One Month

I am stressed I think, it is hard to tell anymore when I am and when I am not because I have had so much stress over the years that it seems almost like a natural state of being sometimes.  Unless it is a major spike I don’t really notice it anymore – but I am definitely going to say I am stressed because I can sense it as an undercurrent to my interactions with other people, my restless energy, and some other key hints that have popped up enough to tell me “Hey you, you’re having stress, pay attention!”

Really there is a lot about this week to think about.  First, today is my official one month day here, having arrived last month on the 2^nd and so there are just two more 2^nd’s to go before I am going to be thinking about packing my bags (ugh, why did I ever unpack?! /shudder) for home.  This week is also my 9 year anniversary with Bruno, which for the first time ever I will be missing; we plan to make it up in London in December of course, but still it is a little sad not to be together on that day of all days.  This week is also Alix’s birthday, and everyone wants to do something with her for it – of course it is also the same day as the exam for the Integral course, naturally it would be, and we’ll have 7.5 hours (from 9:30 to 5) to write four 1,000 word essay answers to the questions picked from a selection we haven’t seen yet – but of course are supposed to be already studying for. 

By the by, that’s the only part of the CMRS program so far that I have to consider flawed in some way – the study for and test of the Integral Program.  The program itself is inspired and informative and gives students a chance to ease into classes and get to know the general curriculum that we have missed having been schooled in another country, for example there isn’t anyone in England who doesn’t know what happened in the year 1066 (the Normans) but in the US we’re a little oblivious.  Great, fine, and good – until we get to the matter of testing, everyone has to have a grade after all at some point.  The reading list, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is a packet of no less than 9 pages.  Our primary source of books is the Feneley Library here in the centre, because we are not permitted to obtain our official University Library Cards until the actual term begins next week; this makes competition for the books on the list, you can’t always get the book you think you might need, but you are not really even sure that you need it because you don’t know what you’re being tested on since the questions aren’t published until the exam – which would make sense if there was a really solid reading list rather than a nebulous one of “pick some things from here that interest you” … yes, in a perfect world we all want to do that here at Oxford where we came to do things we are interested in, but we also came here to get good grades and do well at these classes. 

They don’t have a GPA over here – they have a much looser way of quantifying accomplishment through actual talking and phrasing and putting some thought into trying to paint an accurate picture of the whole student (or so I’m told) rather than a hard mathematical fact attached to your resume which signifies your calculated value on a 4 point scale.  Maybe that is why they wouldn’t think this system would be so stressful a method to test with.  Common phrases around here the last week and a half have been: “Do you think I am reading enough?” “I can’t get the book I need” “Do you still have that book?” “What do you think will be the question on this unit?” “How much have you been reading?” “Can you read too much?” “I have 70 pages of notes, how will I find anything in there?”  and so on.  My guess is that most of the students will have read enough, some will have done far too much in preparation and suffer indecision on ‘what question’ because of it, and some will have to close their eyes and wing it on a prayer because they were too discouraged by the size of the list to have read much if anything at all.  I’m trying to put myself in the middle there, but I’m uncertain; for some units I am definitely prepared if the question is right, for others I could do more before the test to become prepared, but again, not knowing the question means I could be going in completely the wrong direction with my note taking (if not my reading, because that is all from the list) and not find out until it is really too late to fix – which will dump me right into that wing and a prayer group, huzzah!

Oh yeah, and the tea party is today.  Expect a follow up post on that I suppose, since I am – after the snipping going on last night in the common room – anticipating a bit of a fiasco.