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