England Journal

It was called Old English chicken and stuffing pie or something like that. With mashed potatoes and gravy, almost like Thanksgiving all over again, with chicken instead of turkey. But I’m the girl who can’t tell coke from pepsi. There’s no way I can tell chicken from turkey. It was actually pretty good, and now I am completely stuffed. I had a lot of bread too because you never know what the meal will be like, so you have to choose to fill up on bread at the beginning and risk being really full if the meal is good or leave room and risk having an empty stomach if the meal is not so good. Then they had pineapple upside-down cake, which I was looking forward to, but it wasn’t so good, really dry. Oh well, can’t really expect an entire good meal out of Regent’s.

I haven’t written here in a while, been occupied with my essays for the week. I turned in my econ one Sunday evening and my politics one this afternoon. Now I just have to get through the actual tutorials. I really hope the politics one doesn’t go quite as badly as last week’s. This week, I’m going to try really hard to start reading before Thursday for next week’s stuff. I have two extra hours from dropping those lectures, so that will give me a little more time. Actually tomorrow I only have one lecture during the morning. I have another lecture tomorrow evening starting, which conflicts with my business lectures. I’m going to have Ula pick me up a copy of the notes. This week is also the last week of my international econ lectures, which are my only 9 a.m. lecture on Wednesday. So then my earliest lecture will be Monday at 10 and the rest of the days I don’t have anything until 11. So exciting. I just have to convince myself to use my time wisely.

Sunday I used my time wisely, I think. Celia always goes to the grocery after church, and this time I went with her and we got some pizzas and came back and ate them and watched Everybody Loves Raymond on my laptop. It was nice to relax. I hadn’t finished my essay, but I decided I really wanted pizza and so Celia and I planned to do that, so I did. I justify all these things by saying they keep me sane. I can’t study all the time. Although lately I feel like I’m really slacking. And on that note, I should probably try to get some work done before I fall asleep (I got up at 6 this morning to work on my essay so I don’t think I’ll make it much longer before my eyes start to close while reading).

I got up this morning, very sore and tired. I just finished my warm-up for my yoga routine, and I think that might be all I do today, maybe some plain stretching when I come back from the library after having walked. I did the whole routine Thursday and Friday mornings. I had planned on taking my break on Wednesdays. I have a lecture at 9, so it makes it more difficult to squeeze it in. But I think it’s okay not to push myself too hard in the beginning, when I haven’t really exercised in a long time. Don’t want to hurt myself, right? So now I’m writing in here before I go take a shower and then head to the SSL to work on my econ essay. I really don’t like this having essays dues right after the weekend thing. I always worked on weekends, but didn’t have to have my crunch-time then. Oh well, just get through this term.

So yesterday, I met with Suke, my advisor, and we decided what I would be doing for the rest of my time here for sure. Which means I get to stop going to two lectures a week that I had been going to, down to only 10 lectures a week. Yay! Then I tried to read a bunch. I was fairly successful, but some of my econ stuff I have to read is in confined books in the library, so I still have to go there today. I hope to get the essay pretty much written today, and then I can write my politics one on Sunday for the most part. Then I can start next week’s econ on Monday and maybe actually get into a good routine where my weekend isn’t completely gone. We’ll see how this plan actually plays out.

Last night, Sarah and I sat at the high table with all the SCR people at formal hall. I sat directly across from the principal, Dr. Fiddes, which was a little intimidating, although he’s really nice. It was pretty crowded. They had jammed in as many chairs as possible on our side of the table. And at one point, Dr. Fiddes said it was a good thing I was so slim or it wouldn’t have been an enjoyable meal. And then he apologized saying he hoped I didn’t mind him having drawn attention to my size. It made me laugh. Toward the end of the meal, Sarah and I were just talking to each other, mostly about Veronica Mars. She borrowed season 1 from me last night. One less distraction for me. After dinner, we all went into the SCR (the actual room) and people had coffee and talked. Sarah and I talked to this Korean couple who had just moved to Oxford for him to be head of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies or something. They have family who live in Louisville, KY. How crazy is that? Sarah had a lot of connections with them too. They said the centre has lunch every Wednesday, and we should come by sometime. So we might do that, which will be fun. Then we headed to the JCR for a bit, and when Sarah had to leave, I excused myself too.

