Orientation Day - The day where we meet all the new OPUS (Oxford Programme for Undergraduate Studies) students, meet our academic advisors, get access to our college, find out who are tutors are, and what tutorials we are taking. It's a big day.
I'm sitting next to the stack of papers that contain every Oxford-related information I've received since the beginning of this thing. I'm going to organize it all in a binder... as soon as I'm done blogging.
DeePak Mukhi is the guy in charge of OPUS, we met with him a few hours this morning, and then he took us out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town. It was so yummy! DeePak (D-pack) is a really, really nice guy, but he's a bit on the unorganized side. He doesn't always communicate very well. So when I went to Hertford (pronounced Hart-ford) College with Lakshmi (pronounced Luck-shmi) to get our Bod Card, Meal Card, and key to the college, everything was all mixed up. We got passed around to about 6 different places before they finally gave up. One of the porters (old British guys who keep order of the college) asked us which programme we're with, and after hearing OPUS replied, "Oh OPUS! More like hopeless!" So true...
I have absolutely no complaints about my academic advisor though. His name is Dr. Ben Skipp, and he can't be much older than me. He's very friendly and adorably English. It's a shame I won't spend much more time with him unless something is wrong this term. He explained my term is planned as follows:
My primary tutorial will consist of 8 weeks, while my secondary tutorial will be 4 weeks long. The tutor for my primary is Dr. Tudor Jones (appropriate name!) and I'll be studying "The History of 20th Century America through American film" with him. This topic was my first choice, and I'm so happy I got it! Whether or not I decide to continue pursuing a career in film studies, this course will set me up perfectly for graduate work in the field, not to mention the great writing samples I'll be able to send in my grad school applications after writing one essay every week!
My secondary tutorial is with Peggy Morgan, a specialist on Buddhism. Guess what I'll be studying?? We'll be meeting Wednesdays at noon every other week. I'm so excited for this one! I suppose we'll narrow down the topic on Wednesday, but I'm glad it hasn't been specified yet.
Once the craziness was all over James, Brittany, and I invited Ethan and the two other guys in 224 over for pizza. The first thing I noticed about the new guys is they're both really good looking. Like, surprisingly so. Their names are James and Brian, and they both just got back from traveling during the break between terms, they were here last term too. So we're all hanging out, just talking, and suddenly I remember something awful. You see, there's this black hair that grows out of the side of my cheek. I don't know why. But it's always in the same spot. And so I have to keep an eye on it and remember to pluck it before other people notice as soon as it sprouts. Well this morning I spotted it, but didn't have time to pluck it before orientation, so I just left it and forgot about it.
It's a terrible thing to be sitting with a group of people and suddenly remember that there's a black hair sticking out of the side of your left cheek. Especially when the two cute new guys are to your left.
When Brian asked us what we did last night, we told them about going to the pub and walking around the Magdalen grounds... blah blah blah. Then when Ethan asked them what they were doing, they said "Drinking wine, on a cliff by the ocean, in Greece..." I guess we weren't as cool as we thought we were... It's so funny though, how privileged we are to be at this incredible school and all the opportunities it offers. We're able to travel fairly easily to places like that and have those experiences.
Anyway, once we were done giving each other shit for how great each other's lives are, we walked all the way to the other side of town were the other OPUS students are staying. They invited us over for a mojito night, and it was so much fun! It was loud, slightly obnoxious, and a little sloppy- so nice to be around some Americans again!
(Oh, and for those of you who are still thinking about the hair on my cheek, I plucked the hair before we took off for Mojito night, you don't have to worry-)
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