Michaelmas
Oct. 5th, 2005 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI have internet in my room! Yay, finally! And have just discovered the best thing ever: everyone who has them and knows how shares their iTunes libraries across the college network. I have ten complete libraries of music to work through. My life is complete.
Not before time, either. Connecting to the internet here is a nightmare made real. It’s been made deliberately difficult, because although they seem to know they have to provide it, they don’t want people to actually use it. That’s my theory and it seems sound based on the evidence provided. First of all you have to run a virus/patch CD from the computing people and have your laptop certified clean, which seems fair enough, but then you have to apply for an IP address through an online form which is designed to refresh and re-refresh as you enter your data and then again as you attempt to continue. The only way to break the cycle is to find a one-word link hidden in the thick paragraphs of text. Once you’ve done this, you have to send an additional email to the IT manager, from your Oxford-based email account, which has to be activated separately from a Balliol-based computer, which can’t be logged onto unless you have a username and password, which you can’t get unless you get online from the JCR, not the computers in the computer room.
And if you make it through all this, which I have but not unscathed, you have to get yourself an ethernet cable from the OUCS shop, which is “fifteen minutes from St John’s”, (a pound per metre, so reasonable) and cart it across to your room. I am an idiot and forgot to buy an adaptor, but apparently I was being clever without knowing it as my laptop doesn’t need one.
Of course, as you're reading this, I have solved the problem – hopefully – so a little less on the ridiculous wrangling with the IT people, and more on life in Oxford. I arrived here on Sunday, with my parents helping me unload and unpack. I collected my key from the porters’ lodge and came across to my room.
Which is wonderful. I have someone watching over me – I have, more or less, the best freshers’ room in college. It’s true! To begin with, unlike the vast majority of freshers, who are placed in the new, concrete buildings collectively known as the freshers’ ghetto, I am in the old part of college. This is a plus by itself. But more than that, my room is the attic room. It’s about double the average size, with a slanting casement roof, and I have two windows that look out towards St. Giles. One of these is a large circular porthole-like thing, and so the only window that is recognisable instantly from the ground. Now decorated with my bits and bobs (I have a nice red bedspread and throw, lots of photographs and postcards on the wall and books strewn all over) the room and the view are beautiful.
So is the college. Balliol isn’t known for its beauty among Oxford colleges generally – right in the middle of Broad Street means not much room for the picturesque – but inside the front quad is a circle of serenity. It’s quite manicured there, but the large, green back quad is different, with the famous lack of “Keep off the grass” signs. (Not strictly true – they’re up today because the grass is being sprayed with weedkiller). The buildings all around are draped with ivy and even the ghetto looks acceptable in the right lights.
I’m living closer to the back entrance, but I have to go through the front because although I have a key, it’s not generally used until the first week of Michaelmas, which isn’t until next Monday. This week, which is freshers’ week for freshers and noughth week for everyone else, seems to be a limbo period where nothing is quite as normal.
Not that I know what normal is, yet. I have now been here three days and feel like I’ve either been here forever or no time at all, I’m not sure which. My room feels like home, which is good. It helps that it’s such a lovely room with such unique drawbacks. It has two of these – one is the obvious attic room disadvantage of lots of stairs, and the other is the fact the shower is four floors below. This is a problem. Happily, there is a bath. I have invested in a bucket for purposes of washing my hair. Sigh.
The JCR feels homely, as well. As well as the actual junior common room, “JCR” refers to the community of people who inhabit the place, but at the moment I’m just talking about the place. It is not very fancy, with peeling paint and strewn newspapers, but it’s comfortable and has a student-run pantry. Said pantry is the greasy spoon of greasy spoons, but the food is obscenely cheap – yesterday’s special, toast with jam, eggs and bacon and coffee, came to 85p – and easier than actually cooking. I have to use the ghetto kitchens, and am therefore not cooking.
Below the pantry is the bar. It’s called the Lindsay Bar, and is also student-run (because of it, Balliol JCR has the highest turnover of all colleges by a factor of four). I was there last night for its opening night, which was, um, interesting. It’s also very cheap. The special was a Balliol Blue, which is two shots of vodka in blue WKD. Ewwww. I stuck with Smirnoff and red wine. (Tonight all shots were 75p each. Oh, the pain.)
To be honest, I’m not loving freshers’ week. I’m actually pretty much hating it. I hate being totally aimless – you hang around in the JCR because there’s nothing better to do – and everyone else is obsessed with getting pissed, for some reason. Particularly my subject father, who is shockingly attractive. He’s good company, though – he and my other parent, Sarah are extremely nice. They have fourteen children, as PPE is the most populated undergraduate course at Balliol. Of the original hundred and twenty-five applicants last Christmas, nine (including me) have got in; the other five are deferred entry and international students.
