Manchester, Young Debaters, and Leeds

Hello again everybody! After a predictable delay, I have now found sufficient time in which to write up a brief report of my first debating competition in Manchester two weekends ago. Additionally, as an added bonus, last weekend I judged a regional round of the International Competition for Young Debaters, so I’ll add that into my summary as well. Unfortunately though, I’ve discovered that - unlike Model UN - British Parliamentary debating doesn’t really lend itself well to grand story-telling, so I’ll have to content myself with a broad description of these experiences as a whole as well as some of the logistics of competitive debating.

Beginning with the Manchester IV, my first experience of a competitive debating competition began with actually getting to the competition - that is, traveling to Manchester. Luckily, the Oxford Union reimburses travel costs for its debaters but only so long as they take the least expensive form of transportation, which means that all of us competing had to take the roughly three hour train ride there and back. It also meant that I had to purchase a “Young Person’s Railcard” in order to qualify for the discount that met the criteria for “least expensive form of transportation.”

What a lovely picture of me.

Luckily, I met up with a few other Oxford debaters on their way to the same competition, and everything went smoothly. At least, during the departure from Oxford. During our transfer, we quite literally had to run to catch our next train and just barely made it in as someone held open the door, which was obviously somewhat stressful.

Nonetheless, we eventually made it to Manchester, grabbed some dinner at the high-end dining establishment known as Gemini Take-Away, and the five of us spent the night in a student’s room. Three of us got the floor, including myself. The next night, there were seven people, so things did get slightly crowded. Also, for all the people in the flat as a whole, which included ten or so Oxford debaters as well as our three hosts, there was only one bathroom. Taking a shower required getting up quite early in the morning.

Anyway, the next day, we went down to the University to begin the competition proper. I met my partner, Ryan, for the first time, and we got ready for the first round. To clarify exactly what went on for the next several hours, I present the following detailed summary of British Parliamentary debating:

Honestly, that page right there sums up the essential concept of BP-style debating much more succinctly than I could. To provide a little more information though, motions vary wildly from proposals such as “This House believes that the U.S. media should not report any details about school shootings other than the fact that they happen” to “This House believes that African American civil rights organization should condemn capitalism.” Furthermore, after each round, teams are ranked from 1st to 4th on the basis of “the persuasiveness of their arguments.” At this competition, speeches were seven minutes in length with fifteen minutes of preparation time beforehand, and there were four main rounds. After those four, the “break” is announced, which simply means those teams that proceed onward to compete for a chance in the finals.

Now, I’m certain that you’re curious as to how my partner and I did in terms of rankings, and unfortunately the short answer is not very well at all. We came in fourth place in the first three rounds and in second place in the last. However, I’m not letting this disappoint me hugely much, as it was only my first competition, I still had a good time, it gave me some valuable experience, and - even with our poor performance - we did not come in last place!

Those of us who did not break to the later rounds still stuck around to watch the two Oxford teams that did proceed. Despite both doing a spectacular job (in my opinion), one of the two was eliminated in the quarter-finals and the other in the semi-finals. And thus concluded my journey to Manchester.

Bye Manchester!

Just one weekend later though, I was back in another debating competition - the Chenderit School regional round of the International Competition for Young Debaters - this time as a judge! Although I had judged before at the Oxford Inter-varsity Competition from last term, this was my first experience judging by myself and not as a panel, so it was all very exciting. Furthermore, not only did I have to listen to the debates and rank the teams, but I also had to report my rankings back to the teams and provide thorough justifications for those rankings. That part was slightly terrifying, despite the fact that these debaters were all at least three or four years younger than me. Still, I felt it provided even more valuable insight into the workings of competitive debating, and again - on the whole despite its stressful moments - I really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to Leeds to act as a “wing” judge (read: assistant judge on a panel), so I’m getting excited for what should be another wonderful experience. Although I am still very much working on getting the hang of BP-debating, I have every confidence that if I keep putting myself out there, attend these sorts of competitions, and involve myself as much as possible, I will eventually improve competitively and I will certainly continue to have a good time.

Survey Development and Debating

It’s been quite a while since my last entry, but I’ve finally found a moment to take a break from my hectic schedule and write out another blog post. I can’t really say when exactly I became so busy; I suppose things have just been happening at a faster pace than previously and I simply lost track of time. By now, I’m already more than halfway through my first year at Oxford, which means that I’m one sixth of the way towards completing my degree. College life sure is passing by quickly.

I found the Harry Potter stairway!

Anyway, I can now finally take the time to let all my readers know precisely what I’ve been up to during this brief hiatus. Predictably, most of it has been work. On a weekly basis, our tutors assign us hundreds of pages in reading, and we crank out roughly six pages of political theory essays as well as several additional pages of economics reading. Not that I’m complaining of course. Both subjects have remained fascinating for me, and tutorials are still an excellent learning opportunity that I look forward to every week.