I was tired, but I also had told myself I had to read some before I got too tired and talked to Kyle and my mom. So I got some econ reading done, got to talk on the phone some, and then I fell asleep.

Okay, that sounds a little too mushy for me, but oh well. I fell asleep last night with a killer headache. I barely even talked to my mom. It came on really suddenly, and then I was really tired. And my mom saw me on the camera and told me to go to sleep. So I said I might wake up later and call her back. Which I did wake up later to turn the lights off, and set my alarm. And I vaguely remember approving Brendan’s skype account to see when I’m online. But I didn’t call her back, just fell back to sleep. I guess I needed it. Then at 6:30 this morning, I got a wake-up call from Kyle who had gotten home from hockey and was trying to finish his Russian. Then I fell back to sleep until around 7:30, at which time, I forced myself to do the warm-up stuff from my yoga routine. At first I told myself I could just take it slow and just do the warm-ups today, continue to the standing sequence tomorrow, the sitting sequence the day after that. But then I just decided to do it all. And besides the feeling that my legs were going to give out every time I stood up, I felt pretty good about myself, used my workout playlist on iTunes even.

I got done a little before 8:30 and my playlist wasn’t done playing, so I decided to check my e-mails and my family’s blogs to see if anyone had updated. Only one update since the last time I had checked, but it was enough to put me in a really good mood. If you haven’t read Brendan’s latest entry, you should. I don’t know how to make a link, but it’s at www.xorph.com/creator if you want to copy and paste. He’s going to be in the same country as me soon. You can get the details from his blog, but I am so excited to have a relative only an hour and a half away from me. I’ll probably see him here in England before I go home this time and won’t be seeing him in the states for a while. He’ll actually be over here more when I’m not here than when I am, but it’s still exciting. I had to tell someone so I went and knocked on Celia’s door, and she said it’s sort of crazy that my family will actually be closer than hers. She lives like 5 hours away from Oxford.

So anyway, went to my lectures, walking really fast because all three of them are far away from each other, and my legs felt like jelly. Then I came back here and had lunch in my room, and now I’m preparing to get started on lovely politics reading because I have to take one of my books back tonight. But at least I’m in a good mood, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. Yay!!

I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through this week. I didn’t have one of my stressful, call my mom and cry moments, and I got my essays done with time to spare. But I didn’t feel confident in either of the things I turned in, and I was dreading the tutorials. My politics tutorial yesterday was awful. At some points I felt like crying or just being really sarcastic to my tutor, but I didn’t. Afterward Taylor and I walked to the SSL together, so it was good to have someone to talk to. We went into the tutorial, and our tutor said he was going to do it differently than he usually does. He wanted us to read out our essays instead of just talking about the topics, implying he was doing this because they were so bad. Which I’ve never actually had a tutorial where the tutor has had me read out my essay until now, unlike what G-town prepares us for. So he said, “Caitlan, why don’t you start reading yours?” So I did, and from then on out it was the worst tutorial ever. Every couple of sentences, he would stop me and ask me what was wrong with that sentence, or why what I just said was wrong, or why I wrote that, or what does that mean. So Taylor and I tried to answer the best we could. We didn’t even get all the way through my essay, much less to Taylor’s. And then at the end, my tutor said he hoped I didn’t feel like he was picking on me. Thanks.

We think he’s Irish, and I have trouble understanding him a lot of the time. There was one time he said something and I thought he was just saying a statement, but it was apparently a question. So I had to ask him to repeat himself a couple times. You’d think I could understand English. So I just took all the criticism. I think I reacted pretty well, even smiled and said thanks at the end of the tutorial.

