Cheers, mates!

This blog chronicles the bloody brilliant, pond-hopping adventures of Kristin Taylor, an English Literature major in the Honors Program at Columbus State University who spent the Fall semester of 2008 studying abroad at the University of Oxford.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

"Sole" Searching: My Adventures in Britain

When I first received my acceptance letter to the CSU in Oxford Visiting Student Program, I was ecstatic. The program allows CSU students to study abroad at Regent’s Park College of the University of Oxford while living in the beautiful Spencer House (generously donated to CSU by J. Kyle Spencer) – all for the same cost as attending Columbus State. The opportunity to study at one of the world’s most prestigious universities while immersing myself in the culture of Britain was an opportunity too wonderful to pass up. So I began preparing myself for the hop across the pond, reading books about the English culture and the periods of literature I would be studying once I arrived and talking with friends who had taken part in the program at Oxford in prior years.

On September 25th, 2008, with my passport in hand, I boarded Delta flight number fifty-eight and made my nine-hour trek across the Atlantic. Brandon Harris (the other CSU student in the program), Dr. Dan Ross (a CSU professor of English literature who acted as site administrator for the Fall semester), and I arrived at the London-Gatwick airport feeling very jetlagged. But even after our two-hour coach ride to the Spencer House, Dr. Ross would allow no sleeping lest it be even harder for us to adjust to the time difference. Instead, Dr. Ross took us on a tour of the city of Oxford. Although I had visited Oxford once before during a ten-day tour of the British Isles and recognized several of the sights we saw, it was a very different feeling to realize that the town in which I was walking would be my home for the next semester. As we looked at the Bridge of Sighs (an exact replica of the one in Venice), the world-famous Bodleian Library, and the Oxford University Press, I was both in awe and beginning to feel a sense of intimidation. When I called my mom later that night, I told her, “I don’t know why I feel intimidated. I guess because it’s Oxford. There are just such big shoes to fill.” I will never forget my mom’s response. “Well, just remember that you have big feet,” she said.

What was so memorable about her response was its appropriateness. Being an English Literature major, I had to overanalyze the statement, interpret it both on its literal and metaphorical levels. On the literal level, she was right; I do have – or at least I have always believed myself to have – big feet. Her remark was just comic enough that every time I began to feel the trepidation rising yet again, I would hear her voice in my head once more, and I would find myself so amused that my worrying would temporarily subside. On the metaphorical level, she was also right, but that took me a few more weeks to learn. It wasn’t until I began to meet my tutors, attend my first tutorials, and receive high marks on my first essays that my apprehension truly began to wane. I realized that I did belong there, that I could fill the large Oxonian shoes. After that point, I did all I could to live my Oxford experience to the fullest.

During my semester at Oxford, I took a tutorial in Medieval literature with Dr. Victoria Condie and in Modern literature with Dr. Julian Thompson. I enjoyed the reading for my tutorials, which included several texts from the Chaucerian canon and writings of the Gawain-poet, as well as works by W. B. Yeats, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin, George Bernard Shaw, David Jones, and D. H. Lawrence. Alongside working diligently to prepare for my tutorials (writing three essays a fortnight!), I was sure to enjoy the cultural experience of living in England. I made several trips to London. The first time, Dr. Ross, Brandon, and I went to the Tate Museum of Modern Art and the Imperial War Museum, while also taking the time to see the London Eye, Big Ben and the Parliament buildings, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and to ride in the Tube. I retuned to London twice after that – once to see Vanessa Redgrave’s final performance in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and to peruse the famous London markets and again to see an adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. I also walked to a nearby town called Iffley, where I was able to see a twelfth-century church, and later visited Salisbury Cathedral and saw Stonehenge. In Oxford, I had the opportunity to hear Evensong at Christ Church, and I even became involved with choral activities myself by joining the Advent Choir at Regent’s Park. Plus, I made many new friends, even throwing my own British tea party (a delicious tribute to Yorkshire black tea, scones, and clotted cream) for some of them before I returned to the States. In fact, it still amazes me when I remember that I arrived in Oxford only knowing Brandon and Dr. Ross, but I left knowing more people than I could count, many with whom I still keep in touch. As I enjoyed my life as an Oxford student, experienced the British culture, and made new friends, I watched myself grow both academically and personally. I began to realize that the proverbial shoes of Oxford actually fit very nicely.

In fact, I had such a wonderful time in Oxford that I will be returning to England for five weeks this summer, only this time I will be trading in my Oxford shoes for a London pair. While I am there, I will take a course entitled “The 'Other' Britain: The Caribbeans, South Asians and the Romani in London.” I know the London program, like my experience in Oxford, will be a life-changing experience for me. What I learn will stay with me and will be helpful as I prepare to enter graduate school in the very near future – and later when I eventually become a professor of English literature. I also know from my prior study abroad experiences that any time spent immersed in another culture forever changes the sojourner for the better, so I look forward to discovering the person my time in London will make me. Needless to say, I very eagerly await my departure!


This article appeared in the Spring 2009 edition of The Chronicle, the Honors Program Newsletter.

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