Books!

As you may recall from the last time I posted, I am currently working on a team of students as consultants for the Oxford City Council in the development of a Quality of Life survey for seven of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Actually, when we first met with our client, we were told that they expected us to both develop and carry out the survey. Specifically, they wanted 1,700 responses on a twenty-page survey that we were to test, refine, and implement within the span of six weeks before Spring Break. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen.

When we brought up our concerns to the client, we were informed that they were already on a fixed time scale due to the parameters of the project that had been approved by the Council (read: bureaucracy). We did, however, manage to meet a compromise in which we have recruited even more students to our team who will actually oversee the process of conducting the survey over the first few weeks of the coming vacation. With this new vision in place, we began work on the project.

Look at that logo. That is a nice logo.

Most of our work thus far has consisted of reviewing the survey that the Oxford City Council had copied from Bristol City Council and eliminating all of the questions that seemed irrelevant to Oxford or to quality of life in general.

Questions like this one.

More excitingly though, just this past Tuesday, we conducted a focus group with members of the target neighborhoods to go over our revised survey and give us their feedback. Much of their feedback concerned the lengthiness and spelling errors of the survey, but we did gain some valuable insight into how people felt about specific questions. Interesting points were brought up such as: how do we distinguish between homelessness and “rooflessness?” Or, should a recipient of public services really be referred to as a “consumer?” Perhaps most importantly though, it very much contributed towards one of my principle goals in signing up for the Student Consultancy: I now have work experience in running a focus group.

Regarding the Oxford Union, the big piece of news that I have is that I will be traveling to Manchester this week to take part in my first ever debating competition! I am quite excited, although also fairly nervous about this opportunity. The competition consists of four rounds (more if we make it to the finals!) of seven minute speeches on motions revealed shortly before each debate. I have continued my attendance at the Oxford Union debating workshops this term - in addition to competing in the internal Debater of the Year competition against some far more experienced peers - so hopefully that will have prepared me well for the challenge that I am soon to face. My train to Manchester departs at 7:13 PM tomorrow.

 I'll just leave this here. See also the 2014 "One Round More"

With respect to other Union affairs, I’ve seen a number of very interesting speakers so far, including Richard Dawkins, the former Director of the NSA General Michael Hayden, former Crown Prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi, and Tea-Party leader Christine “I-am-not-a-witch” O’Donnell. Furthermore, in my capacity as a member of the always exciting Library Committee, I was assigned the duty of preparing the economics purchases list for this term, which is not nearly as dull a task as it sounds.

Ideally, it won’t be too long till my next post, as I hope to write another one in summary of the Manchester IV after this weekend. Of course, other things are happening in my life besides work and extracurriculars; I recently attended a murder mystery dinner party as well as a random Irish dancing event. Those events though are mostly self-explanatory.

Before I go though, yet another mention of Rachel, who was sweet enough to send me Valentine’s Day gifts even while we’re an ocean apart, including a sweater, a bow tie, and chocolates.

Fancy chocolates!!

Collections and Consultancy

After little more than two weeks back at Oxford, I have finally managed to sit down and force myself to type out my first blog entry since returning to school. To those of you eagerly awaiting my next installment since my last post back in November, I most sincerely apologize. But at long last I have now returned with yet another brief update on my life at Oxford.

But first, I should briefly mention the various activities of my Christmas vacation for those amongst my readers who might be interested. The obvious highlights include the numerous holiday festivities: I spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my extended family, celebrated New Year’s up at my lake house in Wisconsin with cousins and Rachel, and of course took part in the annual gingerbread-house building ceremony.

For my British readers: this is a very historic American holiday tradition

Delicious food, presents, and joyous times were had by all. In additional to celebrating the holidays, I mostly occupied myself by spending time with Rachel, including meeting her grandparents, catching up with friends, relaxing whenever possible, and eventually studying. Yes, studying over Christmas vacation.

For those of you who have neither familiarized yourselves with the Oxford system nor talked to me enough to hear me complain about it, the prospect of studying over vacation might seem simply ludicrous. Unfortunately, at the beginning of each term at Oxford, students are required to take exams on the material they learned prior to leaving for vacation, presumably to ensure that we don’t forget everything over our six-week breaks and end up failing the year-end tests that actually matter.

And that brings me now to the actual start of my time back here in Oxford, upon which I almost immediately had to take these two exams, called Collections, one in philosophy and one in microeconomics with a length of three hours and two hours fifteen minutes respectively. Furthermore, these tests consisted entirely of free-response and essay style questions, which frankly made me miss filling in the multiple-choice bubbles of my high school days.

Ah, Scantron, how I miss ye.

Predictably, these exams were completely exhausting. And although I certainly won’t announce my results here, I will simply say that they turned out not quite as well as I had hoped going in, better than I expected after finishing, and will certainly help me to score higher next time around. Afterwards, I spent the next couple days doing absolutely nothing; it was wonderful.