Last night, I didn’t do any work. I went to dinner after my business lectures, then went to the JCR meeting, which lasted forever, and then came back to my room and read a magazine. I intended to get up this morning to do yoga, but I had a lecture at 9, and I had promised myself I could at least sleep in a little this morning. So I slept in until 7:20. Then got up and went to my lectures. It snowed outside during the night I guess. There was just a thin layer of snow on the grass this morning and slush on the streets. It had pretty much melted off by later in the day.

So after my lectures, I ate lunch in my room and I talked to Kyle some because we had planned to talk today. But then I let out all my frustrations on him, and got mad at him for no reason. And then I cried, pretty impressed with myself that I made it that long. I was really worried about my tutorial today, especially because of how yesterday’s went. I tried to read some stuff today to prepare myself. I had misread an e-mail and hadn’t seen the real reading list for this week, so I sort of screwed myself up because I did the wrong readings and couldn’t answer any of the questions. But it actually went okay. He’s German, and I have trouble understanding his English too. Great. There were only two things that he pointed out that I was totally wrong, better than the 50 or so that the other guy said.

So I’m going to try really hard this week to get all my reading done for both tutorials and get good essays churned out. But now I just feel sort of exhausted and I feel like even when I read the stuff I don’t really understand. Sometimes I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into. This week, so far, I’ve just felt really stupid. And you can’t be stupid and go to Oxford. They want you get really deep into the subjects, and I’m realizing now that I’ve never really done that before. I’ve just skimmed the surface, and somehow managed to get good grades. This term is going to be difficult. I just hope I can survive, take it one week at a time.

So I’ve had two essay crises in a row, and now that I’ve turned them in, I have to somehow prepare myself for the actual tutorials. In some ways, I like turning in the essays early, so I can get them back right away, but in other ways, I wish the tutors didn’t know how poorly I am prepared for the week’s tutorial in advance. My econ questions took forever, and they were complete crap when I did finally turn them in. But then that left me with not much time to finish readings and write my politics essay, and I was completely exhausted and couldn’t think very well either. And now I want to just take a break, but if I want to get on a schedule where I’m not stressing out, I’ve got to keep working constantly until the weekend and hope that I’ve gotten enough done to take a break then.

So now today I have two lectures, two meetings at college, my business lecture, and my tutorial. Plus I want to try to get some reading done to prepare for my econ tutorial tomorrow. Crazy day.

Oh and I think I know where I’m living next year. In a flat with two other third-years, neither of whom I know very well, but hopefully it will work out. And it’s apparently in one of the nicest flats. How I got this lucky I don’t know. I feel bad because I’m not rooming with Ula, but oh well I’m being a bit selfish for once. I want my own shower and kitchen. Everybody told me to just do what I wanted, so I did. It’s hard to explain the whole situation. G-town’s housing was so much easier and less stressful.

Well I better get my shoes on and start the day. Can’t wait!

Friday was a good day. Thursday, I didn’t get much done, but had a lot of lectures. Nothing too exciting to write about. Friday I woke up and didn’t get much done either, but then had a lecture, and came back to college to meet up with Sarah, my South African friend. We went and had tea and just talked. It was really nice. I think we’re going to try to do that more often this term. Then we ran into Brad, an American grad student who is also vice-president of the MCR and he asked us if we had ever sat at the High Table during formal hall, which is where the principal and all the SCR, professor people sit. The MCR is supposed to have two people sit up there each formal hall and they’re trying to get new people to do it. So he said we could do it together and he’d give us advice on who to sit by, so we agreed. So one week this term Sarah and I will be at high table. Celia said she would take pictures of us.

