A field guide to growing up without growing apart
Hey there 20 somethings! I know, I know– t’s been a long time! Sorry for that. Ariel was in charge last month and instead of doing her duty to the blog she was running around Norway with friends. Can you say troll-ific? Anyway, at last […]
So, in case anyone forgot, I am currently pursuing my doctorate at a very big name school in the UK—you know, the one with all the medieval buildings with walls like castles… And this year, I have even gotten the chance to teach a group […]
So, as you have all heard, Cinderslut has become a teacher. She’s passed all of her classes, done her student teaching, and landed herself a new teaching job this fall. Many congrats to her! However, this post is about me. It turns out that two of the naughty princesses will be teachers this year. My life got turned upside down about a month ago when—out of the blue—a professor I know emailed and offered me a teaching job. Now, in America being a Teaching Assistant is an integral part of most PhD programs. However, in the UK teaching experience can be hard to come by and teaching an entire course is definitely not a given. So basically: I had to take the job. Although I am both flattered and excited, I have to admit: the prospect of teaching this class is pretty scary to me. As I did my undergraduate in the US, I am not super familiar with the systems employed for undergraduates at my university. Almost everything is different than what I am used to: classes, lectures, and tutorials are all separate things, and students aren’t given exams and their papers don’t have scores—instead their entire grade is calculated after two weeks of exams that happen at the end of their final year. My undergraduate experience was nothing like that! The other scary thing is that practically no assistance has been given me in crafting this class. There is no established structure or routine; instead, all I keep hearing is ‘everyone does things differently. Figure out what you like!’ Now on some fronts, this is empowering. I can teach however I like; I can structure the class to emphasize what I think is important; I even get to decided when and how often we meet. Empowering for sure, but also… terrifying. Especially as a first time teacher, I wouldn’t mind having more structure given me. I am worried about making the wrong choices, worried my class will be less good than those given by other teachers who have had a few years to iron out wrinkles. I feel a bit like I have been tossed into the water—it’s sink or swim. Hopefully I will be swimming like a dolphin sometime soon (or at least flopping around like a jellyfish).
Hey there blogging world! It’s been a long time! I feel bad to have left you all hanging so long there’s just been lots of stuff happening! First, Sleeping Booty was here visiting me—for the first time ever—and we were basically having a great time […]
So. It’s over. I took: The Test.
Dwarfing the SAT, sending the ACT to go cower in and corner, and putting the GRE to shame. Yes, you’ve got it. I am talking about the All Souls Exam at Oxford. If you don’t know what I am talking about you should check out my previous post on the blog about deciding to take the Exam. But in a nutshell: two days, 12 essays, 12 hours.
Well, after that previous post, I felt like you guys deserved some details about the test itself. To get to the point, I won’t know how I did for about a month. 94 candidates sat the test, 5 will be interviewed, and 2 offered a fellow
ship. So my odds aren’t looking great, but as I said before, that’s not really the point. As far as I am concerned, I did it. I didn’t let the numbers scare me away from going for something that would be really cool, and heck, I finished the whole exam. Now that might sound easy, but when was the last time you had to write twelve essays in two days?! Just finishing is its own accomplishment.
Now. About the test itself. Well, the first thing you should know is that it’s Oxford- so everything is by definition already ridiculous. Like all Oxford exams, the All Souls test requires its candidates to wear their scholarly robes. This is a tradition going back to the murky medieval background of the university. We current students should just count ourselves lucky that all dinner conversation no longer has to be conducted exclusively in Latin, because well at Oxford things take a while to change. Not only though are all people supposed to wear their black, knee length scholars gown, but they were also supposed to dress up. The fellow leading the information session I attended the day before the exam implied that jeans simply would not do. Now normally this would not be that much of a problem for me. Conference dress- check. However, in this instance I didn’t yet have many of my clothes, they were still in storage because I was just moving into a new place. So, basically: I had a suitcase. Ermm. Well let’s just say it is a good thing that the actual test is anonymous…
So yes, there- decidedly underdressed- siting in the fancy dining hall of All Souls, and the exam begins. Each day I wrote three essays in the morning, and three in the afternoon. The morning questions were in your discipline (I sat the History paper), and the afternoon was general knowledge [e.g. ‘secure people dare’, do they?]. By the end of the first day, your hand hurts and you feel like your brain has been sent through the grinder and turned into oatmeal. By the end of the second day, you feel like essays are the purpose of your life and that without the pen in your hand you no longer know how to function.
So. Yeah. It was intense. But really- it was also fun. I threw in some references to Bob Dylan, G. K. Chesterton, Abelard, Bob Dole… really all the cool people. One essay I even concluded with a poem I drafted on the spot. And in the end? How did I do? Probably okay–although one of those history essays may have left me stranded on the open seas with one oar and an ever nearing group of ravenous sharks. But the main thing is that I survived. And… you never know.
So, I’m doing some scary in September. I signed up to take a test I feel I have nearly zero chance of passing. I am taking… The All Souls Exam. So, All Souls is definitely the most mysterious and probably the most prestigious college in […]
As you know if you follow our blog at least a little bit, I go to graduate school— why, because I post about it all the time, that’s why. Well, as a matter of course, many of my friends (excepting three of naughty princesses, obviously!) […]
Okay, I know it’s not really my turn to post. It’s just that I’ve been having the nearly overwhelming urge to rant about something recently, and in you, internet reader, I have a captive audience! And what are blogs for if not for unplanned and ill-warranted rants?
