First Day of Seminars

I'm relived to report that my first seminar today (History of Tudor Stuart England) was not nearly as intimidating as I imagined it would be. Dr. Ian Archer, who teaches the class, has been talked about as quite an imposing figure by those who have taken his classes before. While today he certainly wasn't shy about telling people when they were wrong, he was certainly likable enough. With luck that will hold for the rest of the semester. I was probably a little over-prepared as far as the amount of reading I'd done, but that certainly beats the alternative and as the semester goes on I suspect it will be increasingly hard to stay ahead of the game. Unlike most of the seminars we're taking these first four weeks, Dr. Archer holds his class in Keble college instead of the house. It occurs to me that I haven't talked much about the college system here, so this might be a good time.

The University of Oxford isn't a university in quite the same sense that UGA is. Nominally UGA is made up of several different colleges (Franklin, SPIA, Grady, Terry, Education, Forestry, etc.) but that doesn't really have much of an appreciable effect on everyday life with the exception of slightly different graduation requirements. Everyone still lives in the same housing freshman year and takes lots of the same core classes. Oxford, on the other hand, is a much looser entity. There are 39 constituent colleges, each of which has their own campus, dorms, and dining hall (well, most of them. Some colleges don't have undergrads, and some don't have any students at all). Students apply for admission to a specific college and spend most of their time there. Also, all the colleges have separate rowing teams that compete against each other, completely separate from the university at large's Oxford University Boat Club which rows against Cambridge (generally referred to here as "the other place". In fact the tour guide said "Cambridge" in the chapel and got chastised for swearing in church) in The Boat Race. The academic departments that students take classes in are independent of any one college, with the faculty spread around. Generally students only "read" (study) one subject the entire time they are here, which means graduation only takes 3 years. When they do graduate, they graduate from Oxford University and get one of a confusing array of degrees. This is all just what I've heard/read on wikipedia. If anyone knows better, please correct me. Anyway, the college all of the students on the UGA program are attached to is called Keble College.

Keble is one of the relatively young colleges (founded 1870), and also hosts one of the largest bodies of undergrads (about 435). The campus is a little over a mile south of the house and is mostly constructed of brick, unique since most other colleges are built from stone. The tricolor brick pattern is distinctive, to say the least. We eat our meals there, and today my seminar was there. There aren't any students around now, but that will change in a few weeks.