Matriculation Madness

Yesterday, I became a fully matriculated member of the University of Oxford!

...which means that I got to wear my Harry Potter robe along with everyone else in this place of wizardry. Enough said.

St. John's Rhodies in Harry Potter garb

Really, matriculation is one of Oxford's oldest traditions. Matriculation used to be held before the academic year started, before students settled into the life and the classes and learning of Oxford, and essentially took place because each of Oxford's independent composite colleges had to go through the motion of formally presenting their new students to the University. Oxford has 38 different colleges at the moment, each of them individual and separate from each other, but still existing under the umbrella infrastructure of the University. Think of it like the different houses in Hogwarts. There have been varying numbers of colleges at Oxford throughout its history, but the basic principle of admission and teaching has remained the same: each college, with its distinct traditions and academic reputation, admits its own students, which then claim membership within the broader University for their time at Oxford.

First time in full sub fusc!

From what I understand, prior to matriculation all admitted students used to sit for a set of entrance examinations, which were the same across the board regardless of those students' colleges. (Sort of like the University's "quality control" to ensure that all the colleges were keeping their admission standards uniformly high.) After passing these examinations -- thank goodness we don't need to take them today! -- students from each college would be presented to the Vice Chancellor of the University at matriculation, a ceremony which marked those students' formal acceptance into Oxford-at-large and their entitlement to all benefits and privilege therein. So, today, no entrance examinations to cope with, but all the new students at Oxford, both graduate and postgraduate, dress up in sub fusc attire and proceed through the Sheldonian Theatre to participate in the same sort of matriculation ceremony as students in the old days did. The Sheldonian is one of Oxford's main ceremonial and performative sites, and I'll be graduating there someday down the road. It's also in the heart of the oldest, most evocative part of Oxford, so that I could feel the weight of so many centuries of tradition settling onto my shoulders.

Milling about Canterbury Quad, St. John's

We lined up in our college first to take roll, then proceeded out of the back gate of the St. John's gardens to the Sheldonian, where we waited around with hundreds, if not thousands, of other Oxford students in sub fusc attire, before being admitted inside. (Sub fusc, since I don't think I've mentioned it before, consists of a black skirt or trousers worn with a collared white shirt and silly black neck ribbon for women; for men it's a black suit and bow tie over a white shirt. All worn under the traditional black academic gown. We carried mortarboards, too, but were only allowed to put them on after we'd matriculated, aka after we were fully fledged Oxford students!) The matriculation ceremonies were staggered throughout the day to give all students from every college a turn, so needless to say there were waves of students wearing sub fusc wandering around Oxford throughout the day! We became quite a tourist attraction... I mean, if you're a tourist visiting Hogwarts, wouldn't you want to snap pictures of all of us too?

Vice Chancellor and other Oxford academics behind the Sheldonian

Black-and-white Oxford penguins

The ceremony itself was short; we all filed into the Sheldonian and sat around in our uniformly classy outfits, then the Vice Chancellor and a few other University officials came through the doors in their academic dress, said a few Latin words to conduct the performative act, made a few remarks about our time at Oxford and what it means, and off we went. Afterwards, I joined a few other Rhodies from St. John's for a traditional English brunch at a local cafe, went back to college for the official freshers' matriculation photo in the quad, then changed back into my trademark jeans for the rest of the day. Matriculation is often followed by alcohol-filled revelries, but I had shopping and reading and laundry to do! (I did, however, go out for drinks and a housewarming party later, even if I avoided the "Sexy Sub Fusc" bop that happened somewhere in Oxford last night.) Now, to some reading for my first full day as a "real" Oxford student!

Mortarboards on, fully matriculated members of the University by virtue of some venerable Latin phrases!

Opening Up, and Reaping the Rewards

One of the things I spent the most time considering before I came to Oxford was how to navigate this new place and meet so many new people while doing the best job of enabling my own communication. In other words, yes, I am deaf. And I showed up at Stanford five years ago not really knowing how to handle myself when surrounded by such multitudes of hearing strangers, many of whom had never met a deaf person before. I thought I'd come to terms with my deafness, after growing up in a wonderfully supportive family, but really I hadn't entirely. In hindsight, it took me over half of my time at Stanford to adjust and to figure out how to present myself to others, how to express my needs better, and how to go about this whole communication business in this hearing world I live in. It wasn't until late in my junior year (and perhaps my senior year and thereafter) that I started to hit my stride. A lot of that was maturity, a lot of it was self-knowledge, but most of it was simply experience.