Then I went back to college and met up with Dr. Taul. We went to the King’s Arms, a pub, and he bought me lunch. I had fish and chips, which the fish was more greasy than seasoned in any way but it was still a good meal. I think Dr. Taul was surprised at how much I ate. I was hungry. We had a nice conversation, and then I went to the social sciences library to work some. I had made a stack request to get an article from the Bod, but it never came in, so I sort of stressed about that, but I thought maybe it would come in by that evening or by today. It still hasn’t, but it turns out they have a copy of it at the SSL issue desk, so I have it now, and I don’t have to stress. I was worried I wouldn’t get it in time before my essay is due Monday. I ran into Taylor and Jennifer, both G-town people, and Taylor and I shared books. He’s in my tut with me. Then he left and later Jennifer and I walked back together. She’s really nice.

Then we had formal hall, and the meal was actually decent. I had the vegetarian which was sort of like a croissant with sun-dried tomatoes and cheese in the middle. It almost tasted like pizza. Then we had a quiz night thing in the JCR. Our team had one English person on it, Celia, and we came in last. We had three Americans, Jennifer, Kristie (the other G-town girl), and me, and an Italian/Polish, Ula. It was fun even though we didn’t know anything. We also discussed the room ballot, which we’re all stressing about. There have been new developments which are too complicated to explain. In the end, I have like three choices, all of which will mean me living on college, and everything will be fine for me, but I just don’t know what I want to do. So now I have to make a decision. They decide on this stuff way too early.

Well that was the end of my night. And now I’m at the library where I brought the wrong adaptor to plug in my laptop, so I might not be here all day like I had planned if my battery gets too low, but I should probably get to work and not be writing in here.

So the weather online today said it was going to be windy, but I didn’t think it would be that bad. But I swear, a couple times when I lifted my feet to walk, I thought my legs weren’t going to land back on the ground. I had to go up some stairs outside to this one building, and they’re these metal stairs that the wind can blow through, and I was holding the metal rail really tight. I couldn’t walk very fast either when the wind was coming at me. And my hair went everywhere when my hood was blown off. It actually didn’t rain too much but the wind was psycho. From the looks of the weather lately, I don’t know if we’ll ever get to row on the river. So that was the exciting part of my day.

Yesterday, I had lectures and none of the meals looked good so I ate in my room for both meals. Tuna sandwich for lunch and cereal with banana and peanut butter toast for dinner. Pretty good. I read the econ that I was supposed to read, but it gave me no help in the questions that our tutor assigned us. He told us to use this one book, but I’m going to have to get another one. It might have given me help on one of the questions. I don’t think I’m going to like this new tutor. The questions he gave us, of which there are a ton (4 topics, each with at least 5 questions, most of which are at least 2 or 3 parts), seem like they won’t help us at all when it comes to the exams. Simon gave us at least two old exam questions whenever we had questions so we got a feel for it. This guy gave us just like short answer questions that you would get out of the back of a book, it seems like. But there are a whole lot of them. Oh well, maybe it will be okay.

This morning, I woke up around 7. I’ve been trying to get up at 6 to do work because I felt like that’s what I did last term, but I don’t think I actually did for the first part of the term I realized. I think I only did that when I got into my weird habit of falling asleep right after dinner, so I think I’m going to go a little easier on myself and sleep in a little more. As long as I get some work done during the day. Which I haven’t done a whole lot, but I’ve also had a lot of lectures and already turned in an essay and had a tutorial by Tuesday. So I’m trying to give myself a break. Somehow I’ve gotten this reputation that I’m a really hard worker over here. At Georgetown, I was the lazy one who never studied compared to Melissa and Christi. Now I’m the psycho one who studies all the time.

I keep telling myself I need to write in my blog. I also have to return some e-mails. I need to start reading economics and get started on next week’s politics. But I just want to do nothing. So I’m now forcing myself to write in my blog. It’s a start.

