Tutorials

If you want to know what classes are like in Oxford first you have to forget about classes completely. You can’t even call it school (literally). When someone say’s they are going to school, it means they attend elementary through high school. When someone is doing undergraduate or graduate work it’s called University.There are few classes in Oxford. There are lectures throughout the week… that are completely optional for most people. For chemistry majors here lectures are a must.  I attend three lectures a week (soon to be five). These are held in the science building for me, which is about a 45-minute walk from home but in almost the opposite direction of Magdalen College. There are required lectures in each subject for each year of study. For most other majors lectures are completely optional and so far I don’t know very many OSAP students who have been told to go to any lectures at all. All lectures on campus are open to everyone in the college. There are lecture schedules in every library and I frequently look up lectures in various subjects for the week in case I’m interested in anything outside of chemistry. There are going to be a few lectures on Shakespeare that I may attend later in the term.

Instead of classes, students learn through tutorials. A tutorial is a one-on-one hour-long meeting between a student and their don. There are both primary and secondary tutorials. A primary tutorial meets once a week for all eight weeks of the term. A secondary meets four out of the eight weeks of the term, typically every other week. Most of the OSAP students are taking one primary and one secondary but some are taking three secondaries. My primary is physical chemistry and my secondary is Literature: Shakespeare.

For most tutorials (including my Shakespeare one) a student writes an essay for each meeting. For mine I write an eight to ten page paper every two weeks. My essays are comparative essays between the plays he has me read. I have already done this for Romeo and Juliet compared to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not I am working on comparing As You Like It with Twelfth Night. When I go to my tutorial I take two copies of my essay. I read my essay out loud to Dr. Ed Clark and he will stop me at any point that he would like to discuss along the way. At then end we discuss the overall paper and other points I could have made in the essay.

For chemistry and other more math-based subjects the tutorial is a bit different. The “essays” I write are actually more like notes for myself. Dr. Jacobs gives me an outline with specific points I need to know and equations I need to derive. Then I read the chapters of the books and I basically type my note on the things he asked about. I turn in my paper one day before my tutorial so he can read over it and pan what we are going to talk about. He marks all over it with his red marker and we talk about what I don’t understand or what could be much stronger. Some weeks rather that this essay type assignment I have problems to work on. He gives me eight problems to do and then we discuss them in the next tutorial. In this case I do not have to turn them in a day early. He typically gives me four problems I can do just fine and four that he thinks are particularly challenging. So far I have had two assignments like this and I’ve been eight for eight on the “easy” problems and about one for eight on the hard ones. He says that’s about how he expects it. He assigns very difficult problems to help to expand my knowledge and so we have something to talk about during the tutorial.

All in all the tutorials are quite informal. Some people meet with their dons in cafes over tea or even in pubs over a pint. Many times the direction of more art-based tutorials (such as Shakespeare) are designed by the student (with some help and guidance from the don). Dr. Clark asked me in my last tutorial if I would like to study the histories for a week or do two weeks studying tragedies. He also asked me what I had already read and if I would like to read them again and study them differently or study new plays altogether. For my physical chemistry tutorial the path is also somewhat directed by me. I told Dr. Jacobs what I need to know in order to stay on course in my classes at Otterbein and he has designed the course to move in that direction. I also told him that I am particularly interested in photochemistry, due to my research, and he said we could spend a week or two studying that as well.

All in all I enjoy this new system of learning very much. It’s a completely different experience from learning in the states and I like it that way.