and I still only have a vague idea of what to expect over the course of the next three years.

Going back to those “college conversations” with friends, family, and teachers though, after extracting what information they could from my limited knowledge of Oxford, they’d inevitably tell me: “Well, you simply must let us know how that goes.”

And so I first came up with the idea for this blog, as a chance to document a rather distinct college experience that not too many people are familiar with and share it with anyone interested. My hope is that this blog will not only give me the opportunity to keep everyone back home updated as to my goings-on, but also to possibly provide a glimpse into Oxford life for anyone else who might consider making the same journey across the pond.

Given the aforementioned uncertainty of the weeks to come, I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post here, nor do I yet have a fixed idea of what exactly I’ll be writing about. As such, I’d immensely appreciate any feedback from anyone reading. If you’d like to see me write about something in particular or if you have any specific questions, leave a comment on the post!

All in all, I’m very much looking forward to all the wonderful experiences that lie before me here at Oxford University and I’m quite excited to be able to share them all with you.