Sir Winston and I: thoughts on the tutorial system

I am studying Winston Churchill for my tutorial. For those of you unfamiliar with the Oxford system, let me do a bit of explaining. Instead of attending lectures, the Oxford student attends tutorials. Tutorials are one-on-one's with Oxford Dons for an hour a week. Mine is at my Don's house and his wife serves us tea.  A typical tutorial goes something like this: you defend your essay from the previous week for an hour, at the end of which the Don gives you a list of books to read and a new essay topic, which you prepare for the next week.

Needless to say, this system is absolutely brilliant for a former homeschooler. This is how I learn.

Winston and I have been fighting it out. I'm on my third cup of tea and I haven't moved for around 2 hours.
I'm working on the idea of leadership, exemplified in Winston Churchill's life. One of our speakers said "great men see what other men do not see." but i'm beginning to think that great leaders also act when other men do not act. Winston had brilliant perception, but more than that, he was fearless. He felt no ties to any party, any belief system other than his own head. While this created a great mistrust for him in the British people before 1940, it allowed him the unique ability to grasp hope and to act against the tyrannous storm gathering in Germany when many men felt helpless.

soup time.

windsor castle and WWI

I'm overwhelmed by the amount of beauty around me. It is perfected by the books that I have to come home and read every night. consequently stayed up for two hours reading Winston Churchill last night. When I read his description of the start of WWI i stood at my window and cried. It could be the jetlag, because i'm usually not that sentimental. But I don't think we Americans know the meaning of war. 

The beauty and history of Windsor Castle, of the streets of Oxford, are matched just as equally by the great words I am reading. 

I would very much like to go to school here.

Nibble.

I have been in Oxford since tuesday night but it feels like a lifetime. Today was our first real day of classes. The other two days before were nonstop orientation lectures, tours, sightseeing and general overwhelming. I met with G. H. L. Lemay, my tutorial professor, for the first time today. It was really wonderful. He's let me BORROW one of his books to read for the week. I'm studying Winston Churchill with him, and I'm attending C. S. Lewis lectures every day.

I just had soup and tea and crumpets with the girls I'm living with. really wonderful girls who are also in the C. S. Lewis programme. I would write more but at the moment everything seems wonderful and I don't know if I'm up to the challenge of describing the beauty and the history all around me. Oxford is everything I ever wanted in school. It's already going to be hard to leave.

ps- when I told Lemay about how much of Oxford I've been shown in a few days he said "Oh that's no good. Oxford has to be nibbled, you know."

Oxford Bound

It's 6:41 AM and I am so awake. I leave in an hour for the Pensacola. I will arrive in Charlotte at 1:36 and then depart for Philadelphia at 4. I will leave for london at 10pm tonight and arrive in London at 10 am london time (4am our time) and then find the train to Oxford and then find the Study Abroad Office. and then go to my apartment and fall asleep sometime tuesday night, in Oxford.

I am scared to death.

I mean, it will be fun and it's not like I didn't fly to Russia by myself at 18. (a somewhat more precarious business) it's just... you know. an Adventure.

I woke up this morning thinking about how many Americans have traveled across the pond to Britain to study at Oxford. How many brilliant minds have asked the very same questions I am asking myself.
I usually love flying. And really the flight itself will be enjoyable. it's just the navigating multiple strange airports and cities while jetlagged that i'm not looking forward to.

I do however, enjoy people watching in Airports. I usually create names for people in my head and imagine their lives. Perhaps I will write down a few of the best ones for my blog?

I should have more epic thoughts, but my mom is making me an omelet and really, what are a few elegant words compared to a good breakfast?


