Catching my breath.

Welcome to Sixth Week, when you cross your heart and hope to God that you live. I've barely had time to take a breath in the past two weeks, although I did venture into Windsor for a bit on Sunday. I didn't meet the Queen, but I did get a free pass to visit the castle as many times as I desire for a year. Next time, I'll take a weekend bag and pitch a tent in one of the rooms of the castle. I'm sure that that will get the Queen's attention! All I want is for her to grant me permanent dual citizenship, adopt me, and give me a job at a high-class university. That's not too much to ask, I'm sure.

Anyway, silliness aside, these past two weeks have been crazy. First, I got an email from the academic advisor here last week warning us about "Fresher's Flu" or "Fifth-week Flu". And true to my body's need to acquire every sickness on the face of the Earth, I got sick on Wednesday of last week, which made my tutorial on Thursday very difficult. First, I finished the paper in the wee hours of the morning, although I felt that it was decent. There were some things that I would have liked to have tweaked, but I really didn't allow myself enough time. Story of my life. However, when I walked into my tutorial, my tutor took one look at me and sent me home because she didn't want to get sick. Because I had my paper completed, she took it with her and said that she would count our session as having taken place, so I won't have to go into 10th week (I'm already meeting her during Ninth Week, on 15 March, which is after the 10 March term end date). So I'm not sure how well I did on the paper, but I'll find out tomorrow.

On Sunday, like I wrote above, I trekked into Windsor to see the castle, and then a bunch of us sat down for lunch and then went shopping. I bought some arm warmers for when the weather gets warm enough not to have to wear a jacket but is still chilly enough to want some extra protection from the cold. I also bought a huge, obnoxious, teal, floppy hat (wow, that was a lot of adjectives). We're going to have a tea here some day within the next three weeks, and I intend to wear that hat proudly. It was quite a deal - from £10 to less than £2 with sales and a student discount. I felt pretty good about my purchases, as I've been trying to save money for post-term travel.

Speaking of post-term travel, my hotel reservations were finally confirmed for Dublin! I'll be leaving 15 March after my tutorial, and Rachael and I will be staying in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day, coming back to Oxford on the 18th. Tomorrow, I'm booking my 12-day tour of Europa:

22 Mar - London/Amsterdam

23 Mar - Amsterdam/Rhine Valley

24 Mar - Rhine Valley/Munich

25 Mar - Munich/Austrian Tyrol

26 Mar - Austrian Tyrol/Venice

27 Mar - Venice/Rome

28 Mar - Rome

29 Mar - Rome/Florence

30 Mar - Florence/Lucerne

31 Mar - Lucerne/Paris

01 Apr - Paris

02 Apr - Paris/London

Either before or after this trip, I'm trying to work out a way to go to Scotland for a bit, as I really want to see some of the castles there! I know that I'm also going to try to go to Prague and Poland. I've always wanted to do a tour of some of the death/labour/concentration camps in Poland, and this seems like as good an opportunity as I'll ever have to do so. Rachael (my roommate here) said that she and her father might be able to take me, in which case I'd travel with them starting 10 April. Even if they can't take me, I am going to try to find a way to go. If I don't go with her, I'll still meet up with her and her family in London on the 10th and go stay with them in Belgium for a few days, touring Brussels and Paris (which is just a short train ride from her house). After that, I'll meet up with Aaron in London and proceed to take a 10-day tour around England: London, Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon, Old Trafford, a free day, and then back to London to depart on the 24th of April. I'm still not sure how everything will work out, and frankly, I haven't had time to worry about it.

Which brings me to my final point: I find myself writing this at a little before 10pm on the night before my Shakespeare essay is due, and I haven't started my essay yet. I'm really only writing this blog post so that my parents and relatives don't think that I've died (and because I've gotten really, really good at procrastination - mastered it, if the fact that the essay I had due for yesterday's tutorial was finished less than an hour before it was supposed to be handed in). I finished reading the book for this tutorial today at 3pm, and I've not done anything since then. I tried to do some research, but the internet wouldn't work fast enough to open the PDF files that I was trying to read. So my goal is to write solely using the text for tonight, reach the 2000 word minimum, and then get up and head over to the office at 9am tomorrow morning, giving me about 2 hours or so to find and incorporate research. It's not a perfect plan, but as Eric and I are discussing right now, Oxford teaches you that sometimes you don't have a choice. In a class of one, you can't show up and beg for an extension after class because the paper IS your class. You can't hide yourself in the back of a classroom of 20+ students and pray not to be called upon. And this is the reality check in some ways. Matthias, the grad student in my house, said that Oxford is a bubble, and in some ways, I agree with him. But in other ways, Oxford is certainly not a bubble - you can't hide behind your excuses. Here, you can't give up or give in, or if you do, you'll certainly be ashamed of yourself. You don't finish any essay in less-than-ideal circumstances because it's an option, you finish because it's a necessity, because if you don't, the consequences will be dire. When your grade is based solely on 4 or 8 papers for the term, you don't have an option. And not even sickness or a dead computer or lost notes is a valid excuse for neglecting your work.

I keep hoping that things will get better, that I'll learn from mistakes and move forward, but that's so hard to do. I'm certainly glad that I don't have any plans for this weekend (I was going to try to go into London for the weekend, but after this week, I've scrapped that idea entirely). This weekend is going to consist of passionate studying and paper-writing. I'd like to have a fun weekend, but when it comes right down to it, I spent all of my "fun time" procrastinating since I arrived. I have 21 days, a mere three weeks, to prove to my tutors that I'm not a waste of their time. So yes, I'll probably go visit the Mound ("The Shire") on Saturday for a walk and a short study break, but I plan on getting as much work done as possible, especially because in the final week of term, I'll have two plays to write on for Shakespeare instead of one. As well, the earlier I start, the earlier I can discover that Ebscohost has zero articles about the topic that I'm writing on. I'd like not to have a repeat of today, when I discovered just a few short hours ago that I'm unable to find any research to support my claims. Ah, well, time to start my Shakespeare essay at 10pm. I know that I can do this. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm not allowing myself the choice.