Yesterday, therefore, involved a lot of running around with the other PPEists and our parents – we had a look round the libraries and faculties and finished it off with a PPEists’ tea-party hosted by the Balliol Organ Scholar. He is a nice guy, a PPEist himself, although I have never met him sober. It wasn’t an actual tea-party, you understand – it mostly involved red wine and diet Coke with everyone draped across the front quad.
Among the fourteen PPEists, there are four girls and four boys called Sam. I have spoken to two of the Sams, who are both nice people, and the girls are convinced we need to stick together. I’m quite sure we do, although most of the boys are charming. One of them patently isn’t – he’s an arrogant bastard – and there’s another one who clearly believes he is the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth. He has the sort of accent that would get him ritually flattened anywhere else. He stands out even among all the people from the south. There are very few people from up north here. I don’t like that because it makes me feel so utterly provincial. I do feel ridiculously out of place, actually. So many people have led such terribly glamorous lives – spent their childhoods travelling with their parents with the UN or gone backpacking across Tibet – or else they’re only the latest in their lineage to come to Balliol, and the international students obviously all have interesting stories to tell. I’m just so boring – boring, boring, only eighteen, went to boring school in boring north, came straight from said boring school, likes sleeping more than clubs, actually looking forward to the work... boring as fuck.
Anyway. I do not like freshers’ week. I want something real to do. And I don’t like going out and not drinking and getting bored while everyone else gets pissed. Tonight, though, I did have fun; someone noticed that the freshers’ male to female ratio this year is seventy : thirty and got scared. Therefore there was an evening of women’s drinks tonight with free drinks, penny sweets and tampons. Seriously. There were people walking around with a glass of rosé in one hand and a box of tampons in the other.
Tonight is formal dinner with the Master in hall. (I actually met him randomly in the quad yesterday; he’s an old, genial little man who asked me my name and what I was reading and if I was enjoying myself, and then just as he was departing mentioned that he was the Master.) I have to dress up a bit and go for drinks with my tutors beforehand. Perhaps washing my hair would be a good idea.
And now, must run. Today has been good fun so far; I asked some people up for coffee and got my computer set up in return for a handful of cookies. Life is far better than it was last night, which is when I wrote most of the above. Once I've settled in, I'm thinking I'll like it here.
Not before time, either. Connecting to the internet here is a nightmare made real. It’s been made deliberately difficult, because although they seem to know they have to provide it, they don’t want people to actually use it. That’s my theory and it seems sound based on the evidence provided. First of all you have to run a virus/patch CD from the computing people and have your laptop certified clean, which seems fair enough, but then you have to apply for an IP address through an online form which is designed to refresh and re-refresh as you enter your data and then again as you attempt to continue. The only way to break the cycle is to find a one-word link hidden in the thick paragraphs of text. Once you’ve done this, you have to send an additional email to the IT manager, from your Oxford-based email account, which has to be activated separately from a Balliol-based computer, which can’t be logged onto unless you have a username and password, which you can’t get unless you get online from the JCR, not the computers in the computer room.
And if you make it through all this, which I have but not unscathed, you have to get yourself an ethernet cable from the OUCS shop, which is “fifteen minutes from St John’s”, (a pound per metre, so reasonable) and cart it across to your room. I am an idiot and forgot to buy an adaptor, but apparently I was being clever without knowing it as my laptop doesn’t need one.
Of course, as you're reading this, I have solved the problem – hopefully – so a little less on the ridiculous wrangling with the IT people, and more on life in Oxford. I arrived here on Sunday, with my parents helping me unload and unpack. I collected my key from the porters’ lodge and came across to my room.
Which is wonderful. I have someone watching over me – I have, more or less, the best freshers’ room in college. It’s true! To begin with, unlike the vast majority of freshers, who are placed in the new, concrete buildings collectively known as the freshers’ ghetto, I am in the old part of college. This is a plus by itself. But more than that, my room is the attic room. It’s about double the average size, with a slanting casement roof, and I have two windows that look out towards St. Giles. One of these is a large circular porthole-like thing, and so the only window that is recognisable instantly from the ground. Now decorated with my bits and bobs (I have a nice red bedspread and throw, lots of photographs and postcards on the wall and books strewn all over) the room and the view are beautiful.
