"One who graduated yesterday, and stops learning today, is uneducated by tomorrow"

As I sit in this room, the room that I have learned to call "my room" and the room that I have learned to crave at the end of a long day of studying that lies within "my home" I realize how fully I've come to embody this experience. Experience, the act of learning from exposure to an event or events, as far as I consider it. The first week I got here the sun did not rise until almost 9 am and it set by 4:30 pm. Today is daylights saving time. As the birds still chirp outside, it is 7 pm and still light out. With every day here, I've grown. With every week here the light has shined longer and brighter.

When considering an invitation to extend into Trinity term here at Oxford, I spoke with my mom about this strange juxtaposed reacted that I had. Despite the unbelievably difficult term that I had just completed, I felt this overwhelming desire to continue through next term. While we further discussed the nature of an experience, that which I argue entails a beginning, a middle, and consequentially, an end, I realized that the nature of an experience is such that it must come to a complete finish in order to allow for a full reflection on it. The completion of an experience is ingrained, I argue, within the experience itself. Quite simply put, the end is part of the experience, perhaps the most pressing part of the experience, in fact. Since we are young we are asked: "and what have you learned from your experience?" By gracefully allowing my time here at Oxford to end with the end of my Hilary term (to be completed next week), I am giving myself the chance to fully reflect on all that I have achieved during my time here. To have continued into Trinity would have been rewarding, I am certain, however, to begin a new experience in preparation for my LSATs upon arriving home is the next experience that I must undertake. I've got an agenda.

Here at Oxford, though, I have learned how to learn.

While I am currently preparing for my final tutorial tomorrow in the concentration of British Politics, I have been researching into answers to the question that this tutorial surrounds: "How and why did Tony Blair decide to support the Bush administration after 9/11, including the Iraq War in 2003?" It's hard to dissect the motivation behind a commitment that ended so hollowly, however, it's not my job here to pass judgement, it's my job to answer the question with strong supporting references, insistently, to argue a case.

In stemming back to basic philosophy, we are all striving towards an ultimate end. Every act that we do, every experience that we go through, is driven towards this ultimate end, whether we realize it or not. As Chuck Palahnuik stated "I am the combined effort of everything and everyone I have ever known" I reflect that an experience is meant to shape us. If part of the nature of an experience, as I argued above, is it's end, then consciously allowing a "good thing to come to an end" reflects character beyond that which could have been previously known. I am authentic. My experiences have shaped me, but by deciding the delineation of how these experiences will unfold, which will ultimately lead me to my ultimate end, I am in charge. While I will be able to reflect on this whole experience better after I have moved back to the states when my sentiment will be more definitive, I can, however, confidently say this: Oxford has enabled me to realize my full potential, and with that, I'm ready for you, world ; )

I can not believe it is February already! I really can't afford to take a break from writing essays at this point in my tutorials but I felt like I should do a quick update to kick off the new month and to recognize that I have been here just about a month at this point AND to share the great news that my mom will be visiting me in a month! SO many things going on within a month! As for my quick update, Oxford is (still) an incredible city and I am loving it more every single day. I really could not imagine doing my 40 minute walk that I have to do every single morning and evening to and from the library, anywhere else. My days go as follows: wake up at around 830 am, (the sun rises at about 8 here) get myself together, have breakfast, leave for the library at around 930, get to the Bodleian at around 10ish, read from 10-2, grab lunch somewhere in the city (my lunch date is always my notebook) go back to the library from 2-7, walk back to my flat, get in around 745, have dinner, study some more then go to sleep. (Reading is interchangeable with essay writing, I write about 6000 words/week and I read as much as I can of about 25-30 books a week). I have no borrowing privileges (nor does anyone in the world, not even the Queen!) at the Bodleian Library so I have to do all of my work in Library. There is no food or drinks allowed in either. This schedule is Sunday-Sunday, weekends do not apply accept that the library does not open until noon on Sunday. While my days may seem dismal and monotonous, there are certain things about the fact that this is Oxford that makes them much more bearable. For one, the walk in the morning, while it is long, cold and complete with a heavy bag filled with books and my laptop, is one where I walk over the thames river, passed oxford castle, down cornmarket street, and straight into the Bodleian Library (all beautiful and unique places in oxford). While the Bodleian can feel like a prison, I always try to get a seat near a window whereas I get to overlook the rest of the Radcliffe. Check it out! <<>> (This is the Radcliffe camera, it is conjoined with the Bodleian Library which is the square building with the open courtyard in the center in the back) I always try to stop in a new pub or coffee shop for lunch, for example i have been in the covered market several times for lunch. The covered market offers this sense of raw reality that I had never experienced back home. You walk in to a market place where butchers are doing their work right in front of you, Ben's cookies' smell overrides everything else in the market, they are baked fresh all day and upon ordering I've found that most people just ask for "whats fresh." They are all incredible...Florists are peddling carts around, theres a single barber shop where men are always drinking pints of beer, i think it might act more as a pub, and many sandwich stops, all with traditional british fare, both fortunately and unfortunately nothing American. Anyway, upon finding something new everyday, my 5 additional hours or so at the Bodleian do not seem as difficult to face. When my day at the library concludes I then take the 40 minute walk back to my house. Everything looks different at night in Oxford, especially since everything (aside from pubs) closes at 5-6 pm. The only night things stay open is on Thursday night where they have "late night shopping." On Thursday nights, most stores close at 8. So, I hope I painted a fairly concise picture of what life as an Oxford student is like...

