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.