So is the college. Balliol isn’t known for its beauty among Oxford colleges generally – right in the middle of Broad Street means not much room for the picturesque – but inside the front quad is a circle of serenity. It’s quite manicured there, but the large, green back quad is different, with the famous lack of “Keep off the grass” signs. (Not strictly true – they’re up today because the grass is being sprayed with weedkiller). The buildings all around are draped with ivy and even the ghetto looks acceptable in the right lights.
I’m living closer to the back entrance, but I have to go through the front because although I have a key, it’s not generally used until the first week of Michaelmas, which isn’t until next Monday. This week, which is freshers’ week for freshers and noughth week for everyone else, seems to be a limbo period where nothing is quite as normal.
Not that I know what normal is, yet. I have now been here three days and feel like I’ve either been here forever or no time at all, I’m not sure which. My room feels like home, which is good. It helps that it’s such a lovely room with such unique drawbacks. It has two of these – one is the obvious attic room disadvantage of lots of stairs, and the other is the fact the shower is four floors below. This is a problem. Happily, there is a bath. I have invested in a bucket for purposes of washing my hair. Sigh.
The JCR feels homely, as well. As well as the actual junior common room, “JCR” refers to the community of people who inhabit the place, but at the moment I’m just talking about the place. It is not very fancy, with peeling paint and strewn newspapers, but it’s comfortable and has a student-run pantry. Said pantry is the greasy spoon of greasy spoons, but the food is obscenely cheap – yesterday’s special, toast with jam, eggs and bacon and coffee, came to 85p – and easier than actually cooking. I have to use the ghetto kitchens, and am therefore not cooking.
Below the pantry is the bar. It’s called the Lindsay Bar, and is also student-run (because of it, Balliol JCR has the highest turnover of all colleges by a factor of four). I was there last night for its opening night, which was, um, interesting. It’s also very cheap. The special was a Balliol Blue, which is two shots of vodka in blue WKD. Ewwww. I stuck with Smirnoff and red wine. (Tonight all shots were 75p each. Oh, the pain.)
To be honest, I’m not loving freshers’ week. I’m actually pretty much hating it. I hate being totally aimless – you hang around in the JCR because there’s nothing better to do – and everyone else is obsessed with getting pissed, for some reason. Particularly my subject father, who is shockingly attractive. He’s good company, though – he and my other parent, Sarah are extremely nice. They have fourteen children, as PPE is the most populated undergraduate course at Balliol. Of the original hundred and twenty-five applicants last Christmas, nine (including me) have got in; the other five are deferred entry and international students.
Yesterday, therefore, involved a lot of running around with the other PPEists and our parents – we had a look round the libraries and faculties and finished it off with a PPEists’ tea-party hosted by the Balliol Organ Scholar. He is a nice guy, a PPEist himself, although I have never met him sober. It wasn’t an actual tea-party, you understand – it mostly involved red wine and diet Coke with everyone draped across the front quad.
Among the fourteen PPEists, there are four girls and four boys called Sam. I have spoken to two of the Sams, who are both nice people, and the girls are convinced we need to stick together. I’m quite sure we do, although most of the boys are charming. One of them patently isn’t – he’s an arrogant bastard – and there’s another one who clearly believes he is the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth. He has the sort of accent that would get him ritually flattened anywhere else. He stands out even among all the people from the south. There are very few people from up north here. I don’t like that because it makes me feel so utterly provincial. I do feel ridiculously out of place, actually. So many people have led such terribly glamorous lives – spent their childhoods travelling with their parents with the UN or gone backpacking across Tibet – or else they’re only the latest in their lineage to come to Balliol, and the international students obviously all have interesting stories to tell. I’m just so boring – boring, boring, only eighteen, went to boring school in boring north, came straight from said boring school, likes sleeping more than clubs, actually looking forward to the work... boring as fuck.
Anyway. I do not like freshers’ week. I want something real to do. And I don’t like going out and not drinking and getting bored while everyone else gets pissed. Tonight, though, I did have fun; someone noticed that the freshers’ male to female ratio this year is seventy : thirty and got scared. Therefore there was an evening of women’s drinks tonight with free drinks, penny sweets and tampons. Seriously. There were people walking around with a glass of rosé in one hand and a box of tampons in the other.
Tonight is formal dinner with the Master in hall. (I actually met him randomly in the quad yesterday; he’s an old, genial little man who asked me my name and what I was reading and if I was enjoying myself, and then just as he was departing mentioned that he was the Master.) I have to dress up a bit and go for drinks with my tutors beforehand. Perhaps washing my hair would be a good idea.
And now, must run. Today has been good fun so far; I asked some people up for coffee and got my computer set up in return for a handful of cookies. Life is far better than it was last night, which is when I wrote most of the above. Once I've settled in, I'm thinking I'll like it here.
