Day Twenty Eight

October 27

This weekend I went to Wales with Zoya and Vanessa. It was a ton of fun! We left super early on Saturday morning for a five-hour bus ride to Cardiff Wales. We walked around Cardiff City Center for a while. Saw Cardiff castle, which is pretty much amazing. The city center was mostly pubs and clubs and shopping, not a lot of sightseeing opportunities. After we got our fill of the city center we walked about two miles to Cardiff Bay. This is the major tourist attraction of Cardiff.

The bay was beautiful. We could see hills off in the distance across the bay, which was full of sailboats. The atmosphere of the area was wonderful, it was a very laid back sort of feel. We walked all around the bay. The area around the bay is full interesting buildings and artwork depicting events from and scenes of the bay. We stopped at a small market and tried just about everything they had to offer there. We had home made Welsh cakes, home made goat cheese, and homemade fudge. The fudge was also made with goat cheese. We wound up getting a small package of chocolate fudge to share. It was absolutely delicious.

Sometime late in the afternoon we noticed a tugboat pulling a ship into a small inland area used for docking larger ships. It turned out that the tugboat was pulling a navy ship into port. It was really cool. We stayed and watched the ship coming in for about an hour. After that we went in search of dinner. Everything was really expensive so we decided to go to the supermarket. We all bought a baguette and we got some cold pasta and chicken salads to put on the bread. We also got a package of Welsh cakes. The dinner turned out to be very good.

After eating we walked back into the city center and checked bus times. Gareth, who lives across the hall from me, lives very near Cardiff with his brother. He offered his house to us for the weekend and gave us a key. He said his brother should be there and that he would warn his brother we were coming. We decided to take the last train out at 9:15. We called Gareth and he let his friends know when to pick us up from the train station in Pontyclun (where he lives). We bought our train tickets and then wondered around in the nightlife of Cardiff.

There were tons of people out going to the club for the night. We say one large group of people who were apparently going to a Halloween party. All of them were dressed in crazy costumes. We say a Fred Flintstone, Shaggy, Scooby, and a guy dressed in a slutty nurse outfit. We had about an hour until our train so we just walked around the city and took pictures.

We got on the train at 9:15 and it was only a 20 min train ride to Pontyclun. At the train station two of his friends picked us up and drove us to Gareth’s house. His brother was home so we talked with him a lot about our day and he told us a lot about Wales. The village the live in is really small and everyone pretty much knows everyone else. He said he would show us around the village in the morning. We stayed up really late talking about Wales. Vanessa had a lot of questions. We mostly wound up talking about politics It really is a very popular subject here.

On Sunday we got up at nine and left the house around ten to tour Pontyclun. He took us to the local rugby club. This is the main hang out spot in Pontyclun. He said normally on a Sunday morning there would have been two rugby games going on outside and there would be a lot of people there watching. It was pouring rain outside so the place was pretty much abandoned. It was still really cool. There is a lot of rugby history on those walls. They had a picture from the late 1800’s of a famous rugby player.

After the rugby club we went to the local shopping center. We wandered around Borders and a couple clothes shops. I bought the complete works of Shakespeare. It was only six pounds! I couldn’t pass it up. Then he took us back to the train station so we could get back to Cardiff to catch our bus.

We had some time in Cardiff so we went souvenir shopping I bought some postcards. I love postcards and I get them everywhere. We stopped at a pub for lunch and then got on the bus back home. I had a really good time all weekend. It wasn’t a major tourist area and the atmosphere was very laid back and relaxing. It was a nice get away from all the school work in Oxford.

A Little History of New College

All of my information is from the New College website and can be found at http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/index.php

Officially titled “the New College of St. Mary,” New College was founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham. William of Wykeham (ca 1320-1404) was Bishop of Winchester and served as Chancellor of England. Basically he was the prime minister of the time. He felt that the young men of the day could not represent the church and state as he had and he built New College to educate humble and talented young men for this purpose. At the time this was highly necessary as the recent black plague had struck the area hard and was particularly hard on the clergy. He chose the site as a way of ridding the city of the prostitute service that had given the area a bad reputation. With the idea and a site to begin it on Richard II gave him a guarantee that this college could be built without problems.

