blog.shimer

"It was kinda like boot camp."

The quote I'm using to title this post is shamelessly stolen from fellow student Jesus Avina. It's what he said when asked how Oxford was. I have to say, I quite agree with him.

Academically, my semester in Oxford was the most challenging and difficult thing I've ever faced. I'm still not sure how I got through it. At one point, I was putting forty five hours a week into my academic work, and was still struggling. Talk about an overload. I think i burned out about halfway through.

But then, something awesome happened. Oxford happened.

Halfway through the semester was when I got fed up with trying so hard and feeling like I was failing. I could do better than I was. I knew that. But there was this wall in the way, and I couldn't seem to climb over it, and plowing through it had proved to be even less effective.

So I took a day off.

One of my new friends who lives in Oxford is named Hannah. She's amazing. We met at the first Go Society meeting, and immediately hit it off. Then we met again the following night at the character generation meeting for the RPG Society. Yes, we're colossal dorks. We revel in it.

Anyway, I spent the morning of this particular day sleeping in, eating a proper breakfast, and practicing some songs on my recorder. Then I met Hannah near her college, where the pavement (that's what they call the sidewalk in England!) dips down beneath the level of the road, and there's this wall with tiny adorable doors. From there, we walked up the street to my favorite cafe in all of Oxford: Zappi's. 

Zappi's is the tiniest cafe I found there. The absolute tiniest. There's a table you can fit five around, and three stools at the windowsill. And it has the only pizza I've ever actually liked. Delicious stuff, and cheap, too. That's where Hannah and I went for lunch and planning.

I hauled out my map of Oxford, and we marked a bunch of places on it: all second-hand and charity shops that we were going to take a look at so Hannah could find some role playing kit. We'd both been feeling out of place because almost everyone else had costumes for their characters, but neither of us did. I didn't want anything, since I'd have to find a way to shove it in my suitcase to come back to the US, but I'd offered to go looking with Hannah.

After lunch, we spontaneously started costume hunting. There were a ton of cute little shops nearby, and we searched through all of them, trying on jackets, hats, laughing at some of the strange treasures we found but could not afford. Then we walked into Uncle Sam's. There was a hat in there that Hannah picked up and plopped on my head. Then she gasped and shoved me in front of a mirror, saying, "Sara, you have to get that hat. That is Caleyll's hat." (Caleyll is the name of the character I play, if you were wondering.) That hat looks something like this:

Hannah was right, of course. This is an explorer's hat. She even haggled the price down from eight quid to six, and only made me pay her back five. We never found anything for her, but we then spent the rest of the evening standing on a street corner talking about everything we could think of.

Then I wandered home, and got chips from my favorite kebab van on the way. There's something magic about British chips. They are not french fries. They are better. I munched on them happily, played some Minecraft, then got a good night's sleep.

That was the first time I decided to have some fun instead of trying even harder on my academics. Hanging out with my new Oxford friends became more frequent. And guess what happened! My academic work got better in the process! Did you know it's possible to try too hard to be a good student? Yeah, I hadn't known it either.

Instead of trying to go over or through the wall I'd hit, I went around it. I took detours to museums, to pubs, through windy alleyways and over bridges, down footpaths by the canal, acquired a bike and rode it everywhere, and even organized a pancake party in which I was thoroughly educated on the topic of British pancakes.

It was fun. Really, fantastically, wonderfully fun. I stopped being frustrated with myself, learned the value of occasionally shirking responsibility in order to unwind, and all around had a blast. I think I grew up some. Maybe a lot. Which is good, because that's why I wanted to go to Oxford in the first place.

So yes, Oxford was kinda like boot camp. Yes, I got my butt kicked big time. But it was worth it. Every moment, totally worth it. I've come back with a better sense of me, of my capabilities, and what I want to do with my life. Sort of. I know what I don't want to do, at least, and that might just count for more than knowing what I do want to do. 

It was an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. As I told my family, I went to Hogwarts, and I came back a wizard. A very happy, much more confident, and much less anxious wizard, ready to face the future and see what adventures it holds. And you know I'm going back to Oxford one day. I've got some amazing friends there, who offered to marry me, adopt me, or kidnap me and hide me in the crawl-space under their stairs so I didn't have to leave them. 

How To Cure The Dreariness of Winter

Hello readers of the blog! In case you don't remember me, it's Sara here, back from Oxford and remembering, now there's time to think, that oh yeah! There's a blog that needs me! More on Oxford later. There is a much more pressing topic I must cover. 

Ever notice how, in winter, everyone wears such dark, drab, and unremarkable colors? Well, not everybody, but most people. Take any gray, cold, and downright dreary winter day in Chicago, and almost every person you pass on the street will be wearing colors to match. And most people don't look very happy, either. It could just be the cold, but who knows?