Anyway, I knew I wanted to hit the ground running at Oxford, meet new friends, and start the process of getting to know people without all this painful navel-gazing. I've only got two years here (unless I decide to do a DPhil and stay for longer); that's not long at all! I knew, all spring and all summer, that I had no time to lose once I got to the UK. Carpe diem, as they say. Soak it up, live, learn, meet people, accept no limitations. Frankly, however, being immersed in such a high-level academic and social environment is difficult for any deaf person (especially when no other deaf people are around). It's difficult for me, for sure, especially where social interactions are involved. I love people and I love my friends, and over time I've come to realize how much and how truly I value all the relationships in my life, but I can feel like a fish out of water sometimes with strangers, or in group-based social situations. And so I reflected on many things this summer. And then I decided to embrace a policy of openness and brutal honesty.

By "brutal honesty," I'm simply giving myself a "go-get-'em" code word for being upfront. As a deaf person, it can be all too easy to meet new people, lipread for a bit, get along all right even if not perfectly, feel embarrassed about the things you miss along the way, and eventually chicken out of talking about your deafness much at all. Total honesty is the opposite. It means being vulnerable with near-complete strangers and asking for their help, or at least their cooperation and patience, and doing this from the get-go. It means saying, look, this is the way things are for me, and I hope you'll reciprocate by [speaking clearly/learning sign language/repeating yourself/whatever], since I'd like to understand you and get to know you and your own strengths and weaknesses. And, boy, is this difficult. It's hard enough to be vulnerable with friends, let alone strangers or people you've just met, let alone doing it over and over again. Rhodes House events; college events; department events; people I meet randomly around Oxford. I could still improve, but during this new beginning in my life I've taken a deep breath and tried to plunge right in, hoping that by putting people on the "fast track" toward learning how I tick, they'll open themselves up to me in return.

So far, so many of them have. In addition to fretting about myself and my strengths/weaknesses this summer, I also admit to dwelling over these as-of-yet-unknown Rhodies with whom I would be sharing the next two years. Reading their bios, looking at their pictures in the official Rhodes Trust announcements, was enough to make me fall into that so-called "impostor syndrome" right away. By which I mean, These people are so brilliant, and they've practically cured cancer by age 22! How on earth did I ever sneak into this cohort? How will I ever measure up? Fortunately, though, I've since found out that everyone else felt this way. We've had a bit of fun laughing over our "official" bios since we met each other. Also fortunately, everyone is incredibly nice. I don't know if I've mentioned it on this blog enough, but all the Rhodies are among the most brilliant and talented, but also the most kind and friendly and down-to-earth people I have ever met. Most of all, they are so normal. We've made corny jokes and capered around Oxford and fallen into the same newbie American flubs in the UK, and last night sang "Happy birthday" pretty obnoxiously in a pub for one of the members of our class. All while discussing larger questions related to philosophy, theology, physics, literature, social justice. It still feels surreal to be among this company.

Anyway, I've found that with this group of people that I can open up much more quickly than I ever expected. Upon popular demand (no, not even my own idea), I just started a weekly sign language group in Rhodes House. The first session, yesterday, was so packed with people that several had to sit on the floor, and I couldn't watch so many sets of hands all at the same time. People are fingerspelling at me right and left. They've sent me emails asking if they're making themselves easy enough to lipread, asking me if we can grab coffee and chat more in a quieter setting. Several have started gobbling up signs as quickly as I'll teach them, which has made gossiping about the rude bartender in the pub that much easier (and that much more amusing). I'm still needing to take that deep breath before I meet someone new and set out the ground rules, but my Rhodes cohort at the least has made that challenge much easier. I'm relaxing more, feeling more like myself, and doing that far quicker than I thought I would before I arrived in Oxford. This doesn't mean things aren't still difficult at times, as I talked about my last post about various international accents -- but that comes with the territory, and I know that the strategies and self-knowledge I've gathered over the years will continue to be helpful.

So, to culminate this ridiculously long post, onward! And here's to infiltrating this class of Rhodies (and the other Oxford people I meet) with an overwhelming amount of sign language and general deaf-awareness by the time I'm through.

Those International Accents

Now, a word about the accents.

By "the accents," I mean the British accents, the German accents, the South African accents, the Australian accents... and I'm sure many more. Far before I came to the UK, I knew these accents would trip me up, that I would misunderstand and entirely miss parts of a conversation, that I would need to ask for repetition.

And all of those things have happened. Lipreading different accents continues to be incredibly difficult. The various phonemes of an English word, so clearly decipherable on paper, twist and hide from me on different people's lips. I feel my brow furrowing to concentrate. I burrow deeper and deeper into someone's face, only to find that his or her words elude me at the last -- projected from somewhere in the mouth, the throat, the mind, that I cannot quite grasp. Here and there beacons of light surface, small words, small revelations that help me piece together the puzzle, even if I'm more often left with those stray pieces more than I am a complete picture. In this accent, "e" is smaller, more fleeting. Or, in this accent, "r" is broader across the face, more hidden inside the throat, different in its intonation. Or, going farther yet, in this accent, the words are generally more crisp, or generally more elongated, or slurred, or something that makes them look like text italicized, set in different fonts, the same words but with a vastly different typeface -- a vastly different worldview, if you will.

