"Come Back To Me, Albus Andrew. Come Back To Me Is My Request."

Dear friends,

Another Thursday=another blog post. However, this time I have not emerged fresh out of another tutorial experience. And what a grim day it was.

Today marked the beginning of the portion of my time here that the program has so aptly titled "Angst: A Historiographic Approach to the Methodologies of How to Make You as Angsty as Possible." I've always wanted to get credits for angst. Now the opportunity is mine to seize. The participants in my program sometimes refer to the Angst class as British Landscapes, just so they can pretend to their schools and families that they are learning something substantial and worthy of credit at their home institution. Underneath this fondly assigned label, though, we all know that the class is very terrible and lives up to its name by being properly angst-inducing.

So, now that tutorials are over, I have 3 main things going on.
#1. Angst Class
#2. Writing and researching for my "Dissertation"
#3. Douchebag Seminar

"Wow," you think, "I have got to get me into that Oxford program. A Douchebag Seminar sounds right up my alley."

To elaborate further, my entire schedule has been changed drastically. You see, the Oxford term consists of eight weeks of tutorials. Then, all the students go home until the next term. There are 3 eight week terms throughout the year. Thus, I have finished the real Oxford portion, and we are now doing fake Oxford things so that we can fulfill requirements at our home institutions and be allowed to do this whole study abroad thing. Thus, a normal day for me now will consist of waking up early, vying for the shower at the same time as forty other douchebags in my house, and then playing a game called: "Try as hard as you can to walk the 35-minute path alone and avoid 40 other douchebags walking in the same direction." I failed miserably at the game this morning.

Upon arrival at 9:30am, we immediately settle in for a one hour film that hurls us wildly through British history. 10:30 brings tea time while I sit amongst a crowd and think about how angsty everyone is making me. 11:00 brings another one hour lecture about something British and landscape-ish. 12:00 brings lunch. Yay free lunch (that my tuition paid for)!! Then we're all supposed to scurry off and spend the rest of our lives in the library until the next day starts. I only have 2 essays to write for this class, but the topics that I have to pick from are very terrible. From my first day of "class," I can summarize what I learned by dropping a few names, but not knowing at all what those people did. How unfortunate.

The Douchebag Seminar began today as well. Some people refer to this as the Integrative Theology Seminar, but again, we all know what it really consists of. This was maybe the angstiest hour of my life because 8 students and 1 facilitator sat in a pretentious circle and talked about pretentious things that were completely pointless. All we did was talk about theology in some horribly abstract way and use words and phrases like "patterns of judgment," and "metaphysics." Actual mention of the Bible occurred very few times. I utterly despise theology in the abstract. There are things I can appreciate about biblical theology--a lot of things--and overall, I think it can be a quite worthy enterprise. However, there are terrible ways to go about theology, and I think that my Douchebag Seminar is going to be a crash course in worthless ways to discuss theology. (Of course, you perhaps should realize that this is me talking. I evaluate most things in a pessimistic manner. However, in my opinion, the Douchebag Seminar is worthy of rampant pessimism.)

The one thing that does make me happy is the prospect of working on my dissertation. The only problem is that I don't have much time to devote to that since I have the Angst and Douchebag classes eating into my time. I don't know why pointless things have to infringe upon my scholarship. Angst.

In other news, I did just return from Wales. Wales was perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It was a very chill trip. We hung out, went to castles, and hiked a mountain. The hike was probably my favorite part. I like to accomplish things.

Tomorrow will consist of a field trip to a cathedral somewhere north of London and then I will depart at 1am to catch a bus to airport where I will board a flight to Belfast. Even though I just got back from break, I really need another one. Belfast will be wonderful. I'll arrive Saturday morning and leave Sunday night so it will be a very quick trip, but I am terribly excited.

There is perhaps more I could write about, but I must really get to bed in preparation for the early morning "fight 40 douchebags for the shower" game.

Best,
Sara