Perdue

[raven]

Abruptly, I'm feeling homesick and blue. I don't know why. Most likely it's because my mother visited today, and it was lovely to see her - she spent the afternoon and we had lunch and a general wander round Oxford - but then of course she went away again, and now I feel blue. She and Pedar are in London now, and she asked me to come back with her, spend the night and come back in the morning, and I said no because of logic, and now it turns out the logic is all done and the lecture I thought I had tomorrow is not happening, and I could have gone after all. Predictably, this makes me feel worse; at leas then I could see Pedar as well, but his meeting overran and he couldn't come at all.

From this point, I don't see my family until December and I just feel really depressed. It's not that I hate this place - quite the reverse - but I haven't fallen in love with the student lifestyle as others seem to have done. I mean, I do like it here. Most of all, I love the fact that freshers' week is over. I hate that I've got more work this week than I've had in a lifetime so far. (I'm covering thirty-two chapters of microeconomics in four weeks, formal logic in eight weeks and A-level maths in sixteen weeks.) I love my beautiful attic room and how wholly mine it feels. I hate the six flights of stairs between me and the nearest bathroom. I love all the new people I meet every day. I hate feeling intellecually inferior and hopelessly provincial all the time. I love being able to go out and stay out as long as I want. I hate coming back to an empty room. I love being away from home. I hate it.

And it's more leaning towards the latter, right now. I miss my family and my home, and they do feel very far away. Everyone here is a southerner, and you always hear about how such-and-such a person popped home for the weekend to London, or Kent, or Cambridge, or somewhere else resolutely south of Watford Gap. I want to be somewhere with flatter vowels and greyer skies.

I miss my family, I miss my home, and the weirdest thing of all is that I miss the sea. Perhaps I only miss the sound through my window, but it's something tangibly different. This is a different place and time, here; I haven't been further from Balliol than I can walk in the last two weeks, and by December I'll have been more than two months without setting eyes on a television or using any form of transport, so perhaps it's claustrophobia, as well. My mother brought my camera up with her, and I looked through all the pictures I'd taken over the summer, including some lovely ones of the beach at Formby, which just consist of sand and sky and open space.

I guess it'll be better in the morning. Then, I've got the morning earmarked for writing up lecture notes and five hours of logic tutorials in the afternoon, so perhaps not.

Comments

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

*points up* What they said. I felt that way my first year, too; many, if not most, people do. It does get better. I'm not even sure how it does, but it does.

I haven't been further from Balliol than I can walk in the last two weeks, and by December I'll have been more than two months without setting eyes on a television or using any form of transport, so perhaps it's claustrophobia, as well.

Oh, boy, do I feel you on this one. Whenever I go home, just being in a car or watching television is like a revelation. What kind of places can you get to on foot? Is there any way to just get out for a day trip or anything? I find that I have to leave every now and then--even if it's just to take the shuttle into town--or I'll go insane.

On a brighter note, tonight my mother and I spent quite a while discussing the possibility of a semester/year abroad at Oxford in 2006-2007. AH.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I believe you. I'm waiting for it to get better, and it's better tonight than it was yesterday. A lighter shade of grey, as I told Hannah this morning. :)

There are a lot of places I can get to on foot, actually. I live right on Cornmarket, which is the centre of the city, almost; it's fifteen minutes' walk to the University parks and the botanical garden and half an hour to the "real world". I just don't have the time to walk and walk like I did at home. One thing I'd love to do is either get into London or somehow to the sea coast; it's a matter of freeing up a day. Maybe when my workload dissipatees. (If it ever does. Sigh.)

Gleeeee. That would be amazing. Oh, so amazing. All the American undergrads wandering about the place being all cool and collected, that could be you. Eeee.

Out of curiosity, how does the programme work? Is it arranged with one particular college here, or with the University? And do students from here go out there?

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I am now conditioned to assume that all institutes of higher learning are in the middle of nowhere, but really that's just mine. *grins*

I assure you, I would not be one of the cool and collected ones if I ended up there! And from what I hear, the application process for studying abroad at Oxford is--unsurprisingly--very competitive. So I'm not getting my hopes up.

It's all very complicated. I'm still trying to figure it out. There are various organizations here that send you to foreign schools, get you a place to stay, help you work out your plan of study (so the credits will transfer properly back to your home college), etc. So first I have to figure out which organization to do it through, since a lot of them work with Oxford. As far as I know most of them aren't affiliated with any particular college, just the University as a whole. (I really should actually read the brochures, but I am still too intimidated by everything I need to do, and am still trying to decide what I want.)

I think they only work one way--that is, they take American students to Britain, but not vice versa. They're all US-based.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*g* Well, Cambridge actually is. But we don't talk about that place.

Oh, no, you so would. For some reason all the American undergrads drift through life with this aura of effortless cool. It's something about the drawn-out vowels. And believe me, I have every confidence in your ability to kick the arse of the competition. Or, alternatively, if I did it anyone can. :P

That's really interesting; so the University's visiting students really can end up in any college? (I met a girl from Columbia (err, the college, not the country) yesterday, visiting St Peter's for a year; I'm guessing your situation will be the same sort of thing.)