Slowly, I find myself getting better. If I speak to a single person more than once, his or her accent imprints its texture on my memory. I return to it later, to find its contours getting more and more familiar, if still not easily navigable. This is the best of scenarios, however, and many people I've only spoken to once so far, or maybe a handful of times. The standard British accent is getting easier, especially compared to the last time I studied in the UK, but then again there are so many variations of the British/Irish/Scottish accent. Each new one plunges me in anew, requires me to start over. And then these international accents. As I think I've mentioned on this blog before, never have I met so many people from so many countries within such a short period of time. It's fascinating, but at the same time exhausting. More than once have I felt as if I possess a sole, single, rather small battering ram, and am using it to attempt to break through a many-sided, at times impermeable fortress.

Someone turns to me and says something; her accent moves across her lips, so that her words are slightly but still only scarcely recognizable to me as English. I take a deep breath, humble myself (yet again), and say, "I'm sorry, I'm reading your lips right now, could you say that again?" The person reels, sometimes looks panicked, sometimes yammers on just like before, other times considers and slows down and enunciates a little more. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes I get stuck asking, could you repeat, could you repeat, I'm sorry could you repeat, over and over again. At last I grasp some thread of meaning, even if it is incomplete; this is the best I'm going to get. Then I run with it, attempting to hold it high, this meager scrap of a flag laughably substituting for a full-streaming banner, and try to make conversation. Or I get the sense that my new companion and I are at cross-purposes, that I'm talking to her about ABC and she's talking to me about XYZ. So many avenues of possible conversation, here, that we are not taking. That we are perhaps incapable of taking, unless we write it down or unless I beckon someone to my rescue.

And this, at the end of the day, is why I return to writing. The individual whose accent was so impossibly vaporous becomes starkly intelligible when I send an email, or follow up with a text message, or something like that. It is astonishing, the clarity of the written word on the page (or screen). Once they know my situation, I have found that many people here are sympathetic. They do attempt to shape their words more carefully. They do attempt to slow down. They do attempt to use improvised sign language. All of these things help, and I so appreciate them. Still, the sight of an American face, an American way of speaking, sends cool waves of relief washing through my soul. (This is not to say that all Americans are easy. They aren't. But many of them are.)

At times I find myself wondering, what am I to do with myself, if my friendships and close relationships are thus shaped by whom I can understand and whom I can't? This is a conundrum I have not yet solved, and it continues to grate at me. I put the issue aside for the moment, though, and walk back out into the day, into whatever accents I might encounter. All I can do is try again. And try and try, in faith that comprehension and language and mutual exchange are all possible.

Already, though, I've learned so much from so many of my peers. Accents or no, I know that they -- that people in general -- are worth the effort. More strategies upcoming.

First Day of Oxford Classes

Well. I came, I saw, I got through my first day of classes as an Oxford student.

It felt remarkably normal, considering the entire build-up and all the anticipation of getting to this stage. The professor (ok, so I had a conversation tonight with someone about how "professor" is a very particular term at Oxford, so maybe I should call him my "lecturer" or "tutor"; the American side of me is very confused) came in and straightforwardly began talking about bibliography and the history of the material book, and off we went. I also noticed the impact of my graduate degree at Stanford today, since none of the readings so far (nor the class discussions) have been at all over my head, as I was somewhat fearing they would be. Nor has it been as overwhelming to keep up with all the schoolwork as I expected -- at least not yet. That could change, since after this light-ish first week I've got the heavy hitters like Ulysses ahead of me!

Also, I got in a nice afternoon of wandering around Oxford looking for a good study spot before I looped back through the St. John's College gardens (lovely despite the rain!) and settled into the college library (also lovely in its old wooden-rafters antiquatedness -- how can they possibly let me study here?). I think I'm going to enjoy taking advantage of such a sweet study spot -- though looking up at the stained-glass windows and sprawling gardens outside became a regular, if welcome, distraction. Then it was off to yet more classy drinks with the other graduate students in college, an event at which the British gift for scrumptious snacks and desserts came into play again. Someone remarked to me tonight about how all of Oxford's traditions are essentially British upper-class traditions, due to the university's history. How true that is. And here, unlike in the U.S., we all have great fun with the game of aspiring (or pretending to aspire) to that kind of classiness. I still find this culture shift jarring whenever I take the time to reflect on it.

