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