"Welcome to Oxford: Where Your Best is Never Good Enough." Orientation commenced with the program staff reiterating these exact words over and over to us.

So you might assume that I haven't updated since I got here because I've been busy, but it's really just because I've been excessively angsty and didn't figure my posts would be all too positive. I really haven't been too busy; I've mostly been incredibly bored.

Monday was the start of one week of orientation. One week! Crazy! However, seeing as we take 3 breaks for tea within a 6 hour period, perhaps a week is necessary. Regardless, orientation is perhaps the worst thing ever. You are expected to make friends. Gosh, I hate making friends. I just think it's a terrible thing. I like the having friends part, but I don't like to make them. Also, there are approximately 45 people living in my house. I am not a fan of big groups of people. We all share one kitchen where we are responsible for preparing all of our meals. This means there is no room to do anything in the kitchen because there are many scary people smiling, talking, and cooking. (Doesn't that sound like a horrific scene?) Thus, I don't think I will ever prepare more than a sandwich because that would involve me spending more than 1 minute in the scary kitchen.

Today in orientation, they talked to us about how to write an Oxford essay. There are not words to express the angst I felt during this hour of my life. I feel as though I have the ability to write to write a good essay, but the way they talked, I am almost certainly headed towards failure. The scary but cute English lady that facilitated this portion of orientation informed us that some tutors might expect 6000 word essays every week. In the 18-20 page range.

If my tutor were to expect that, all I would ever do is hurl myself in front of a bus. Over and over again.

As you might be able to tell, I haven't particularly warmed to this city nor to the program. I don't want to say that I hate it, but I can't say that I haven't thought continually throughout the day about how much I hate it here and want to come home. I expect it might get better, but it just seems unfortunate that I left classes, jobs, and people I loved to come somewhere where everything was simply dreadful and incredibly hard. Well...maybe I can at least still shoot for cum laude.

There are 1.5 things here that have made me feel a slight twing of enjoyment.

First, I am still overly delighted to be taking classical Greek. I know that I will not do poorly with it and that I can handle it. I mean, perhaps I will be given a 100 page translation to complete in 2 weeks, but then I would just do the bus thing and it'd all be okay because I'd be dead. Also, my tutor for Greek is the junior dean (RD type person) of the other house for students in the program. That means he is really a jovial person, and I am really quite delighted because I don't feel as though he'll rip me to shreds. I am pretty sure that the pupose of this program is to rip you to shreds in some sadistic approach to encouraging personal growth.

Second, I am excited (.5) about the library system here. If you have no interest in reading the most fascinating library news you've ever heard, then you might want to skip this section because a good amount of words should be devoted to describing the libraries.

There are over 100 libraries in Oxford. I have a University of Oxford card and thus have access to them all--that amounts to around 11 million books to which I have direct access. The main university library is called the Bodleian. It is the shit. The Bodleian "is over 400 years old and is globally acknowledged to be one of the greatest libraries in the world. Its priceless collections include the papers of six British Prime Ministers; a Gutenberg Bible; the earliest surviving book written wholly in English; a quarter of the world’s original copies of the Magna Carta; and almost 10,000 western medieval and renaissance manuscripts" (www.ox.ac.uk).

The Bodleian Group of Libraries have 120 miles of occupied shelving, 29 reading rooms and 2,490 places for readers.

Let me tell you, you may not talk in these libraries. You may not bring in food. You may only drink water out of pre-approved containers. You may not borrow books from the Bodleian. You make a book request online and specify which reading room you'd like the books to go to. At that point, the gnomes travel under the city to pick up the appropriate books and deliver them promptly to your reading room of choice. You then go to that reading room, sit amongst brilliant people, and read.

If your book is located somewhere other than the Bodleian, you must figure out where in the city that library is and go pick it up. This is a very hard endeavor for me because I know where nothing is. Nonetheless, the library system I have access to is a thing of brilliance and having rights to gain access makes me a very fortunate person. I only assigned it .5 worth of excitement because it will be very difficult to become adept at finding and gathering the books I need.

Another point to make: Oxford is a city. I don't think I quite knew this at all. But it's effing huge. I think the reason I am having trouble adjusting is because I don't care at all for city life. I have never even lived in a big town. Crap, I've never even lived in town. Thus, I don't know how to do city-like things such as ride buses, cross streets, and find my way around. I also do not know how to read maps. I could try, and will probably have to at some point, but for now I am just memorizing important routes.

I think this is probably enough information for now eh? I will try to be less angsty and more witty in my next post. For now, cheers!

Best,
Sara