With Every Passing Day...: Joining the Tradition…

Yesterday was my International Graduate Student Orientation! And it was surreal… I was all calm and collected walking into the historic Oxford Examination Schools on High Street… Up the marble staircases and into the most beautiful room with vaulted ceilings, chandeliers (I swear this room could’ve rivaled Versailles for beauty), and about 300 other soon-to-be graduate students… That’s about when it really hit me… I’m actually going to be studying at Oxford…

The Vice Chancellor of the University was the first speaker of our day long orientation, and he was nothing if not inspiring… He pointed out, rather accurately, that we were a representation of the world. An international melting pot of some of the most brilliant young minds of our generation… He said that while Oxford has a history that dates back to 1200 AD, it isn’t the cathedrals or glorious buildings that make the University. It is the students and faculty. It is the minds that work tirelessly day in and day out towards a common goal of contributing some little bit of new knowledge to humanity… That will be done in part by us... He told us that we would be asked to think more deeply and creatively than ever before… And that it was our obligation to give ourselves to that process… To be open and questioning.

Perhaps most memorable of his talk was the way he described Oxford. He said that there are many prestigious universities around the world, but Oxford prides itself particularly on being a “centre of knowledge OF the world, and FOR the world.” Our composition as a graduate student body is more than 60% international with students from nearly every country on earth… We are OF the world. And we have come here with a common goal to better the future of humanity by creating/discovering new knowledge… We are FOR the world. I personally loved that image… :) It made the reality of this experience (where I was and what I hope to achieve while I am here) come to life for me.

During our lunch break I wandered around the city centre a little bit… I had my first Cornish Pie… Which it must be said was absolutely delicious! I have been pleasantly surprised to find I really like the food here, and most especially the veggies! Every day I’ve eaten some sort of cabbage or collard greens at my College and I’m shocked that I’ve loved them! Haha While I was wandering through the city with my delicious Cornish pastry… I found my way to a little hidden market that was amazing! It had great fresh fruit/flower/meat vendors and lots of little shops that seemed a lot cheaper than what I’d been finding… Finally someplace the locals seem to frequent!

I spent the evening out with some of my roommates and a few other grad students we’d met at the orientation… I even met a student from Malaysia who is going into Biomedical Engineering! So we were able to talk shop over dinner and drinks… It was great to rambl e about science again with someone (all the students in my college are in the social sciences or humanities); it reminded me how much I miss the medical sciences already…

Today I spent a quiet afternoon wondering around the city… I finally got my sub fusc (traditional Oxford dress code)! I couldn’t wait to come home and try it all on of course! Haha And then I wandered through a few museums… Which are all free!!! I love this town! Haha It’s supposed to be raining most the weekend (not like it’s really stopped since I’ve been here of course) so I’m going to try to make my way over to the Museum of Natural History and Anthropology tomorrow. There’s supposed to be a great exhibit on Africa that I can’t wait to see… :)