The fifth week of Michaelmas trimestr

1. Academic environment

Most of the teaching at Oxbridge is conducted in the form of tutorials—these are one hour long sessions with a professor or a PhD that take place every week. I study Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). Tutorials are usually designed for two to three students, but some lucky ones (usually visiting students – i.e. students from other schools attending Oxford for a year) have tutorials one on one. We must meticulously prepare for any given tutorial, which usually entails reading approximately fifty to hundred-and-fifty pages of textbook or similar amount of philosophy and then write an essay (roughly 1 500 to 2 000 words) or solve a problem set. There are several interesting things about tutorials, let me just talk about two, however.

The first thing is how surprisingly exhausting the tutorials are; given how little they differ (topic-wise) from conversations I have with my friends, I usually leave tutorials very exhausted. I was a bit shocked – it was just handing an essay in and then talking for an hour about interesting things! Preparation for them, on the other hand, is not so difficult and is fairly manageable without any major problems even while being involved in several extra-curricular activities.

The second thing is absence of grading – even though it is obviously not forbidden to grade, so it depends on the tutor. Hence it all much more depends on personal motivation to learn and on the ability to grasp the fact that the final exams (or prelims, as they call it here) are going to contain what we are learning right now. Theoretically this gives people an opportunity to experiment academically. Practically, however, I am not so sure whether that works. Perhaps in later years. The second explanation (conjecture, really) is that this makes student focus not on studying for a test, but mainly learning useful, transferable skills. While we often talk about prelims, it still seems that learning here is about real, useful education than elsewhere.

2. Student societies

I have read many opinions that the reason why the undergraduate education at Oxford is such an excellent preparation for future life is precisely thanks to the student societies. And I have to say that they are probably right. Oxford is a huge university – approximately 22 000 students and faculty – and thanks to the sheer numbers, there is a copious amount of various student projects and societies in all sorts of things: Historical Re-enactment Society, Oxford Star-Trek Society or Oxford University Gliding Club and many others. They all do what their name suggests—Historical Re-Enactment Society has real swords and armor and goes to re-create real battles in smaller scale; and those who want to glide simply hire a gilder – at a discounted rate. What does Star Trek Society actually do I have no idea.

I have joined the Oxford Microfinance Initiative and I will be at least (but hopefully more) drafting a microfinance project in Gambia. In addition to that I am learning Chinese, which, however, is not really a society. Then I have joined several advisory groups – one of them is involved with creation of the undergraduate economics curriculum and consults the university directly. The second one is an advisory group for IT for Oxford University Student Union (which does not cover everything that university does, but almost). Then there are other things in play, but we will see how much I will have.

There you go – my first impressions of Oxford. I have several exciting weeks with little sleep and many interesting tasks, so we shall see what they bring.