Arielle Askren is a junior at Northwest Nazarene University studying Communications with minors in Political Science and Psychology. She is spending the semester at Oxford and started a blog called “Living Life with an Arielle View” to chronicle her experience. You can follow Arielle’s blog at www.ariellelivinglife.blogspot.com. Here is her latest blog entry:

Oxford Life: Week Six

Hello All!
I hope that you all have had a marvelous week! I have had a cold this week, which has NOT been fun! Hmm… I’m trying to think of what to write. This week was a little hectic due to the fact that it was the first week of term. Term here is Oxford is very different from school in the US.
So I shall give you all a play-by-play of my week:

Monday: Canadian Thanksgiving
I am a member of the JCR: Junior Common Room, its kinda like a class council/SGA for all of us in our program. Within the group of 60 of us, there are about 2-3 Canadians so we decided to throw them a Candaian Thanksgiving pancake party! It was a lot of fun and got a little hectic with everyone coming into our program office… But it was totally worth it! A group even sang the Canadian National Anthem!
The rest of the day I went to a lecture and spent time in the library researching. The lecture that I went to was British History VI… Pretty much it is a lecture series on history in England from 1800-1915! I actually really liked it, because while I know quite a bit about American History and Politics it was interesting to find out the history of an entirely different country taught from there viewpoint. Gotta love all of the angles!

Tuesday:
I had a lecture on Theories of Politics. It was very interesting and I was able to understand about 99% of what the professor was teaching on! I also met some really awesome people and just had a great time. From there I went to the library and studied some more. I was working on a paper about the Aristotellian State. So tuesday was defiantely Aristotle day! Also in the afternoon I went and had tea at our program office Frewin Court. Every week our Tutor of Student Affairs holds a tea for us where we just get to hang out and socialize a little. I also had a JCR meeting where we planned out some fun events for the rest of the term. JCR is realy fun because all the other people on it live in the other house, so its great to get the chance to socialze with them and get to know them better! After the meeting I went back to the library and read more Aristotle.

As you are probably catching life in Oxford revolves around 4 key places: My house, the program office, the library and the exam schools where all of my lectures are!

Wednesday:
This was the day that my cold decided to come out in full force! Which was not that much fun considering that it was my most hectic day. So on Wednesday I had 2 lectures in the late morning/early afternoon, followed by our programs weekly Vocation and Scholarship lecture. It was great to be able to see everyone in the program in one place and it followed with all of us having tea together. From here I went back to the library because my essay was due the next morning. I didn’t last long at the library though due to the fever that developed

Thursday:
I decided that I would sleep and finish it all in the morning which I did. By this point I was really sick and so I was unable to make it to my tutorial. We were able to reschedule it, which was very nice of my tutor. The rest of Thursday I spent in bed only to go out to make a doctor’s appointment for Friday. It was really good just to spend a day in bed not doing anything.

Friday:
I started feeling better, but still rather sick, so I went to the Doctors appointment where he told me… that I had a cold! I know right, I was not happy to pay a person to tell me that I had a cold, but oh well that is life. Friday was another day where I did a little researcg but mainly stayed in bed.

Saturday:
And well, that brings us to right here. Where I literally spendt all day in the library reseraching whether Irish Feinianism is an ideology or a tradition! I know right, sounds like SO much fun. I really do find it really interesting, but I know nothing about it, and at times it feels rather obscure. So I am pretty much trying to learn as much as I can.

Well, that was my week! Yay being an Oxford student!!! Life here is crazy and hectic, but its great to know that I have some amazing friends here and also everyone who is in the states! Thank you all for you support!

Have a great week everyone!!!

Arielle

Josh & Steen test the admissions office new video camera

Orientation for new students is just around the corner and will begin on Friday, August 28.  The weekend is designed to get each new student through the process of checking in and to get all of the details necessary to begin the school year taken care of.   Orientation weekend also has several fun events for both students and parents designed to help make the transition to college life.

Please click here to visit our New Student Orientation website to view the schedule and events that we have in store for that weekend.  It really is a fun time for both students as well as parents and family members and we look forward to seeing you there.

I wanted to make a video for NW Sr. High Camp.  However, I had not been on campus for almost three weeks and wasn’t able to film anything.  Well, I got stranded in the San Francisco airport for 4.5 hours and this idea came to me.  Having only Photoshop Elements, Windows Movie Maker, and an internal mic, I created this little diddy.

To watch the other camp videos, click here.

-Josh

Hello all! My name is Brandon Gipson and I am a student worker at the NNU Admissions Office. Basically what that means is I do a bunch of random assignments and what ever Mike Marston tells me to do.

I work for this guy...

That handsome fellow to the left there is Mike Marston.  He may look scary but don’t  let him fool you. Anyways, every now and then I get to do  something really enjoyable for my job and Saturday night was a perfect example of this. I was lucky enough to attend this really fun party for future NNU students over at Professor Russell’s house. I was a little nervous at first meeting so many new people but as the night went on it became easier and easier to engage in conversation with everyone. The future students and their parents were great to talk to and the food was amazing. There was even shrimp! After a while Taylor, a girl I work with,  gathered everyone on the lawn to play a game. I’m not sure what it was called but it involved a bunch of funny movements and animal faces. Overall it was a lovely evening and I look forward to seeing all the future students I met again this fall.

Due to a near plane crash experience trying to get to Colorado for camp, I was unable to attend this year.  So this is the video message that I had for the campers.

Mike, Steen and I recently went to the NACCAP Conference in Cedarville, OH and we had a blast.  It was great to spend time with other Christian school admissions counselors from around the country.  We learned a lot but we also had a lot of fun.

The highlight probably had to be that the NNU boys took home the NACCAP Dodge Ball Tournament championship!  We signed up with Trinity International University and had so much fun playing.  We actually lost our first game, but after
a team huddle during which we adjusted
our strategy, we became a force to be
dealt with.

I have two photos for you, the first is us in action.  As you can see, apparently our strategy was that I would stand in the back playing dumb, Mike would hide in the back next to the girls, and Steen was told to stand up front and do all of the work.  The other photo was our victory photo where we were all supposed to look serious (except for Steen apparently)

Here are five of the lesser known, yet just as important facts about NNU.  Don’t bother trying to research these facts, I have already done the appropriate research and all of the books containing info of these facts is now hidden in my office.  Enjoy.

- Josh

Ahh…these are a few of my favorite things!!! Seriously…merging NNU with Disney? BRILLIANT! GLORIOUS! Don’t you just want to come now???

p. to the s. Carly and I have WAY too much fun making videos for events…can you tell?

      -j.dizzle (what??)