New College, like most Oxford colleges, was a religious foundation. The Chapel remains a focal point in the lives of many of its members, both spiritually and musically. The chapel choir has an international reputation. During term there is a full Choral service every night except Wednesday and the weekend services attract many outside visitors. The tradition of this choir goes back to the founding of the college and today the choir is internationally recognized. The Choir became a crucial part of the BBC’s religious programming during the Second War. They did regular broadcasts from the College Chapel and became a symbol for excellence within the domain of sacred music, a role it has continued to play within the nation’s life.

When founded, the College was new in several ways. It was the first college for undergraduates. It was the first college in which the senior members had tutorial responsibility for undergraduates. And it was the first college to be designed around the now familiar quadrangle plan. The front quadrangle, dining hall, chapel and cloisters were built within a few years of the College's foundation. 

Over time some reconstruction and much new building has taken place. In the 19th century there was an expansion of rooms for undergraduate students, and in the 1960s a new building for graduate students was added to the main site. More recently, the original Morris Garages, which are within the College's perimeter, have been converted to provide attractive undergraduate accommodation. In 1995 a new residential building for graduates was opened on the Sports Ground site, five minutes walk from the main College.

For the first century, it lived up to its founder's hopes, producing excellent scholars, and several bishops and archbishops. The college survived the Reformation, but with the intellectual heart taken out of it, and until the middle of the 19th century produced not much more than a long succession of comfortable country parsons. In 1850, there were barely twenty undergraduates in residence. Quickly however, the college reacted to the reforms of the 1850s by expanding in size, raising intellectual standards, and matching reform-minded Balliol for willingness to imagine a different world. By 1873, there were 275 undergraduates on the books. By the First World War, New College was one of the top three or four colleges academically. In the First World War, this reputation took its toll as New College lost more members killed in action than any college but Christ Church.

Like all Oxford colleges New College is an autonomous, self-governing institution. The governing body consists of the Warden (the head of the College) and Fellows as well as representative undergraduate and graduate students represented. Most Fellows of the College are both College Tutors and University Lecturers in the subjects that are taught here.

There are currently 400 undergraduate and 200 graduate students studying at New College. There is a great sense of community within the College walls, with students making friends across subjects and year groups. Unlike many colleges in Oxford most students at New College actually live within the college walls. 

Because of this college life becomes a big part of their University experience. Most students in New College live, work, eat, and socialize inside the college. All undergraduates are members of the Junior Common Room (JCR), and graduates members of the Middle Common Room (MCR). Committees elected each year by their students run the JCR and MCR. These committees are responsible for looking after the JCR facilities, organizing social events, and communicating the views and needs of the students to the governing body of the College. The JCR is also the route by which the students keep in touch with the University Students Union and the National Union of Students. Regular JCR meetings give all undergraduates the opportunity to express their views and concerns on life in the College.

New College is fortunate also has its own sports ground and pavilion five minutes’ walk away from the main College site There are fields for rugby, football (soccer), hockey, netball (similar to basketball) and basketball. In the summer there is a cricket field and grass and hard courts for tennis. The sports pavilion is home to two squash courts, changing room facilities and bar. The College also owns a boathouse on the banks of the Thames, along with a number of College punts, which are available for student use in the summer term. During warmer weather there are also magnificent gardens to relax and study in.

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.

Oxford Campus

In the states a person would typically ask for a tour of campus, in my case a tour of Oxford’s campus. Well that would be a complicated feat. There are 44 colleges within the University of Oxford (my college is New College). Each college is a college in it’s own right and could stand on it’s own as a college. It has it's own place in town with a wall around it's land, and each college has it's own library, pub, dining hall, dorms, faculty and staff. The colleges are very exclusive. At the door to every college is a porter whose job is to keep the "public" out. Only staff and students associated with that particular college have full access to the grounds. It’s not really too difficult to get into a building where you don’t belong, just walk in like you know what your doing and you won’t get stopped most of the time. They do try though. Each college is walled in with only one or two entrances that are always looked after.

