I arrived at St Anne’s College yesterday with three other study abroad students. The drive in the taxi from the Oxford train station was memorable because all of us were speechless, staring out the window at the centuries-old halls, chapels, and residential buildings that will be our home for the next year. Even though I have been to Oxford before, it was a lot to take in, and there were a lot of new people to meet.
There has been a mixture of American students studying abroad, American students studying full-time, international students studying abroad, international students studying full-time, and mainly UK students studying full-time. What has been the most fun so far is talking to the other students about what they’re going to be studying, because you can tell just how much they want to be here and how much they want to do the work. This is true academic specialization, and there is legitimately no complaining about workloads because of how much they love their subjects. I remember Andrew Williams telling us in orientation that a “goal” of the university itself is to find, say, a group of students from all kinds of academic fields, having academic conversations with each other around a table at a pub, sharing ideas and work. I found myself doing just this the very first night after arriving in Oxford, with people I had just met that afternoon – I was the only music student at the table, surrounded by economics, maths, computer science, classics, and literature. It was incredibly exciting, and so far I couldn’t be happier to be here.
There’s plenty of the city to explore in the coming weeks, but St Anne’s is about a ten or 15 minute walk from the center, in a pretty quiet area. Classes and lectures begin next Monday, and so in addition to the orientation activities this week some of us are reading and even beginning to write essays. In the future I plan on writing more about my musical experiences in this city, but until then, cheers from Oxford!
