Making Headlines at Oxford Already

 ...am I cool or what?

Breaking hearts since the 51st century

So last night when I went to DocSoc to watch The Empty Child and get my Cap'n Jack fix there were some copies of The Oxford Student, our weekly student paper, floating around the room. Apparently the Doctor Who Society had been featured in the "Soc-hopping" section this week and there were some quotes and comments about the first meeting of the term. Upon further perusal, I noticed that...I got quoted!! Well, a little misquoted, and they didn't include my name, but hey, we take what we can get right?

Here's the article/quotation:

My printer has a scanner, jealous?

"The Freshers’ Drinks drew in a mixed crowd...from an older gentleman who was celebrating his 21st membership anniversary, to a rather bemused second year, who only came because she 'likes the way Matt Smith moves and talks.' Her friend disagreed and fought Tennant’s corner, claiming that Smith’s head is 'so big that they wouldn’t be able to fit it all on one television screen.' She was prepared to admit, though, that through some sort of witchcraft the BBC had made it possible."

"Her friend" = ME, fighting bravely for the Tenth Doctor's superiority since 2009. Don't get me wrong (I see Claire bristling as I write this), I do like Matt Smith, but I miss the Tenth Doctor's "allons-y!" and "Well...". I know, tragic loss.

Anyway, I thought it was particularly appropriate that I made my first official mark on Oxford as unnamed geek girl in the Doctor Who Soc. I basically consider myself famous now. Here's the whole article for those who want to read: Soc-hopping with the Doctor Who Soc.

Also, to my readers for whom this entry makes no sense at all: sorry guys. I'll write about something normal next time. And/or start watching more BBC.

Allons-y!
KQ

Bow ties are cool!

Rainy Day

Nothing to do with Utopia.

So after a few weeks filled with all kinds of new stuff to do, things are finally beginning to settle down into a routine. I've got my classes: A-Course, B-course, C-Course...and lots of reading to go with them. Did I say "lots"? Because what I meant was, ALL I DO IS READ. In fact, writing this blog entry is a break from reading Utopia--which, by the way, is not as fun to read as Ever After would have you believe. I only WISH I had an evil stepsister to come and burn this book. Then again, I'd have to pay the library for it if that happened, which would probably be expen$ivo, as everything is here.

17th c. printing: all the cool kids are doing it.

In addition to my regular classes, they have an interesting system here at Oxford, where you can kind of just drop in and out of some classes whenever you feel like it. For example, last week I went to one random lecture about Shakespeare and Ovid, and earlier this week I went to a early modern manuscript master class...just because I can. I'm also in a Latin class that just meets because we feel like it--no one actually enrolls, we just show up and learn about early modern Latin (btw, did you know they put declensions in a different order here? It's not N.G.D.Acc.Abl.(V), it's N.V.Acc.G.D.Abl...what the heck!?).  I went to a printing class in the basement of the New Bod on Friday afternoon, where 30 people showed up and listened to a lecture about 17th century paper making and watermarks just because they were interested...again, no one enrolls or gets units for the classes. They just happen, and people go. I can only imagine how disastrous this system would be at UCLA, where you can barely get people to go to classes they actually need to pass to graduate. Obviously I'm going to a school for nerds.

Vintage cybermen with the fifth doctor.

This week I also revisited a few of the societies I scoped out last week. On Thursday I returned to the Doctor Who Soc for a screening of "Earthshock," featuring the fifth doctor. It was basically as campy and low-budget as a I expected from old Who. Seriously...you think the cybermen look ridiculous now? You ain't seen nothin'. It was fun though, since everyone there also thought it was silly and had a good laugh at the more cheesy parts ("more cheesy parts" = the whole thing). I think I'll probably stick with this soc, since there's no way I'm going to ever slog through old Who on my own, and the people seem relatively chill.

On Saturday I made a second appearance at the anime soc, but this time I dragged Meagan with me to alleviate the awkwardness. My plan succeeded, and I think I'll keep going to this one too, as long as I have a comrade in arms to geek out with. On the other hand, I think the "speculative fiction" soc has lost me forever, through a combination of unbearable awkwardness and the unfortunate reality that I will not have any time to read scifi/fantasy novels here...I'm too busy reading things for class. (This, however, did not prevent me from getting really excited about an online Borders coupon the other day and ordering a bunch of novels I won't get to read until Xmas...someone should be around to stop me from doing this kind of thing. You know I can't say no to cheap books!)

Our hall in college...this is where we had Introductory Dinner.

