This too might be something of a long post because I’ve delayed posting about big events too much.
Oxford: We went on Friday to what was my favorite city I’ve seen so far in England (not counting Ireland and Edinburgh, as they’re not in England). It was amazing. There are 38 colleges in Oxford University and they’re all very independent and spread about the city. They were beautiful and austere and ancient of course. By the end of the walking tour we all felt quite positive that we needed to apply to attend graduate school there. It was not only because of the lovely city and the beautiful colleges, but also because of the tutoring system that they use. Instead of having set courses you must attend, they have tutorials that you must attend. It is usually one-on-one or no more than 3 people in a group with a fellow (professor) who is knowledgeable about the same field the student(s) is interested in. The student must go there every week and the fellow will give them topics to write on, suggest lectures to attend, books to read, etc. The student must write on the topic then read it to the fellow the next week and the fellow will usually tear it apart then suggest some ways to make it better. It’s really interesting and sounds like a nice idea for an education. They have long holiday breaks and are really not in school for very much time, but this direct education system makes it better than if they were in a huge lecture hall or if they were being given huge amounts of rather simple work (in my case).
And that’s the thing that I’ve realized about Southwestern. The work is rarely hard but it’s always massive. I’d rather have some truly difficult assignments that I spend hours labouring over than to have twenty-five assignments that I can do with relative ease but that take me two days because I have so much. This semester is great because everything is pared down considerably (as it should be), but I know next semester when I’m hopefully taking my capstone, it will be hell.
Anyway, Oxford also has some amazing literary connections. Harry Potter was filmed in bits of Christchurch and the Bodleian Library (which I’ll be talking about later) as well as other areas around town. The Eagle and the Child pub is where the Inklings met. The Inklings are a group of writers which include Tolkien and C.S. Lewis who would often gather in the pub and read aloud their writings. It was here that Tolkien told Lewis that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was crap. It was pretty cool to see the colleges where Tolkien, Philip Pullman, Mr. Bean, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carrol, and Michael Palin (of Monty Python) were students and to discover some of the things that inspired them.
After our walking tour and an amazing lunch at the Eagle and the Child we went to the Bodleian Library where Clive Hurst showed us some of the rare children’s books from the Opi collection and other collections. This was primarily for the Children’s Lit class but it was also really interesting to see these ancient books and see how they reflected the ideas of publishing, religion, class, education, etc. of the day.
I think it is fairly decided that we will all be returning to Oxford on a school trip which will explicitly be to tie in the connections from the literature we’re reading and the amazing city.
Borough Market: So yesterday we went to the Borough Market. We were planning to go last week but we were lame and didn’t. It was amazing. There were all these stalls and a huge crush of people trying to get to the organic cheese, fruit, jam, meat, rare cheeses (there were tons of cheese), wine, baps (a dusty roll sandwich thing), unique beers (I bought a banana beer!), olives, etc.etc.etc. There were tons of people there buying their environmentally and economically friendly free-trade, organic, no plastic used anywhere within a hundred mile radius products. It was awesome. We bought some hazelnut carrot cake, a chocolate brownie, chocolate pecan cake (wee bits of each mind you, we aren’t that unhealthy), some tomato and basil bread (good god we bought a lot of carbs), banana beer, cherry beer, and some garlic and basil olives. It was all-in-all a great day with amazing food and we are really hoping to be able to return.
After the market we headed to Tate Modern. Now, I like some modern art and I hate others. Michael apparently hates all modern art considering how surly he was about all of the “silly” bits there. But we did it. We trudged through the entire museum, quietly laughing at the people who spent 35 minutes looking at a painting a four year old could have done (and I secretly believe, probably did do) then would nod their head and walk away to the next ridiculous bit of “art.” There was Waterlilies by Monet which was lovely, some Matisses which were…yeah, some Jackson Pollack which I honestly cannot remember because all of the surreal (literally, surrealism) paintings kind of bled together in my mind. There were some very interesting pieces like a foam machine, a giant metal circular thing, live birds, etc. It was all-in-all an exercise in tourism to be able to say you were there. We went, it wasn’t all bad but it was certainly not our taste. It particularly irked us to see these inane pieces where someone literally just splashed paint onto a canvas and then a long bit of writing explaining how brilliant and important this piece was. There were pieces which were monochromatic, completely orange or black and yet these exemplified the gaping void of humanity or the fiery passion of life which can only be contained within itself. Trying to make meaning out of these things which were indecipherable. It’s like no one ever once stopped to think, “Hmm….I wonder if good ol’ Jackson Pollack needed to make some extra dough when he painted this one. All the others are somewhat intricate (if a little haphazard) but this one he obviously did to make some extra money between big paintings and he just wrote some drivel about the purity of art to make up for the obvious slapdash job he did.”
Anyway, that’s way more time than modern art deserved.
Today I think we’re going to hit up some of the British Museum. Obviously it would be impossible to tackle the whole thing at once so I hope we can get it done in 2-3 visits. Sorry for the ridiculous length of this post, but now you can never say you didn’t know my feelings on modern art.
The Exploration of Undiscovered Worlds 