The blog was broken apparently, and I didn’t even notice, but now it’s back! October 29, 2007
Well they came to look at the heater this morning, and then they came again this afternoon. The boiler is broken or something. And they’re going to try to fix it, but if they can’t, they’ll have to get us a new boiler. And maybe get us some little heaters for the time being, I hope. I took a bath this evening, just to get warm. And during my tutorial, the room was quite warm, but I refused to take my jacket off because it was just nice being sort of hot. But at least they’re working on it. It would figure something has to be broken in the place I’m staying.
But my tutorial went well today. He said he could really see an improvement since my first essay as compared to my fourth essay. I’ve gotten the hang of using historical events to prove my points rather than just listing historical events because they need to be mentioned. I still have to work on showing the necessity of my points, why one reason can’t just explain it all and why I have to go on with another reason to help explain it. I was really nervous about this essay, though. The question was, why did the Cold War end? Talk about a question that is debated in international relations theory. No one saw that one coming, and then all the theorists were scrambling to explain it after the fact. So it seems hard to put in a little over 2000 words, about 4 pages, an answer to a question that experts have written books about, and nobody has really come up with an answer that everyone agrees on. Which I know that’s sort of how every essay is, but I found this question really daunting. But he said the essay was quite good, and I think we had a good discussion too.
Afterwards, I went to Sainsbury’s and bought some Pringles. I already have Pringles, but I bought more because they are buy 1, get 1 free right now, and they’re in a bigger can than usual. So I now have enough Pringles to last me the whole rest of the year. I will buy no more Pringles in England ever again. It’s actually weird because I feel like I have to have Pringles while I’m here. In the US, I rarely eat them, but here they’re a necessity. Maybe just because they’re familiar food. Although I eat a lot more sweets here too. People say it’s comfort food, but when I’m home all I crave is salty. When I’m here, I go through cookies like no other.
It’s weird to think of things as the last time I will ever do them over here. I’m halfway through my last regular tutorial. I only have four more regular essays, actually I could even say 2 more because I only have to do six for this paper, but I’ll probably just go ahead and do eight so I’ll have more to study later and more to talk about in the tutorial. This is my last autumn in England. I’m very happy about that because I miss autumn in the States, but at the same time, for the past three years, I’ve been in England from October to December. That seems weird too. Who actually studies in another country for 2 1/2 years? It’s surreal if I actually think about it. But then, I usually don’t because I’m too busy studying.
Well this has been a rather random blog entry. The main thing I wanted to say, though, was that I’m halfway through this term and I’m almost done for good with regular Oxford stuff! Soon all I will be doing is revising, which will still be stressful and hard, but it will be nice not to have a completely new topic every week. Instead I’ll be revisiting old topics that I’ve already forgotten about. So exciting.