 Last night I had my last real "new student" type event, the Introductory Dinner at St Cross, where we meet our college advisor. This event reminded me of nothing so much as Monday night dinner at ADPi...and not only because it was on a Monday night. The dress code was "daily wear with gowns; please no jeans or trainers" (for those of you who don't speak Brit, that means no sneakers).  So basically I wore pin attire + my sweet graduate gown that you all saw pics of last week. Just the gown though, not the whole black and white affair that Caroline commented on so astutely last week. At the dinner we all stood while the Master said a Latin prayer and then had a super classy three course meal served to us (sorry guys, it was way better than food at the HOP). My advisor is actually pretty rad; she's the librarian for St X and was fun to talk to. I also sat next to one of the Fathers from Pusey House (the little Anglican institution with which we share the premises) who happened to have studied Renaissance Lit at Oxford in his time, and we had a lively chat about Samuel Daniel and Edmund Spenser. Oh, and I got into a debate with a fellow advis-ee, who is in the Medieval strand, about the merits of Timon of Athens, a Shakespeare play I happen to detest. Did I say I went to a school for nerds? Obviously I fit right in.

I know...this pig is effing adorable.

Today it's been raining all day, but in that on-and-off way particular to English weather. Like, it's raining just enough that you need an umbrella, but every once in a while it'll stop for a while or start pouring for a while. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, I've been cooped up for most of the day with my books. And speaking of books, I think it's about time I got back to Utopia. Hopefully tomorrow I'll see some sun!

l8er sk8er...

KQ

Matriculation and the Week of Societies

Hello again, faithful readers. Ready for another trip into the magical world of Oxford? Just head on toward the second star to the right, and straight on till morning...no wait, that's Neverland. Scratch that.

Shakespeare's handwriting? Or a forgery by my prof!?

So to pick up where I left off last week after my first class of the term: I had more classes. Not too many more, just a few. On Wednesday I had my Shakespeare seminar, in which we discussed quarto and folio versions of Hamlet and MND. Basically what I'm learning here is never trust your text! Editors are out to deceive us all! Well, not really, but we ought to be careful. On Thursday I had my A-Course, also known as the survey course for my strand. We discussed Sidney and Dryden, although ended up discussing Sidney much more since I think everyone found Dryden quite boring, though only a few were bold enough to say so in front of our professors. Later on Thursday I had my first paleography class, which was absolutely exhausting. The class was a whirlwind of information about majuscules and miniscules and final s's in secretary hand, which is basically impossible to read without training, hence the reason why I have to take this class. Our professor encouraged us to forge Shakespeare in our free time, told us that if we were really hardcore we'd make our own ink, and also uttered my favorite quotation of the week: "An early modernist without Latin is like a beautiful woman with one eye."

But you guys don't care about my classes. Admit it, you're already yawning. So let's get on to the less boring bits: matriculation and the OU societies.

In the St X quad

So on Saturday we had matriculation, which is basically a ceremony in which we are inducted formally into the university by college. This ceremony also required us to be attired in the infamous sub-fusc I've been talking about...and yes, I finally have pictures--->.  I had to arrive at St Cross at 8 in the AM to take our group photo for the college, and then they paraded us all over to the Exam Schools, in a two by two line like ducklings, or school children (think Madeline). Actually it was a pretty bizarre experience. I think the tourists must love matriculation, because there were tons of them lined up along the roads taking pics of us in our matriculation gear. When we got to the Exam Schools, they arranged us all in the room and said a few lines to us in Latin, and then made a speech about the significance of matriculation, so on. Apparently they do this all day on matriculation day, since there are tons of colleges and they can only fit so many of them into the room at a time. The sheer influx of students being matriculated screws up all the traffic in the city too, because there are all these two-by-two lines of students crossing streets, and they have to get tons of city employees to stand out in the street with yellow vests and make sure no future Nobel prize winners are squashed by a careless driver on High Street.

More pics:

Me and my friend Meagan outside our dorm flat.

The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah.

Messing up traffic on St Giles.

Courtyard of the Bod...impressive, right guys?

On a side note, after matriculation I was inducted into Oxford in another way; I finally went to the Old Bodleian Library, which is the main library here in Oxford.  They basically have everything there...I think they have a copy of every book published in Britain since 1700 or something. I felt kind of cool walking in because lots of tourists go there to take pictures but you can't get in unless you have a Bod card, which, being a student here, I do. However, I quickly stopped feeling cool and started feeling winded after walking up like five flights of stairs to the Upper Reading Room, where all the English books are. The only down side to the Bod is you have to actually read the books there; it doesn't lend. This, however, did not stop one of the books I needed from being conspicuous in its absence on the shelf. On the left was A.5/3303, and on the right was A.5/3305, and right where A.5/3304 should be was a nice book-sized gap. I suspect that someone else from my program got there first and was holding the book hostage at their desk. I also suspect that book-napping is going to become an ordinary feature of life here. Don't scoff--for English students, books are serious business.

