Anna's Adventures in Oxford: Why I love Oxford

MANY apologies for not writing for a few weeks! I contracted a virus which lasted over a week and then got food poisoning, and then had a ton of work to make up because I was sick for so long. While I was sick I didn't do anything exciting or blog worthy so I have waited until now.

The title of this post is "Why I love Oxford." I want to preface this by saying that no place is perfect, Oxford included. Everything is very expensive, and the library system (while enormous) can be a huge pain to maneuver. But in this post I am going to talk about the great things about Oxford.

About a week ago, I was walking from my dorm to my college, Mansfield. As I walked down one of the less busy roads, I encountered two students slowly cycling next to each other. I wondered why they were moving so slowly--many cyclists here are absolutely fearless and fly down the streets. As I got closer, I realized they were discussing international relations during World War II. Evidently, one of the students was taking a politics course about this and was educating his friend about it. They spoke in earnest about how many of the international relations strategies from WWII are still used today.

This experience sums up what I love best about Oxford--everyone is genuinely interested in learning and loves talking about what they study. Conversations often effortlessly turn into discussions about academic ideas and concepts. Since arriving here, I've learned so much from my peers simply from talking with them. The other night, I went out for ice cream with some Oxford third-year students and our conversation topics ranged from life after graduation to hiking to gendered history.