I got to England safe and sound Thursday morning, although I did realize about a half-hour before my plane started boarding that I was at the wrong gate. I apparently can’t read. My gate was really close, so it wasn’t a big deal. I’m just glad I noticed. Then I got to the airport and wished the flight was longer because I just wanted to sleep. But I was okay because I had the bus ride to Oxford to sleep. However, I got to the passport control line and stood there for an hour and a half. Then I got to the bus stop and had to wait another half-hour. By the time I got on the bus, I was still tired, but I couldn’t really fall asleep. I did run into Meg, a third-year PPE American girl from Regent’s. So we shared a taxi back to college, I dropped off my stuff and ran to my meeting with my tutor because I got to college at 1:50 and the meeting was at 2. But it was all okay.

The next two days I had collections in the mornings. I have no idea how I did. I just have to wait and see. I try not to think about it. The one good thing was that I didn’t run out of time, or that might be a bad thing because I didn’t have enough to write about. I’ll report on that later.

So since then, I’ve been doing politics, watching my DVDs of Veronica Mars, talking to my mom and Kyle, and trying to get over jetlag (I haven’t been succeeding very well in that). I turned in my essay yesterday before I went to rowing practice for a tank session, where I got blisters. I always get blisters in the tank sessions, never in the boat. I don’t know if I’ll be stroke again this term. Actually I don’t know if I’ll race this term. The river is 26 inches too high, and it’s still raining. They said they might travel to race some, but I have a feeling we would have to pay for that, and I can’t afford it, so I’ll just do the practice. It’s not as fun when we’re not outside, but at least it’s some exercise. Oh, I also had my first lecture Monday and put my backpack down in a spilled can of coke under my seat, which was wonderful.

So today, I had my first politics tutorial. I haven’t looked at my comments on my essay yet actually, but I think I did fairly well in the talking part of the tutorial, talked more than in British politics. Our tutor seems to really know his stuff and is going to make sure we learn it too. I think it’s going to be good. So now onto econ questions for next week. My econ stuff I have to turn in by Sunday evening via e-mail and my politics stuff I have to walk to his college and turn in by Monday afternoon. Again back to back turning stuff in and it’s right after the weekend. I’m going to try to convince myself that I need to have stuff done by Friday. We’ll see how that goes. Now I’m getting ready to go to my business lectures, which I do for fun. I have a ton of other lectures this term and lots overlapping or even farther across town than before so I’ve resigned myself to having to be late and missing some lectures. Oh well.

I think this entry sounds a little like I’m not very happy. I’m fine, not too homesick. A little tired of school, but hopefully I’ll get back into my routine soon. And start updating this more often so the entries aren’t as long.

This truly is an England Blog because the only time I’m good at updating it is when I’m in England. I do have some good stories about coming home at the beginning of December, and maybe I’ll have a chance to write about those soon. Right now, I just wanted to tell everyone I’m getting ready to head out again. I’m going to Louisville tonight and my mom and I are going to stay over at Christi’s because Brendan and Maria are sick. Christi is a very good friend, and I’m glad I have lots of connections in Louisville. In October, we got stuck in traffic on the way to the airport, and I got very stressed that I was going to be late, and Rita had to come to the rescue and print out my ticket from Bellarmine and meet us at the airport with it. This time, I have all my stuff printed out already. Everything is packed besides my carry-on, and I’ll be in Louisville 10 minutes away from the airport by tonight. My flight from Louisville to Philadelphia leaves at 1 p.m. and then I have a 5-hour layover, and I leave for England at 8:20 p.m., I think.

Then I’ll get to England Thursday morning. Have a meeting with one of my tutors Thursday afternoon, then collections on Friday and Saturday mornings. Then my first essay is due Monday afternoon (used to have one due Friday, but he changed it), then first tutorial Tuesday, and next one Wednesday (unless he’s changed that too). And of course, lots of lectures. And I’m guessing something to do with rowing at some point. Busy, busy, busy. I’m already stressing out. But it will be good. I’m excited too. As long as I can survive. Keep me in your prayers, if you don’t mind. And I’ll be writing again soon, I hope.