We can't have them galavanting up there like kangaroos, can we? - Mary Poppins



-Mal

PreTripBlog

If ever there was a time in my life for Born and Raised to fall into my lap, this is the time. A true America album, full of cowboys and harmonicas. John Mayer, wherever you are- I dig it.
On Monday I head off for my Europe adventure. Which, as many times as I say it, doesn't feel real. How do I imagine something as wonderful, as ridiculous, as a trip to europe by myself? And I do sometimes feel as if it's secretly ridiculous. Even though I have been saving every penny for a year- it still feels as if I must live in unheard of luxury to be able to do this kind of thing.
The first chunk of the trip is Oxford. That terrifying and glorious institution. Everyone seems to have their travelers list of what they need to do there. Naturally, I have my own.
The Eagle and Child- hopefully on my first night.
Oxford Farmers Markets- where i plan to get my veggies
The Parks- I know myself in study mode. If I am going to kill myself writing papers, I might need to spend some time walking in the parks. make that every day.
Exotic food- you know, the stuff I can't get in the states
H&M- cheap clothes from Europe? Yes. Yes please.

Anything else I need to do while I'm there?


ad astra per aspera

Hedge Therapy

This morning I rode my bike to the bank around 8:00am. Probably the best thing one can do around that time of day in my opinion, although to call me an early riser is an understatement. The scenery was breathtaking. If ever you forget how beautiful Fairhope is, just bike. Sometimes i think i live in Magic Kingdom.
The weeks home from school before my trip to Oxford have been simply aesthetic. I had no idea how much time I'd spent indoors this semester until I played outside every day. This revelation (which hit me as I was biking) is what brings me to the Hedges. I was looking at the hedges and thinking about how something in the giant bulk of green touches the deepest parts of my soul. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't have to. We are in part, animals. And we forget that in our lecture halls and final exams. We are afraid of our skin, and we retreat to our brains. I hope that I never become so intellectual that I forget that intellect is a gift. Like being a soccer player, so is being a sociologist. It is not "higher'' it is a different type of skill. Something modern education has simply forgotten or ignored- we are not all smart. And for the fortunate few, who can use their brains to abstract formulas and complicated concepts- theres is a place and a purpose, in some ways of great importance, and in someways not as important as someone who can fix my flat tire. I hope I never forget the southern beauty of landscape, and the fact that Love and selflessness can be known and expressed without intellect.
In the end, the books don't matter. And books mean everything. Read all the books, see all the hedges. 

On writing papers and being Jordy's sister.

as i stare at a sheet of facts that i have copied with my careful handwriting, my little brother is writing songs downstairs.

They're good songs. Sometimes they're better than my papers.

Baroque- Movement that explored innovative compositions with intense images of LIght and Shadow.

I'm too young for this birthday/ not ready to start, calling myself 17.

The rules to great writing are very fussy now. I mean, they come from this long literary tradition and in order to have something to say it's supposed to sort of Remind everyone of Dostoyevsky or the Republic.

My little brother has to have such a knowledge of music theory that he makes jazz sound all like improv from the soul. freedom in knowledge, in joining the conversation. or joining the song.

There are some people who are brilliant. who have something to say that everyone wants to listen to. I think my little brother is one of those people. I think the people who grade my papers will one day get in their cars and listen to his music on the way home. Because it's on the way home music.

That used to make me very upset, when i started to realize my brothers genius. in the 8th grade i knew for the first time, and when i started trying to play guitar. it used to make me mad and hate myself and decide i was never going to be a musician. I would sit in my room and cry because when Jordy sings, the music comes from somewhere deep inside him and then gets lost in the universe, and everyone looks up from their conversations and wants to be IN it. not just listening to it, but IN it. and somehow everyone get's reminded of how they really feel about everything.

Renaissance- rebirth, laid the foundations for modern society.

It's different now- maybe I've stopped trying to be Jordy and started being proud of him. I think it happened when i read Socrates. when i realized there is something that i love more than music. Or maybe that for me, music is how i get to socrates. it's the vehicle, not the thing itself. And most people will not read my papers and poetry and blogs. and if my brother becomes a rockstar, I'll be Jordy Searcy's sister. And that's a good thing. Maybe I'll be teaching a class one day and someone will learn something from me. And that's like writing a song. In its own way. For me, to be in conversation about important things is to be a songwriter. It is to join in the great song.