Tutorials and London

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know. It has been awhile since I posted and if I'm being honest, Wednesday, I would have had nothing to talk about. Now life has picked up dramatically. I have plenty to talk about. The important things of note in the last week: I had my first tutorial! I went on a wonderful trip to London! I am so overwhelmed I could cry.

Let's start with the happy bit first then?

Tutorial was great. My first neuroscience tutorial got moved to Thursday morning (which I'm surprisingly glad about) and it went well. The structure of the tutorial was kind of like a seminar or lecture. We went through a power point together and made sure that I had all the background information ready. She did promise that things would pick up after we had established a base. The less fun part of this was the assignment of a paper 2000 words due by sunday evening, before our next tutorial on Monday. Unfortunately, since we started so late in the term, we are having to play a bit of catch up. This would normally be fine, but well, I will get to that a bit later.

Later that day I also had my first (make-up) Aesthetic tutorial. I learned that I wrote too long of papers and should focus my energies on what I could actually defend. We then had a really interesting discussion on Plato and the way he viewed poetry in the Republic. I have spent a long time studying and discussing the Republic, but this was a completely new take and new perspective that I had not been exposed to. I feel as though it went well. I defended myself, asked questions and was able to produce information as needed. My tutor was very nice, and I look forward to having a few more tutorials with her. Given that this was a make up, my next tutorial is this coming Thursday. The only reason I'm bringing this up now is that it will be important later.

Now LONDON!

London was a really fun trip. We got on the bus from Oxford around 1:35 pm and arrived in London around 3:45. No, London isn't really 2 hours from Oxford, but there are a lot of stops on the way. The first thing Sara and I did when we got there was enter a tube station. Now, I would say I'm fairly well travelled for my age, but I haven't really ever been to a city with any kind of subway system. I was a little daunted by the idea of using the tube system. I got myself an Oyster card which is a neat little card which gives one a discount on all travel, makes sure you don't spend more than the cost of a day pass, and in general makes it easier to traverse the underground by topping it up with a prepaid amount and then waving it over the checkpoints in which it automatically lets you in and takes off the charge. The map of the tube stations isn't that difficult to understand, as long as you actually look at the proper map. All of London's travel is linked and at all the tube stations they have a map of the day and night bus routes as well as the tube routes. It would also have been helpful to have a "you are here" marker. We eventually found the Victoria station marker on the map and figured out how to coordinate our way to where we were meeting our friend Heather (who lives in London). I was a bit proud at our success.

The London underground is a bit of a different world. You have to go so deep underground and you have no sense of where you are in relation to the surface. It feels entirely separate from the rest of the city. I completely understand why Neil Gaiman and many other authors have often attributed a supernatural quality to it. That being said, make sure you mind the gap.

We spent the night in and didn't go out on Friday. Heather had a mini-Halloween party and we went out to Indian food for dinner. English people make their Tikka Masala so sweet. It was really nice to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones. Heather lives quite close to Tower bridge and the Tower, so this became our first stop for the next day. Now I could talk about all the stuff I did, but I would prefer to show. So here are quite a few pictures with mini explanations.

Tower Bridge

A small portion of the Waterfront view of London with the Gherkin (cucumber shaped building) and the Tower of London pictured on the far right.

The Tower of London

A beautiful building we came across in our search for Shakespeare's Globe

Globe Theatre

Millennium Bridge...you know...the one that got blown up in Harry Potter 7 part 1

Big Ben!

The London Eye

The Beautiful Westminster Abbey

Even in England they have a statue of Good old Honest Abe

And to top it all off:

Me at a Red phone booth outside of Big Ben

I could bore you with all the details, but I think it is important for people to visit places like this on your own and take your own impressions. It was an exciting trip and a bit surreal given that this city is only 2 hours away by bus. The city was something I had only known from TV and books and now it is actually real to me. Safe to say, Sara and I were really tired after all this walking around. We had a relaxing evening in and left promptly the next morning.

Now we can get to the not so fun bit.
Remember, I mentioned that I had that paper due Monday. Well I spent Friday and Saturday in London and half of my Sunday was travelling back to Oxford. Safe to say, I rushed to get that essay completed and had to work some of the time while I was in London to do the research and reading required to complete the essay. This resulted in a less than proof read essay but I did get it done. I'm not a procrastinator. If you asked anyone who knew me, they would probably say they were envious of my time management skills. I have a tendency to finish things days ahead of their due dates, and I like it that way. It stresses me out to have to wait until the last minute to finish things. I wish I could say this is the last time I have to do this, but this coming week is making that look impossible.

I have the paper due Wednesday for my Thursday tutorial (Aestetics), which thankfully is considerably shorter than my last one. But I spent the weekend working on the paper due Sunday, so I still have lots of reading to do to prepare for that essay. I was assigned another essay of similar length today for my tutorial Friday on the subject which is due Thursday. I still have yet to get the reading for that. This would all be fine, but this Friday I have a third essay of moderate length for my one shot tutorial on Ion channelopathies due Friday. Thankfully, I have had that prompt for a bit and have done all the research and notes, so I just need to type it all up. So where does that leave me, a week full of extracurriculars that I have previous obligations to and three essays to write. Two of which, I still have plenty of reading to do. Fortunately, after this week the work should calm down (so maybe don't expect another post until this weekend). I am merely playing catch up for the situation that I had no control over. I try to take some deep breathes. I can do this.

So a busy last half of the week to say the least. I know everything will calm down again and I will return to the natural rhythm of things.

Adventures Await

KH