Anyway, in Oxford, there is color. Even in the cold. Even when both the rivers have been frozen over for a week and all the houseboats are stuck. The people wear cheery colors and smile at one another, and life is grand.

Now I'm back in Chicago, I miss that. 

Enter lime green pants:

Discovered these at Unique, a most awesome thrift store and the best place (in my opinion) to buy clothing ever. They are more vividly green in the sunlight, I promise. 

But more to the point, the day I wore these pants and wandered all over campus, almost every person I walked past smiled. It made me happy. I like making people smile, even if it's because they can't quite believe I'm wandering around in pants that color. 

Yes, school is great and amazing and wonderful (I'll post about this later, too.), but if there is one thing I learned while in Oxford, it's that one of the most important things is happiness. You can work real hard, get good grades, be a very successful person, but what does it all mean if there's no happiness in it? Happiness for yourself, and for others. Little things like lime green pants to help cure the winter dreariness of Chicago, and bring a smile to a stranger's face, if even for a moment. These are just as important as getting that Kierkegaard reading done and successfully contributing an interesting idea to the class discussion.

We have all these goals set for us, by society, our peers, our families and ourselves. All these great expectations we strive to meet. But let's not forget to have a little fun along the way, shall we? Spread some smiles, and keep cheery this winter! 

Wesołich świąt bożega narodzenia!

Well, actually, it's quite past the season to be giving you that greeting, but it about sums up a good part of the way I spent my break in Oxford. While some of it was devoted to recovery time from the previous semester, as well as working on - le gasp - a thesis and other break projects, I finally got a chance to see some of the continent. I might not have, but a family invitation to spend Christmas in Poland gave me the perfect opportunity. Just so you know that we Oxfordites do a *few* other things besides study our fannies off.

Unfortunately, my grasp of Polish isn't as good as I'd like it to be, but my cousin had studied English for years and she was eager to practice with me (giving me plenty of time to reflect on the hegemony of my native language). I stayed with her for a few days while she finished up her last classes - she even sneaked me into one of her lectures - and then we headed to her home in Tarnow, near Krakow in the south of Poland, to stay with the family.

Christmas in Poland follows a great deal of tradition. The Wigilia, or Christmas Eve, is the time for the most intimate family. You eat very little all day, for most of the preceding two days are spent preparing the Wigilia feast, consisting of twelve meatless courses (except for fish). At sundown, or when the first star appears, the supper begins. Beforehand, my cousin, her parents, and my great-aunt gathered together to wish each other good in the coming year by breaking opłatki, and then we began the feast. After this enormous dinner, gifts are exchanged, and perhaps a few other close relatives are visited. Christmas Day, and the days following, are spent visiting all friends and family. I met a great many people whom I'd never met before, including two sets of aunts and uncles who own farms, and a cousin who worked in Spain and happily chattered away with me in Spanish (a certain step above my Polish).

It is customary to visit, clean and tend for the graves of family a few times a month, and especially for the holidays. My great-grandparents are buried here.

I hope to have a chance to return to Poland before I return to the US. To be family in Poland is to be welcome to all, even if the language and cultures are different. Barriers are overcome.

My last long journey before classes began was to Middlesbrough, far in the north of England. I was journeying to help the Young Friends General Meeting (Quakers to you, bub) plan its next large group event, which happens to be in Oxford in February. As a result, I got to see a great deal of English countryside as the train sped up north:

And, of course, the meetinghouse itself.

Classes have started now, and I doubt I will have much more time now than for occasional gasps of air at the surface before I plunge back down. But I will leave you with the image of my FAVORITE TABLE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, which is where we meet to have classes, and is found in the incomparable Albion Beatnik Cafe:

Montaigne Scholarship 2011

    January is almost a third over now and in just two days time I'll be on a plane returning to my home in Chicago and the rigorous assignments that await me. It also means that February is fast approaching and, with it, the Montaigne Scholarship competition. This is my third blog about the competition; the first was centered around one of the winners from my year and the second was full of pictures of the competing group from last year. While I have been asked to write a blog encouraging people to come compete, I also find it personally important to talk to everyone about entering the competition.
    Margaret, the youngest Dashwood sister in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, says something to the effect of, "we never talk about things," and, for some reason or another, this has always stuck with me. I kept it in the back of my mind until it came rushing to the surface during the discussion portion of my Montaigne competition. I realized that was what had been so unbearable about high school education and what I was dreading about college, not talking about things. My entire life I had been expected to "learn" things from people who only knew what the teacher's edition of textbooks told them, nothing was discussed, just memorized.
    I didn't win the Montaigne, but I earned something invaluable during the competition: the decision to go to Shimer. It is one of the best ideas I've ever had and cannot imagine being happy without receiving the education I am today. So, yes, come to the competition with the hopes of winning, but also come to find yourself in discussion and lose yourself in learning. I can't wait to see you all there.