In the Study Cave for the Day...

…but that doesn't mean nothing else is going on. First of all, tea! Coffee! Crumpets! Study dates! My time in cafes has increased as I try to crank out this paper, and the good thing is many of my friends are working on papers too and are willing to keep me company.

It's not all nerding out, though. Or, at least, it doesn't mean that the nerding out doesn't take a variety of forms. I've been to a few department and Rhodes House lectures this week, the first by Dame Helen Ghosh, a Rhodes Trustee and the Director General of the National Trust (and former permanent secretary of the UK's Home Office). Dame Helen's talk centered around her career background, particularly as it pertains to advice for women wanting to pursue influential careers in the public or governmental sectors. Though many Rhodes narratives seem to revolve around the idea of success, which I and a few of the other scholars find problematic (is it all we should be talking about here?), it's still enjoyable to hear the stories of those who have taken their interests and talents in many different directions.

I also attended the English Faculty's annual Professor of Poetry lecture yesterday in one of the halls of Oxford's Examination Schools. It did not disappoint, because even though I found the speaker a bit abstruse in his subject matter and presentation style, he was one of those old Oxford academic types with an incredibly bushy white beard, a cane, spectacles, and volumes upon volumes of poetry. And he burst into song halfway through the lecture, amidst discussing eighteenth century philosophic and operatic influences on the poetic tradition. Seeing someone who looks like Socrates singing in the middle of a grand vaulted Oxford hall: enough said.

The theme of poetry didn't stop there, either: I got to go to a poetry night last night at Rhodes House, in which a bunch of us sat around in a circle and discussed four different poems centered on the idea of "power." A lot of the Rhodes House events tend to revolve around policy applications or more practical things, so it was nice to have a night dedicated to open-ended humanistic discussion for a change. Wine and cheese didn't hurt either. And how refreshing it feels, to be in a community full of people (from many different disciplines) who are so unabashedly eager to spend their evening talking about poetry, or whatever other intellectual idea you toss in their paths. One of my friends was joking that the sign for "Rhodie" ought to be based on the sign for "nerd," and I think she's right. Maybe that should be the sign for general "Oxford student," too. It's too true.