The 5th Week Blues

So my time in Oxford is more than half over - it's 5th week, only this week plus three more to go. It's gone by quite fast. Fifth week always brings along fifth week blues, at least so I'm told. Right around this time everyone starts to get tired of working and not too much is going on as people are sitting for collections (which in the US would mean taking tests - but they only take a couple very important tests). However, in Trinity Term the Wed-Sat of fifth week is very, very important - it's when the Summer Eights occur! Summer Eights is the biggest rowing race, well after the Oxford/Cambridge race, and the banks of the Isis are packed on the last day of racing (Sat). I will be going to the races as much as I can but if nothing else I'll surely be there on Saturday.

In other news, Dr. Juilee Decker (my art history prof at Gtown) will be in Oxford starting this Saturday. She will be here for about a week as she is the McCandless lecturer this year (each year Regents and Gtown switch lecturers). It will be nice to see a familiar face, especially the one that played the biggest role in preparing me for my time at Oxford.

The tutorial is going rather well although this week is a bit challenging. After my tutorial last week, Yu Ping and I talked about my progress thus far and about how I can improve what I've been working on, etc etc (it was more or less the 'progress report' for the term). As a result I'm working quite hard to take all of her advice into consideration and produce the best work I can - we'll see what happens.

The rest of this term should go by extremely fast. This weekend is Summer Eights. Dr. Decker will be here for 6th week, the Regents play is also during 6th week. The Saturday of 7th week is Final Fling (the end of year ball more or less, the ticket wasn't cheap -about $80- but it includes dinner, drinks, breakfast and it's basically the big event of the year). Then it will be 8th week, my last week here which ends with the Valediction ceremony. Then it will be time to travel Europe for a bit then head back across the pond and start the internship search and study for the GRE.