As for today, I spent the morning refining and finishing an essay arguing that religious fundamentalism may be manipulated as a tool by men to create social inferiority of women in societies throughout the world (particularly in the middle east). Then I did my 40 minute walk to the library where I spent the whole afternoon reading about Parliamentarism, so that I can spend this evening (what I should be doing right now) writing an essay arguing that parliamentary democracies are better at enacting policy than presidential democracies are. I still have 2800 words of that to write tonight, and I have my gender issues tutorial in the morning where I will have to debate and defend my above referenced thesis with my professor (called my tutor). This is life at Oxford. While I wish that I could take just one day off and not go to the library, I am so blessed to be here and this experience is not only making me a better student, but it is absolutely shaping me into a better person. I can say that with full confidence.

Well, I have to stop procrastinating and I have to get to writing this second essay.

Cheerio!

a short note on the impossibility of knowing

I'm not sure if it's the experience of living in another country or it being that I'm in Oxford that has led me towards great introspection, but either way I keep finding myself constantly in thought. There's so much to learn.

I had a teacher in eighth grade who would walk into our classroom every morning, slam the tip of his chalk against the chalkboard, while exclaiming "you know this much . " I never really knew what he meant by that until now. It crossed my mind the other day while sitting in the Bodleian Library, surrounded by 117 miles of books (it grows by 3 miles each year), that depending on how hard he hit the board on any given day and the size of the miniscule mark that that chalk made, I think that some days Mr. Marcus was being overly generous when displaying to us how much we knew. I know not much, but I'm finding that just when I think I have finally pinned something down, it unravels in a whole new light. Its just as the saying goes, "all that I know for sure is that I know nothing for sure," which, I would normally say is absolutely true, however I believe in universal truths aside from just that single ones existence. Despite the revelation and possibility of knowing nothing for sure, however, I have been trying to pin something, anything stable, down these days while experiencing so many new things. Here's what I've got:

I think that it is undoubtedly within our very nature as beings to enjoy the comforts of stability, while consequentially rejecting the discomfort instilled within us by experiencing too much new.

What I have come to realize about this, though, is that the novelty in the things that we deem as being new is that it will inevitably become replaced by a newer new. It will become old. It will become comfortable.

((I'm finding comfort in this revelation in fact!))

Also, "you know this much . " never meant that we know nothing, it just means that we have a hell of a lot left to learn, about our surroundings, about the world, about other people (even those who we think that we have pinned down), and the most difficult to know of all, ourselves.

For my concluding thought, I'd like to state that this was the same teacher who told me that he didn't think I should participate in the Model United Nations debate team (which has students represent different countries while debating international policies and practices) because he was not sure if it was something that I could handle. After becoming a head delegate in high school leading debates at NYU and Harvard (I know I'm such a nerd), Now here I sit at Oxford University studying international politics with the greatest minds in the world. So, here's to you Mr. Marcus, while I have learned to appreciate your wisdom more so now than ever, I'd like to end this introspection by stating, "you know this much . " and, I could not have gotten here without having crossed paths with people like you. There's so much to learn.

