Frenzied Freshers' Week

Noughth week (the week before term begins) has officially ended, and the flurry of freshers’ week and introductory tutorials seems to be winding down. This is not to say that the pace of life at Oxford is anything less than frenzied. My calendar for next week is double and triple booked with introductory meetings for clubs, free dinners, brunches, and drinks, dance classes, and music auditions and rehearsals.

It was so interesting going to Freshers Fair. I attended a high school of about 450 students, and Azusa Pacific University only has about 4,500 undergraduates. Accordingly the number of clubs and societies is much less than at Oxford University, an amalgamation of 39 colleges with 20,000 students. I was overwhelmed by the number of tables in the Examination Halls when we entered for “Freshers Fair”, the exposition at which student organizations advertise their groups and try to convince new students to join. There were more common clubs, such as the Republican Club and the college choirs, but then there were also more obscure clubs such as the underwater hockey team and medieval reenactment society. I left the fair having signed up on the email lists for about 30 organizations. I have no idea how I am going to limit my involvement to one or two, as they all sound so interesting!

I met with both of my tutors for the first time this week, one on Thursday and the other on Friday. Both introductory meetings went well, and I am excited to study my subjects here. My social and cross-cultural tutor is an Australian woman who immigrated to England about 30 years ago, but her parents were Chinese. She is an ordained reverend and seems well qualified to teach on social and cross-cultural psych.

My meeting with my music in worship tutor was a bit less fantastic. He is from Germany and about to finish his Doctorate in Music History. He’s quite young, and he seemed much less prepared for our meeting than my psychology tutor had been. At one point he even said to me, “So…you’re supposed to write essays?” As the Oxford tutorial system is completely based on readings and essay writing, this surprised me a bit, so I said, “Yes, I believe that’s how it’s supposed to work.” My assignment for the week is to read the “Service” and “Mass” entries in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and then write a one to two page summary of what I read. A one to two page summary?! Most Oxford tutors do NOT want summaries as they want more involvement and interaction with the text, and the minimum ever given is usually six pages. I guess it will be nice to have less work, and since it’s only my secondary tutorial, I will only be meeting with him four more times. He did buy me tea at our meeting and then walked me to the music library and the music faculty library with practice rooms and helped me register for free.

All in all, the week went well, and I am excited to be part of such a large, vibrant university with so many opportunities for involvement, recreation, and personal enrichment!