So, if you’ve read any of my posts before you might have noticed that I go to graduate school in England—at the University of Oxford, to be exact. My university is famous for many things: its great scholarship, old libraries, harry-potter-look-alike gowns, burning Protestants in the streets, etc. It also has balls.
All of my friends here like balls. I mean, who doesn’t love the chance to dress up, eat good food, and dance the night away—especially with good-looking men spruced up in their best attire. And you too, reader, might be thinking things like: ‘Hey, Merskank- what you doing bashing on balls? They sound pretty fun.’ Or even, ‘I’ve never been to a ball but I would sure would like to—will Prince Charming be there?’ And I understand, a ball sounds fun.
But let me explain why I take issue with balls at Oxford (I can’t really speak of the balls that happen anywhere else- wait? do balls exist anywhere else?!). Yet in my experience, balls at Oxford are a statement of excess. The tickets, to the big balls at least, can be upwards of 200 pounds. So we are talking over 350 dollars for one night. Now I take issue with this for several reasons:
1) tickets to these sorts of balls always grant access to their holder to an open bar. Now, I am not in theory opposed to open bars (although now that I am thinking about it maybe I should be), but when students pay such exorbitant prices for a ticket the tendency is to drink more than one should (perhaps even more than one wants) to ‘get your money’s worth.’ This fosters an atmosphere of drunkenness and excess that is, at it’s best, not fun and at its worst rather vile.
2) balls are exclusive. The poorer (or even middle class) contingent of the student body could never afford a ticket to this sort of ball. For undergraduates especially this must seem incredibly divisive. All of a sudden, it becomes readily apparent which students have hundreds of pounds of disposable income to waste on something as ephemeral as a ball ticket and which do not. It seems elitist to the extreme for a college to officially sanction an event that is only really an option for the richer half of the student body.
3) balls are excessive. Have we really come to the point where we need to spend thousands, tens of thousands, of pounds upon events for them to be fun? Colleges compete with one another to have the most lavish ball, the most extravagant entertainment. Maybe I am just a wet blanket, but I really just have to wonder: isn’t there something better we could be putting that money towards? Perhaps hiring new faculty or funding more scholarships should rank as at least slightly more important than having a twenty minute fireworks show?
So, yes. This is my opinion about balls. It is an opinion that has slowly been forming over the last year and half. I think they are irresponsible- dare I say it, immoral- in their excess. And I refuse to go to one.
It is generally unpopular amongst my friends when I express this opinion—not that I have ever tried to convince them not to go; it’s not really any of my business. Yet they often attempt to convince me to go. The argument tends to be: ‘yes it is elitist- it is excessive- but that is Oxford. That is how it has always been. You should go: it’s part of the experience. ‘ And in a way they are right: it is how it has al
ways been. But, as much as love tradition, I don’t think we should cleave to it when it is wrong or damaging. Less than a hundred years ago women were not allowed at Oxford. This too was very much in-line with the Oxonian tradition of the proceeding centuries—but people stood against it and it changed. I think it is time for the balls at Oxford to change too.
Cinderella would never have made it into an Oxford ball. She wouldn’t have had the cash.
So, apologies in advance, this week I sort of went into mini-diatribe mode. I’m just tired, and sort of grumpy, and well… a graduate student– and we like to argue, especially about things that have nothing to do with our practical lives! If you can […]
So, remember way back when I said my love life was too pathetic to write about, and that I preferred to render it into charming fiction? Well, sadly, this is still the case. After the events of last week, however, I don’t even know if […]
I have been reading ‘the Confessions’ by Saint Augustine lately. If you haven’t read it you probably should: Augustine is the best. Not only is he is crazy-wicked smart (ever want to have your mind bent inside out?– try book xi of the Confessions ‘On Time’) but you never feel like he is writing to impress. For being someone so important (as in, probably the most important post-New-Testament author in all of western civilization) he seems very little consumed with blowing his own trumpet. In fact, he is ready to call others out of exactly this sort of behavior. For example, in one of my favourite scenes so far, Augustine goes to talk to a visiting speaker for the Manachees:
‘Nevertheless I put forward my problems for consideration and discussion. He modestly did not even venture to take up the burden. He knew himself to be uninformed on these matters and was not ashamed to confess it. He was not one of the many loquacious people, whom I have had to endure, who attempted to instruct me and had nothing to say. He had a heart which, if not right towards you, was at least very cautious with himself… This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about.’
I love this passage! It just seems so clear to me that when Augustine mentions those ‘loquacious people, whom I had to endure’, that he simply must have meant academics! Now if you have been stalking me you would already know that I am currently trying to worm my way into the academic world (confrencences, papers, seminars– oh my!). But in same ways my entrance into academia has been disappointing: everyday I ask myself, where are the Augustines?! I mean, sure, people are smart here (although I think few, well probably none, would stand up Augustine) but what bothers me is that so much energy goes into trying to look it: attempting to instruct but ‘having nothing to say’. In this way, I feel like academia is like a deadly game of jenga. It is about being able to drop references to authors you haven’t read and boast about languages you’ve never really learned—and doing it well enough, with enough false confidence, that no one ever calls you on it.
Yet I feel like we all, including myself, could learn a bit from Augustine. In a world where so much of success is built on boasting about your accomplishments and presenting yourself as confident, learned, and put-together, the ideas of mental ‘modesty’ and ‘caution’ can seem ridiculous. But if you keep going down the other path you better be careful: one misstep and the whole tower will fall.