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no subject
on 2005-10-05 12:09 pm (UTC)By god but I know that feeling. YAY THOUGH for you are back online.
Try www.radiocity.co.uk The music is absolutely crap, the DJs are banal, the adverts are irritating, but here is the part that counts - it's all with a Scouse accent. It really helps, oddly enough.
Your room sounds so pretty. Speaking as someone who lives in the self-confessed shantytown of St Andrews, I am thoroughly jealous. And drink prices! I am coming to visit!
no subject
on 2005-10-05 12:23 pm (UTC)People keep calling me Scouse! I will have to play Radio City at them.
Vist! Please do visit! I would love it if you did, and would buy you all the drinks I owe you.
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on 2005-10-05 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 02:17 pm (UTC)(Small side note, omg Five For Fighting! Love that song beyond all reason, have you heard their other stuff?)
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on 2005-10-05 03:14 pm (UTC)(That was the first time I'd listened to it, to be honest! I've taken it from someone else's library and will be sure to check out their other stuff.)
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on 2005-10-05 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 03:14 pm (UTC)The Lanky Bugger
on 2005-10-05 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 04:00 pm (UTC)apperantly I have high levels of hormones...ehm yes not sure bout that. Oh and you are missing the big- is he or isn't he? about Mr.Lamb. He apperantly has a wife.....but when he comes out with things like,
"One of the other applicants was so attractive I was considering leaving my wife for him,"
You have to wonder,
And tomorrow is the staff olypmics, apperantly Mr.Evans is wearing very short shorts and going to be garotting himself with a skipping rope.
If I get pictres, you're getting them lol.
I'm glad you're all settled in, we're goign to see serenity soon and it's jogged my memory- will you be back for December 20th/ish? Because thats brokeback mountain or Boyskissing day (BK Day for short)
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on 2005-10-05 04:04 pm (UTC)Alice (or James as she is now known) mentioned the words 'gay cowboys' the other day and Sam didn't stop jumping up and down and squealing for an hour. If you're not back, I'm refusing to go for my own safety.
We're going to see Serenity on Sunday. I'm so excited, I can't wait. But I should probably buy the tickets first.
Sam, you're far too preoccupied with Mr Evans' shorts. That's like the third time you've mentioned them today.
Iona, I'm glad you're all right and that you're settling in, but I'm sorry you're bored. You should do something about that.
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Posted by (Anonymous) - on 2005-10-05 04:06 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Posted byBalliol's found you.
on 2005-10-05 04:06 pm (UTC)Re: Balliol's found you.
on 2005-10-06 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 04:07 pm (UTC)Also, re: feeling boring and provincial. I know the feeling. Here I am, from the East Coast, from a province that most people do not even remember ("New Brunswick? Where's that?" There aren't that many provinces, guys. If this was the U.S., you might have an excuse!) with a "cute Maritime accent" in the Modern Languages Department, where half the people are from places like China, Romania, Equador, Germany, India, Senegal, and so forth and the other half have travelled just about everywhere with their families or on study abroad programs. I have lived abroad, but I haven't been out of The Americas in 13 years.
But you know, if you were to come here, you could be an interesting international student, and if I went there maybe I could be. So maybe it's all a matter of perspective. You are one of the most INTERESTING people I know. Far more interesting than someone who goes to clubs all the time. Honestly.
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on 2005-10-06 12:45 am (UTC)It's so true that if you were here, you'd be extremely funky and interesting, not just by virtue of being you (thought there is that!) but 'cause you'd be international. Perspective, right. :)
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on 2005-10-05 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-06 12:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
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on 2005-10-05 04:40 pm (UTC)-rebecca.
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on 2005-10-06 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-06 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-05 05:53 pm (UTC)Got your interview. I have more questions, if you don't mind answering them, particularly about a secular society and Indian marriage customs.
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on 2005-10-06 12:48 am (UTC)I will answer your questions, no fear. Tomorrow, now. :)
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on 2005-10-05 06:43 pm (UTC)And I'd think being Liverpudlian amongst a load of southerners would make you seem quite exotic, rather than provincial. :) When I went for my interview I hung out with a bunch of northerners, and found their accents endlessly fascinating ... but maybe that's just because I'm a language nerd, heh.
I hope you manage to settle in okay. *partly wishing she was starting this year too*
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on 2005-10-06 12:49 am (UTC)I'm not exotic, really. I'm kind of boring. :) What year are you in?
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on 2005-10-05 07:15 pm (UTC)Get yourself down to Freshers' Fair some time over the next few days and join loads of things; one or two will become high points in your Oxford life, and the rest will email you for the next three years while you desperately try to get off the mailing list...