The Tenth Doctor knows he'll always be the one for me.

This week was also Week 1, so it was the week where the various OU societies hold all their first meetings, and I decided to test drive a few. On Thursday evening I went to the Doctor Who Society, also known as the DocSoc. As you might expect, it populated by slightly awkward people. They served cocktails like "sonic screwdrivers" and "Doctor-Donnas." There was also a kid there with a remote-controlled Dalek. At first I was kind of intimidated because there were a bunch of people there who were serious Who geeks, and as you know, though I am a geek, I'm strictly a New-Who geek. However, shortly after this I happened to meet an awesome girl from Holland who's also studying English as an undergrad and is also a New-Who fan. I knew we would get along when the first thing she asked me after we introduced ourselves was, "So, are you here because of Matt Smith too?" The meeting was actually pretty nice; we watched a Who parody they made in the 90s before they decided to reboot the series. May go again to drool over Matt Smith assert the supremacy of David Tennant. 

DRRR!! ftw

On Friday I paid a visit to the Anime Soc. As you might expect, it was populated almost entirely by extremely awkward people. Luckily years of sorority training have taught me how to make conversation even with the most stubborn participants. We watched a few good shows, they had a raffle (I won a Misa figure from Death Note...but she's a horribly obnoxious character, so I gave her away), and I met another grad student who is relatively normal and likes FLCL. On the other hand, he told me he doesn't like Lord of the Rings, and a shadow and a threat have been growing in my mind that this could be a deal breaker for any future friendship with me (btw, there's a sign in the English Faculty Library featuring a picture of Gandalf and the slogan "Is it secret? Is it safe?"...it's warning us to change our OLIS passwords...yeah, English nerds). I didn't make it through the whole meeting because I stormed out in protest when they revealed we were watching Hellsing with dubs (gross), slash I had to get up r-tardedly early for matriculation the next morning. May go again if I can brave a second round of awkwardness.

Finished this one just a bit ago.

On Sunday night I decided to round out my geekiness and crashed the Speculative Fiction (read "speculative" as a euphemism for "SciFi-Fanasty") Soc's library night. As you might expect, it was populated by moderately awkward people. On the other hand, the society actually has a pretty significant lending library of fantasy books, which would be more awesome if I had time to read for pleasure here. I spent some time discussing Ursula K Le Guin and Neil Gaiman with some other society members and ate brownies that some kind soul brought along. Some native Brits also explained to this ignorant Californian what a pantomime is. I peaced out to go finish up some reading right before they were about to play some variant on Mafia, which seemed too awkward to bear.  May go again if only to borrow books.

tl;dr: I went to a bunch of geeky societies and was somehow surprised to find awkward people there.


Well, as it is Monday night here, I am preparing for another week of class and I have a little more Faerie Queene to read before I go to bed, so I better call it quits here. Is the weather nice in CA? I'm already wearing coats here...brrrr.
 
See you next time,

 Kelly Q

First Day of School

So this week was a busy week! Somehow I can see myself saying that about every week that I'm here.... 

My Norton Shakespeare...it's a brick.

Last Tuesday I had my induction to the English Faculty, and finally met the other people in my program, which was awesome. I also had the pants scared off me by one of the supervising professors, who bluntly told us not to bother signing up for any clubs or teams while we're here, since we would spend EVERY MINUTE WORKING for the next nine months. Yikes! I also had reading lists piled on for the first week of class...but more about that later.

Door to St Cross...or Gondor??

On Wednesday I had my induction to St Cross, which mainly consisted of us listening to talks about things we had already listened to talks on the week before (like IT passwords and library systems) and standing around making small talk with coffee and biscuits.  The Master of the college welcomed us, and gave us some very sage and useful (dare I say Dumbledorian?) advice about St X and Oxford, the most profound of which I will attempt to reproduce for you here: "Put lights on your bikes. If you don't have lights, most cars won't see you, and you'll die. The cars that will see you are cops, and then you'll get a ticket." Probably one of the most practical statements about biking (or 'cycling,' as they say here) I've ever heard. Take note, bikers.  I think it also says something that the greatest safety threat here is bikes without lights. I guess Oxford's pretty safe then.

