Finally through my tutorials
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.