Learn from someone every day.

as a post script; a year ago today I was at the Biden Home State Inaugural Ball in DC! As Dr. Suess stated so perfectly "Oh, the places you'll go!" Life and the people in my life have brought me to quite fantastic places!... Now back to studying the world!

First week in Oxford

So here I sit, a week into my Oxford experience, and what an experience it has already been. I flew into London Heathrow airport last Wednesday, the day of the "biggest snowstorm in Oxford in 30 years." On my way through JFK airport I picked up two heads-up pennies, both of which I give equal accreditation for my landing in London, since every other airport in London closed that morning, and Heathrow closed an hour after my flight landed. Since arriving here, Oxford has been one large sheet of ice covered with a full layer of snow, now more accurately noted as being slush, or as the British say, "rubbish". I have seen about 30 people fall thus far, not an exaggeration, and it has become quite easy to distinguish the British who fall from the others. Yesterday, a woman fell right in front of me and when I ran up to help her she was yelling "bloody f*cking hell, this f*cking ice..." you get the idea...The British curse like sailors. Aside from the cursing, and the obvious accent barrier, another way to distinguish the British from Americans are by their tardiness. My first day of orientation was scheduled to begin at 9:20 am (mind you I was jetlagged) and after walking over 30 minutes into the city centre at 8 am to be on time, the meeting did not start until 10:05, 45 minutes later. I thought tardiness might have been circumstantial, however, last night I had a tour of the Union Society, the world's greatest debating chambers, and my tour which was scheduled to begin at 5 pm did not start until 5:35, subsequently causing the formal dinner we were to have beginning at 7:20 PM not to start until nearly 8 PM. Anyway, I could continue with this, but you get the idea. I think tardiness is a general standard in Oxford though, things are much slower, and if I may say, a bit less serious in terms of general concerns.

Oxford seems concerned with beauty and academia above all else. The alarm clock and the tour groups can wait. The thought you are experiencing in any given moment can not. It has become no wonder to me why this is the city where Harry Potter and the Golden Compass came to life, where Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Ring series, where Carol wrote Alice and Wonderland and where Hobbes wrote the Leviathan. The heir of intellectualism is absolutely contagious. Just dining in the same hall as Albert Einstein and John Locke is enough to make anyone strive to be better, to extend oneself beyond the boundaries that we have self-imposed, unknowingly, prior to stepping into a city, or a new world, where dreams are not merely dreams any longer, they are feasible future accomplishments.

As for now, however, I sit in a McDonalds that is cleverly placed between two buildings dating back to the early thirteenth century. I find it to be refreshing though, this healthy balance that Oxford has kept between the old and the new, predominantly on the old. Being here is like nothing I have ever experienced, quite literally because our notable American history merely dates back to the 1700's or so, but even further so because I have noticed that it is an American standard to deem the "old" as being replaceable and always subject to being made more contemporary. Old is good. Whether it be old traditions, such as sending "cheers" to the Queen at dinner, old buildings such as the Bear, a pub I spent 5 hours getting to know the other day that dates back to the thirteenth century, or old thoughts, such as the original copy of the Leviathan and Darwin's notebooks which are held in this exquisite city, each remind me in their own way of just how precious the old is. Without the old, there would be no basis for the creation of something new. My goal, now, is to do something un-American, then. Instead of the American tradition of deeming everything replaceable, my goal, while here, will be to become a piece of history, to make both my own experience and my presence here, something totally and completely irreplaceable.

My favorite contemporary American author stated "The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." This is undoubtedly the place to do so. While in the presence of so much greatness, the only thing to do is to strive to be great.

cheers!

Jess

merrily merrily merrily merrily...

     Today is my first day back in New York, and even after spending the day with my entire family at home, baking, while being snowed in, I'm still scratching my head while thinking about how I have gotten here. 