Radcliffe Science Library: temporary home of Special Collections

Thursday was especially eventful: I got an induction to the Special Collections (yes, this was a week of inductions) and had the Freshers' Fair.  What are the "Special Collections," you ask? With a capital S and a capital C? They are the Bodleian collection of manuscripts and early/rare books, which I supposedly will have the opportunity to get up close and personal with this year. I thought the most terrifying part of the special collections would be handling the irreplaceable/priceless manuscripts, but I found out on Thursday that the most terrifying part is actually just finding the things in the catalog.  I suppose this is what comes of going to an extremely old university.

Basically, none of the catalogs have been digitized yet, so they are all in hard copy. Which might itself be okay, except that there are three separate catalogs. Any Western manuscript the Bodleian had up to the early 20th century is cataloged in a series of 10 or so dictionary-sized volumes, with another dictionary-sized tome as an index to the whole thing. Then between about 1915 and 1970-something, there is another catalog, with another-dictionary sized index. If the MS was acquired after the 70s, then it's in still a third catalog, except this one is in note-card form in a totally different library about a mile away, housed in cabinets that were built into the walls of Duke Humfrey's Library, so they can't be moved. And none of these three catalogs overlap AT ALL. The good news is, if I somehow manage to find a manuscript in these catalogs, then I still get to play with it. So yay for that!

Flyer for the Doctor Who club.

The Freshers' Fair was a bit of a change of pace from touring libraries.  This is the big fair they have for all the clubs, societies, teams, etc so the freshers can join things and the clubs can get new blood.  I thought the activities fair on the IM field at UCLA was huge, but man, I think the OU Freshers' Fair could give that one a run for its money. Before I went, someone described it to me as "like a haunted house...you keep going into different rooms where people jump out at you with flyers until you run away." And I have to say, this was a fairly accurate description (get it? fairly? That one's for you, Hannah).  I'm pretty sure I put my name down on way too many mailing lists, some of them just to escape the overenthusiastic stallholders.  I'm already getting random emails from everything from the choir to the break dancing club. Yeah, I said it, the break dancing club. I made the mistake of stopping to watch the video they had playing at their booth and they caught me...you win this one, Oxford break dance club! *facepalm*

Meanwhile, I've been all over that stack of reading lists I mentioned earlier.  The great thing is, I found out that the English Faculty Library is literally 300 ft from my front door, so basically I can live there. I see this as the death of my social life.

On the other hand, BOOKS. A lot of my reading has been pretty interesting, actually. Some things I've seen before, like Sidney, Dryden, Shakespeare, etc; and some I haven't.  One thing we're focusing on this term is manuscripts and hand-printed books, so I was assigned a book on printing, which I quickly learned is one of the most boring things you can possibly read about.  Just to give you a taste of this, the book was called "A New Introduction to Bibliography." Sounds thrilling, right? In addition to pages and pages about how they made each individual piece of movable type, which hand the compositer held his composing stick in, and how many journeyman operated a press in 1612 in London, the book included literally 20 pages of diagrams on how to fold sheets into different kind of books (quartos, folios, octavos, etc). 

I think this is a duodecimo. *yawn*

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I was pretty worried that this class was going to be extremely boring. But I had it today as my first class, and actually I have to say it was extremely interesting. We're going to get more into the mechanics of printing later, but today we mostly talked about the purpose of bibliography, and ways of looking at text that take into account its material manifestation as a leaflet, book, email, etc. Here's a brainteaser from my class for you: "If the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, where is Hamlet?" Yeah...ponder it. This is what I do here. I have to say, I was fairly nervous about starting class here, 'cause, well, it's Oxford, and everyone here is a smart cookie. But really, my first day of real school here was awesome, and I feel like I'm going to really love this course, even if it's going to consume my life for nine months.

sub-fusc?

I have the rest of my classes tomorrow and Thursday, so I'll tell you how they go in my next update.  Also, matriculation is this weekend, so stay tuned for pictures of me in my wizarding robes sexy sub-fusc outfit. 

Oh and btw, I miss all you guys tons! I've been trying to get on skype and fb but...mountains of reading! Hopefully when things settle down more I'll have some more time. Oh, and Claire...throw that baking powder away, you're freaking me out.

KQ out.

Some bonus photos:

Some pics from my desk!

Aren't this tissues adorable? I bought them at Boots. They have polka dots ON THE TISSUES.

Had to share this...I bought these to snack on while reading. "Baked with an authentic American recipe." They do taste kind of American I guess.

I Have to Wear Socks Here

These are not my actual socks.

...I really do.  Many of you know my hatred of shoes, but with the weather situation as it is here, I actually have to wear them, which requires socks. True story: my mom took me shopping for socks before I left 'cause I didn't have any. Now I do.

