Midterm

This week is the fourth week of the eight week Hilary Term at Oxford, and we're really feeling it. As we sat in the Bodleian library last night, Christine asked me if I were ready to go. No, I said, but I won't be any closer to ready when the library closes in a couple of hours, so we left and ate at the Raddy (omelettes this time. I haven't had anything there I didn't like). It's frustrating to struggle under a workload that often seems impossible, but part of me feels like it's better to fail at Oxford than succeed at another school (do I sound too much like Milton's Satan?).

We're not really failing, so don't get me wrong. Our objective in coming here was to learn a lot about topics we're interested in, and by that standard we're definitely succeeding. But when each week has all the information and processing of a semester's worth of the same class back home, it's easy to feel exhausted.

Christine's Friday tutorial was cancelled last week, so today she met with her tutor from 9:30-11:30, so we got up wicked early for breakfast and I've been writing my essay for my tutorial at 5 since then. It's about how HG Wells addresses social issues in his fiction that later become systematized in his utopian (and horribly racist) non-fiction. Since his fiction is very exploratory, it's very difficult to come up with a thesis. Right now my pretentious title is "The Eloi, Morlocks, and Beast-Men in London: Social Structures in H.G. Wells's Imaginative Fiction and Prophetic Non-Fiction." My goal is to so impress my tutor with the title that he overlooks the meanderings of the paper itself.

We got fruits and vegetables at the covered market this week. Christine told me to go up to one of the vegetable vendors and say, "I'll take a leek." Then she laughed really hard. Sadly, she's the mature one in our relationship.

In answer to Rachel's question about creative cursing, it's not the case. I've heard no "bloody hells" or "slimy gits." Howver, I don't think that a day has gone by when I haven't heard somebody yell the "F" word loudly and in public.

We're going to see Two Gentlemen of Verona in Stratford on Tuesday, so watch for pictures.