Unfinished musings on the British class system aside, I've got more reading to do for this week -- so, back to Herman Melville and Moby Dick...

First Formal Hall!

So Oxford basically became Hogwarts tonight. Because these Harry Potter jokes and references never get old...

In other words, first formal hall at St. John's is under my belt! We filed in wearing our gowns, then a few other Rhodies and I went upstairs to the balcony seating in order to have enough space for everyone to sit together. The perks of this location: we got to look down from above as everyone rose and the High Table came in, the choir sang a brief song to open the dinner (I wish I knew what it was), and everyone sat back down along the long, quintessentially Oxford tables. A bit surreal, really, to find myself here.

Alas, the food was a first course of soup, followed chicken with gravy, potatoes, and peas -- can't the Brits get more creative than this? -- then a lemon tart for dessert. It was decent enough for British food, but I'm looking forward to sampling more formal hall menus in the coming weeks. Good thing St. John's has so many (one every night, preceded by an informal hall option)! This gown is going to get a lot of use, methinks.

Port Meadow (Or, Encounter With Incredibly Adorable British Ponies)

As much as I enjoy Oxford, I'd been feeling locked up in the city this week -- so, this morning, I headed out to Port Meadow. It's a sprawling open meadow in northwest Oxford, a short walk from St. John's, in which one can literally open the gate and go tramping through herds of horses and cows, while seeing flocks of geese by the river with Oxford crew boats rowing past. Such quintessentially lovely English scenery, and I felt like someone in a British provincial novel the entire time. I'd heard about Port Meadow from some Rhodie friends, and had somehow never made it out here the last time I was in Oxford.

Anyway, it had been cold, cloudy, and gloomy this morning, so I zipped up a rain jacket, only to find that the skies cleared up and the sun broke through and exposed some brilliant blue sky as soon as I arrived at the open space. The shades of green were glorious. There are few defined walking paths through the meadow, and I saw a few people walking their dogs hither and thither, through some lone cows grazing, so decided to follow them. A handful of cows turned to a big herd, and I stopped to get up close and personal with a few curious ones as I passed.

I'd heard that there were some horses here, too, and was hoping to get at least a glimpse of a few, since I've missed my big equine buddies (and riding, of course) since I got to Oxford. I'm hoping to remedy my horselessness soon, but more on that later. As I continued my walk, I saw a couple of familiar equine shapes in the distance and decided to get a little closer.

These horses, far from being shy, were unfazed at my approach and a few of them decided to follow me around and say hello. They were all fat, hairy, and adorable. (A few needed a good hoof trim from living on their own for so long, but all seemed happy to be living unfettered in the outdoors.) Plus, picture not included here but a tiny Shetland stallion was trying to have his way on top of a large horse-sized mare, which was one of the more interesting sights (and examples of size incompatibility) I've seen...

A couple of horses turned to more, and then to many more, and soon I was weaving my way through new four-legged friends as part of my walk. My favorite: these two absolutely, incredibly adorable ponies who marched right up and snuffled at my pockets. They were both tiny, slightly larger than miniature horse size but not by very much! I think I would have been just as smitten even if I hadn't been feeling so horse-deprived. Such velvety noses, such thick manes, such fuzzy ears. SO. CUTE.

Actually, many more horses, from Shetlands to Gypsy Vanners, marched up as soon as they saw me, nuzzled around a bit looking for carrots, and then wandered off. Could you get any more picturesque? I think now Port Meadow is going to leap to the top of my list of favorite Oxfordshire walks...

OUSU Freshers' Fair

This just made my day: Oxford, rather appropriately, has a Harry Potter club. That divides you into Houses. And that plays Quidditch. And meets throughout this strange place that really ought to be called Hogwarts. What could be better??

This, and many other clubs and societies, was on offer this morning at the always-crazy Oxford University Student Union freshers' fair -- aka Stanford activities fair on steroids. Set in the examination schools building, freshers' fair is a crush of people navigating hundreds of tables with free giveaways and club sign-ups and overeager club officers getting in your face with pitches for why you should join. A very different affair than Stanford's laid-back version... Anyway, the options on tab included caving, fencing, pentathlon, a Gregorian Chant club (??), a tea lover's club (no, seriously), a bibliophiles' club (but of course; this is Oxford), and dozens of others I can't remember. The things Oxford students spend their time doing or thinking about are blowing my mind.

I'm still deliberating over what to join or what I'll have time for, but the next few days should bring a little more clarity. Or at least I hope, since the last few days have been an absolute blur and, as fun as it's all been, I'd really like to settle into a semi-normal routine, curl up and read, do my work, grab copious cups of tea with friends, and do various other exciting things for fun when I can. Please?