Actually the weather hasn't been that bad since I've been here.  It rained on Friday of course, since that was the day I had my city tour, but other than that, it's been reasonable. I've been told I shouldn't get used to it.

So as I mentioned, Friday was rainy, but I had a busy day.  First I got a city tour from a second year undergrad who forgot her umbrella (sucks) as well as most of the information she was supposed to tell us, but she did point out the only Mexican food place in the city. I'm sure I'll find myself there someday in the future when I start to really miss tortillas, but I'm pretty skeptical about what I'm gonna find. I'll keep you guys posted.

This is my actual college lawn.

I then scurried back to St Giles to make it to the tour of my college, St Cross. It didn't take very long because my college is pretty small and cute. We have two tiny libraries and a huge bar in the basement. Someone (who went to school in the states, obvi) commented offhand that our college is kind of like a giant frat, and the more I think about it, the more I agree. A big, studious, damp frat. With a lawn that we're not allowed to walk on. Our common room is really cozy, but the libraries seem pretty small for everyone to be able to study there during exam time, so I may have to scout out some other study venues.  I also found out that we share our college site with Pusey House, a little group of Anglican priests who are Catholic sympathizers, and apparently want to reconcile the Anglican Church with the Church in Rome. Best of luck to them.

After the tour I had lunch at the college (we have a dining hall type of thing) and got a crash course in British food. I thought I'd experienced British cuisine; you know, fish 'n chips, pork pies, pasties, mushy peas, etc.  But then I had lunch at St Cross. The menu was fish pie and buttered cabbage. Yum. At this point you may be asking yourself, "What is fish pie?"  Well, let me tell you, it's exactly what it sounds like: pie, but with fish.  Luckily St Cross is pretty international, so I wasn't the only one with misgivings about the food.  I sat near a Nigerian and a Czech guy and they were both pretty confused about what they were eating.  I also had to clarify that even though we may speak English in California, we do NOT have all the same kind of food as the Brits there.  See, I'm missing tortillas already.


Speaking of American food, I went to a burger place on Saturday night with a few American girls and I saw a dude eating his burger with a fork and knife. A FORK and KNIFE. WHAT?

Just say no.

Longwall Street

I'm finally starting to get the hang of the area around my dorm/flat, mostly because I've been out running errands like whoas. It takes extra long here too because a) the Brits aren't that keen on customer service and help at every store is slow, and b) I have to figure out what I'm looking for.  Here's an example of the latter: I went grocery shopping at Tesco and wanted to buy eggs, milk, and butter. Naturally, I head to the dairy section. I find milk and butter, as well as cheese, yogurt, etc, etc. But no eggs. Where the heck are the eggs? After wandering down a few aisles, I finally find them near the bread, just hanging out on an unrefrigerated shelf. Cool. Luckily, though, the street names aren't hard to remember here. There's a street by my place called Longwall Street. Guess what it runs along? That's right, a long wall. Pretty easy.

Some randos in subfusc from Google. 

I've also picked up a few other necessities, like an umbrella, towels, and desk organizers. And of course I stopped by Shepherd and Woodward to pick up my subfusc. Or, as I like to think of it, I stopped by Madame Malkin's and picked up my wizarding robes. What, you ask, is subfusc? From the Latin subfuscus, -a, -um, meaning "brownish" or "dark" (who says my minor isn't useful!?) -- basically it's a uniform we have to wear for matriculation, as well as other formal occasions like dinners at our college. I think if I have exams I'll have to sit my exams in it too. Don't worry, I'll keep my wand in my back pocket in case I need to fight any wizard's duels on the way there. Expelliarmus!

Star Driver: fabulosity at its finest

In between all this I've been doing my best to settle in, which includes meeting a ton of people and being all social. Actually it feels just like rush all over again: I'm tired all the time and I can't remember anyone's name. My room is nice and  relaxing though, since it's a single. On a totally different note, did you guys know that Hulu doesn't work in the UK? I know, right...it's pretty frickin' tragic. How will I watch Big Bang Theory!? Nooooooooooo....and they monitor our network here to make sure we're not illegally sharing Lady GaGa with each other over the internets. I'll figure it out though, guys, don't worry. No one can keep me from Bones and Star Driver ;). I hope Booth ditches that blond reporter chick soon, am I right?

Tomorrow I have my graduate student induction in the English department, which I'm pretty excited about since I haven't met anyone from my program(me) yet. I'll let you know how awesome the English dept is in my next post.  By then I might have to do some laundry though 'cause I'm running out of socks already.

Stay classy,
KQ