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