     After a cancelled final and a declared snow emergency yesterday, I made the split decision to  move myself out of DC within a single day.  I placed 8 months worth of stuff (pretty much everything I have aside from clothes and shoes) into storage (not as simple as it sounds), took a math final exam (not as simple as it sounds), and packed myself along with all of my stuff (and my friend katherine, and all of her stuff) into a two door civic, where we drove 4 hours to jersey (with my knees in my chest pressed up against the dashboard, along with katherine's plant sitting on top of them) and then another hour and a half trip back to new york (definitely as bad as it sounds).  Now here I am, in my bed at home, with extra baggage from this passed semester still hanging over my head-a philosophy final exam to be taken from home tomorrow morning as a result of this crazy weather.   Aside from this though, I'm thrilled to be back in New York.  I can't wait to get this exam behind me so I may actually have some time to think straight before boarding the plane to move to England in two weeks.  While passing the skyline last night it struck me that within a two week span I will have moved between three of the greatest cities in the world, Washington DC, New York, and London. Hey Mom, check me out!  Hey Me, check me out! It amazes me every single day how blessed this life is...

   Today, upon reading a random quote, I came across the old rhyme I used to sing and dance around to as a child:  

Row, row, row your boat, 

Gently down the stream,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream...

   Upon analyzing it and even researching into its significance, since I tend to do that to everything, I realized that the meaning behind this short rhyme is more profound than any child singing it may come close to grasping.  This poem about life symbolizes the diligence and unity that it takes in rowing (the coordinated effort between myself and my professor to get out of DC before the storm.  Katherine telling me that she would not leave DC without me, or all of my stuff and that we would make everything fit even despite all odds against that happening, and my parents meeting me halfway, as they are always so willing and kind in doing).  "Gently down the stream" signifies that our paths and our decisions are possibly more confined than we realize, and that there are things that are out of our control, the direction of our lives may not always be understood to us but yet our lives don't wait for us to choose when it is the right time to act, we are always in motion and always heading towards an end, even when we don't understand how exactly we are getting there.  Finally, we must be "gentle" and "merry" in our handling of this realization.  Even when we feel confined or confused, our disposition upon executing how we will act during a tough situation can make all of the difference.  And lastly, perhaps the most striking aspect of this short nursery rhyme is the last line which deems that "life is but a dream."   I could write a long commentary on what I believe that to mean and how I believe that its applicable in my life, however, I think it's best that you, whoever you are reading this, finds their own meaning for this profound ending, and you figure out how it applies to your life.  It may strike you just how wise the words you spoke before you even knew the meaning of words, can explain your life as it is undoubtedly unfolding before you today... it sure did so for me.

   On that note, every day is an experience to learn from, and from this experience I have learned that people, nursery rhymes, and even we can surprise ourselves, and that in the end its not a matter of worrying or contemplating about how we will get to these ends that we have in mind, its a matter of appreciating the experiences that we gain while finding our way to them.  It's also understanding that even when things seem overwhelming, crammed!, stressful, or any other feeling we experience when facing challenges, we musn't always take ourselves, or our lives for that matter, too seriously whereas it wont change the path we are on, it will only make it harder to travel down...if we spend too much time focusing on the wrong parts of this journey, in the end we may merely come to realize that Life is, in fact, just a dream...

I got in to Christ Church.  If life is just a dream, it is surely a brilliantly blessed one. 

One Year in the Making

While I am not yet in England, I wanted to make this blog, (and figure out how to use it properly) before I head overseas.  Over the passing weeks it has been consistently harder and harder to get the work done that I am still stuck doing here in the States, as my Hilary Term in Oxford is fast approaching.  I am so anxious to wrap things up in DC, however I have to move back to New York first before I can officially move to England.  If I wasn't me I would absolutely think that I was some chic jet-setter, and I wouldn't be more wrong! Traveling, I find, is a hassle and moving between states, and soon to be, between countries, is horrifying! I have come to the realization, however, that this journey to Oxford has almost officially been "one year in the making."  After deciding and discussing with my Mom that studying abroad "just wasn't for me," aside from my pretentious and audacious comment "except if I somehow get into Oxford or Cambridge, those are the only universities that can get me out of this country," I received my letter to apply to the Oxford Honors Program on January 4th, the day after returning from a skitrip for my 20th birthday...

         My 21st birthday is in less than 3 weeks, January 3rd, and I will be moving to England on January 5th, leaving January 4th, the day in between these two milestones, to become a milestone in itself. While this milestone marks an end to a one year journey of preparation, I know that it is merely a new starting point for the journey of my lifetime...

New York bound for now,

   Jess