Members are very proud of their colleges. New College was used in the filming of Harry Potter, one thing I am proud of for sure. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, there is a scene where the fake Mad-Eye Moody turns Malfoy into a ferret. The cloisters of New College were used for that very scene. 

Cloisters are a square of buildings usually with big open windows with no glass and a big grassy sort of courtyard in the center. The plan for New College actually did not include cloisters originally. The architect however decided that is everyone else was going to have them he wanted them too. He added them in right in front of the chapel blocking the main door. You can no longer go into the chapel through the original from door because of the cloisters!

While each college does have it’s own dorms few people actually live within their college walls. The majority of people live outside of the center of Oxford and commute into the city. I live about a 20-minute walk from the center of the city and about 30 minutes from New College, but this is actually a typical walk for anyone in Oxford. Not only that, there are over 100 libraries in the city that any student may need to go to and the tutors (dons) do not necessarily hold their tutorials inside the college. One of my dons works at Magdalen College and we have our tutorials there. Magdalen is on the other side of Oxford and is about a 45-minute walk from my flat. They have a deer park at Magdalen and sometime I like to go early to watch the deer. 

It’s really amazing. My other has his tutorials at him home very near my flat. I don’t actually know what college he is faculty for.

Day twenty-four

October 23

First of all I can’t believe I have only been here for 24 days. The time has flown by but also feel like I’ve been here much longer than that. It almost feels like home already, although I also can’t wait to come home. I miss my family and friends a lot, as well as Otterbein.

Today Rebecca, Andrea and I ate at the New College dinning hall for the first time. The food was actually pretty good. It also wasn’t too expensive. Were probably going to be eating there much more often now, especially for lunch. It’s so convenient and it’s cheap!

Day twenty-three

October 22

Day twenty-three

Today I had my first tutorial with Dr. Ed Clark on Shakespeare. I brought two copied of my paper and we sat in his office to go over it. He had me read the paper out loud to him and he would stop me so we could talk about some of the points. He actually didn’t stop me very much he mostly said “good” and “great point” and things like that. When I got to the end he said I had done a very good job. He said I clearly read the text closely and he liked my examination of the plots together.

After I finished reading we talked about other angles I could have compared the two from. I did a very in depth examination of the plots that he sad he liked. We also talked about the passage of time in the play. We also talked about symbols and motifs in both of them. I think I’m going to write a few more paragraphs on the things we talked about just for my own use because I found our discussion very interesting.

After my tutorial I came home and then all of us from Venneit Close walked over to the St. Giles house. Today was Jesse’s birthday and they were having a party. It was a really fun night! It was awesome to catch up with everyone from OSAP after the first couple weeks of classes. It was also a very nice break from working every day. 

Jesse and I :-)

Day twenty-two

October 21

Today I had another lecture. This one was about thermodynamics and was given by Dr. NJB Green. He was a very interesting person. He has some very strong and not so nice opinions about Americans. I was humored more than offended but I think I’m going to go chat with I’m sometime.

After the lecture I went to the library again to finish working on my problems for physical chemistry. I had a tutorial at two and about three hours to work. I’ve been working on them all week and was just hoping I could figure out a few more of the things that had been giving me trouble.

When I got to my tutorial I had the problems all started at least but I hadn’t finished three of them (there were eight). I was worried but I had no idea what to do for them. After going over all of them Dr. Jacobs said I actually did a very good job. He said he purposely assigns some very hard problems so we have things to talk about and I can learn more. He said I did a good job starting the problems and he pushed me in the right direction to finish them off. I’m going to try again so we can go over the problems again next week.