Anyway, hang in there - just a few more days to go before your degree kicks in - and don't let any arrogant bastards get you down!
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on 2005-10-05 07:18 pm (UTC):)
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on 2005-10-05 07:16 pm (UTC)(Also, I got a copy of Short Trips and Side Steps, with the "last Rolo in the universe" story in it.)
no subject
on 2005-10-05 08:07 pm (UTC)Okay, this? Was exactly how I felt when I got here, because everyone, but everyone, came from classy private schools and taught handicapped children and sold CDs of their own music and reconstructed the ozone layer. Heck, my advising group alone was: daughter of major Kenyon Review trustees, published playwright, grandchild of E.L. Doctorow, grandchild of John Cheever... and me. But the funny thing is that it doesn't make much of a difference. In a lot of ways I have an advantage now, because I'm used to actually doing work. Really, the work is what you're there for. And you're going to blow them all away in that regard.
(Funnily enough, we have similarly convoluted computer protocols here. It's just an international conspiracy.)
We don't really have "fresher's week" as an institution here, with its own special term or anything, but we do basically the same thing--a week of just first years learning the ropes. I hated it, too. I couldn't wait for classes to start; and once they did, I was much more comfortable.
Amusing side note: I was watching a movie a little while ago, and there was a character in it who went to Oxford. Balliol. And was doing PPE. I think I might have squeed. :)
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on 2005-10-05 11:28 pm (UTC)Freshers' week, even. I really do know how to construct possessives properly.
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on 2005-10-05 08:44 pm (UTC)Sorry for you with everyone else's getting pissed obsession. I've luckily found quite a few people who don't drink that much (in fact, as yet I haven't seen anyone drunk ... which suggests I've been staying in too much), but I'm sure your lot will settle down a bit once term starts properly.
And you are such an interesting person! Don't feel boring, because you're so not. Which is why I read your LJ. :)
Your Master sounds fun ... ours is quite fun, too, saw him yesterday going off on his bike, and today in the cutest little gown and cap (the cap was rather 18th century page boy, I thought, not at all like a mortar board).
Good luck in the rest of fresher's week.
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on 2005-10-06 05:36 pm (UTC)I hope you're right, and you usually are. :) I wonder, have you met anyone called Helena? She's doing law and has hair like a cocker spaniel, though I didn't say that. :) Anyway, just in case.
I'm feeling boring. It's not fun. But the week is nearly over, thank god. Our Master doesn't ride a bike, but he does windsurf. I am bemused.
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on 2005-10-06 12:45 am (UTC)Forget the Balliol blue, come to Hertford and have a Pango! It's bright blue (or a Dark Pango which is sort of blood coloured) and absolutely VILE. There's about seven shots of God knows what in it and I'm not sure I'll ever pluck up the courage to have one of my own.
I am so jealous of your room, mine's alright, but I got put in Hollywell with most other freshers and people keep burning toast and setting off the fire alarms. Grrr. If there's one tonight somebody is going to get a good kicking.
Everyone here seems to be from Essex or London or America. I'm sure that's not actually true because there must be some northern people but it's terribly lonely saying I'm from near Birmingham and having people go 'huh?' because they don't think this country exists north of Watford.
We'll have to meet up this Sunday, but I don't know my way around very well yet. Are you on Broad Street? Cos I think we're sort of near there (near the place with all the heads?) so I might be able to find Balliol but don't count on it- there's a reason I'm not doing geography. Let me know what you want to do though, so I can give you this lovely cold that I'm incubating at the moment :D
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on 2005-10-06 05:40 pm (UTC)We too are having fire alarms every night. It's infuriating. What do they put in a Pango? (And does Hertford have a bar? And where is it? I am woefully ignorant.)
Essex, London, or America. Absolutely right. Grrr.
I am on Broad Street, yes. Past Blackwell's, past Trinity, on your right as you go towards Cornmarket. Yes, near the heads! Do you want to get a coffee or something? Are you coming to the fanfiction society meeting on Saturday?
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on 2005-10-06 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-06 05:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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on 2005-10-06 01:41 pm (UTC)Also, if you ask what someone is reading to enquire as to what they're studying, how do you know when someone who asks you what you're reading is actually just interested in what you're reading as in novels? Or is it all context, with certain people not being expected to be interested in the newest Neil Gaiman or whatever?
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on 2005-10-06 05:46 pm (UTC)"Reading" a subject tends to be an Oxford (and Cambridge and Durham) thing; everywhere else you're studying it instead. And mostly people assume it has the "studying" meaning because the question gets asked so much.