However, you might note that earlier I said that I “almost immediately” took these exams upon my return to Oxford. Well, that’s not just because I arrived in advance to give myself a bit of time to settle in, but also because I did in fact have yet another ordeal scheduled shortly beforehand that did in fact take place immediately upon my arrival.

Over the course of my vacation, I was frequently visiting the Oxford Careers Service webpage, waiting to see when they would post the international summer internship opportunities and whether there might be one in Chicago I could snatch up. There was not. Nonetheless, during my time spent on that website, I eventually came to notice another opportunity that the Careers Service was offering the following term: The Student Consultancy.

The Student Consultancy requires its logo to accompany any/all mentions of its name.

This program essentially recruits students, groups them into consultancy teams, and assigns them Oxford small businesses, charities, and like organizations as clients with real-life problems to be solved over the course of term. Ever eager as I am to make myself more employable, particularly in light of the lost Chicago-Oxford internship, I quickly sent in my résumé.

Shortly thereafter, I received a reply stating that I had been advanced to the second application stage, which required me to come to the Careers Service office for an evaluation the day of my arrival. So upon arriving at my room after a nine-hour flight and an hour and a half bus ride, I opened up my suitcases, changed into my suit, and walked on over. Luckily, the evaluation was not incredibly intensive; everyone sat with a group at a table with a summary of a different business problem, we discussed said problem amongst ourselves, and then briefly presented how we would approach the problem to the rest of the assembled applicants.

Fortunately enough, I succeeded past the second stage as well, and I began my work with The Student Consultancy. Within two weeks, I have undergone some minor consultancy training, been assigned my first-choice project with the Oxford City Council with three other students, met with the client, and begun to work on a rather intense project. In brief, the Oxford City Council Communities and Neighbourhoods (British spelling is weird) Team has developed a quality of life survey that it wants us to evaluate, refine, and pilot. Although progress has been a bit haphazard so far, things seem to be coming together at this point, and I’m very excited to see how it progresses.

Although I could write plenty more, I believe that’s enough for now, but I will provide a quick synopsis of some of the other things going on with me. This term I’m studying political theory, a bit more microeconomics, and macroeconomics, all of which are quite interesting subjects that I’m enjoying significantly so far. In fact, I have my first macroeconomics lecture this Monday, which I’m very much looking forward to not only due to the subject matter but also because the lecturer is the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England. Furthermore, I have actually begun in earnest my study of German that I said I was going to start last term, I am continuing with my involvement in affairs at the Oxford Union, and I recently became interested in a writing group here called The Failed Novelists. All in all, everything is going splendidly, and I shall have more to write soon.

Pictures!

Since the only request I've received from my readers has been "Ooh. More library photos, please!", I've decided to oblige. For those of you curious as to what Oxford (or at least some of it) looks like, here are a number of photos:

We'll start with Jesus College:

The front entrance of Jesus College from within

Although you may have a mental image of Jesus as being quite large and expansive from this photo, it's actually one of the smaller Oxford colleges in terms of both physical size and population.

The front entrance from Turl Street

For comparison: the front of Balliol, a neighboring college

Like every college, Jesus College obviously has its own on-site library, open for its students 24/7:

A very limited view of the Upper Gallery as seen from above

Jesus' library features many snug alcoves where people can literally bury themselves in work.

Also of note though before we continue: Jesus College has a rather nice dining hall:

Moving on from Jesus College though, we exit out the side entrance onto Ship Street:

Possibly so named because they once sold sheep here.

There's not too much excitement on Ship Street, but if you look way to the back of that last picture:

Zoom!

That road all the way back there on the right behind the cyclist and with the white van is the path to the Oxford Union. All in all, it's pretty much just three minutes away from college, which is rather convenient. Also down that way, we have the much busier Cornmarket Street:

Possibly so named because they once sold corn here.

On this street, you can find pretty much anything, including sushi and fast food, Starbucks, British chains like Boots and WH Smith, as well as the local department store, Boswells of Oxford. You can even find a nearly thousand-year-old building:

Saxon Tower of St. Michael at the North Gate, built in 1040

 Cut across Cornmarket Street from Ship Street, and you'll end up at the Union.

The Union

Which has a very nice courtyard:

The Courtyard

And a rather respectable library of its own:

The Library - The Goodman Library to be precise

Hang on, make that two libraries:

The Old Library

Gotta love those Pre-Raphaelite murals

Next stop, we're turning around and heading back the other way, past Jesus College and to Radcliffe Square, where you can find the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin:

There are even more spires on the front of the church

Notably, C.S. Lewis - author of The Chronicles of Narnia - attended services and gave at least one sermon at this church. In fact, from what I've heard - although this is unconfirmed - C.S. Lewis would always exit the church from this side door:

Whereupon he would see this door right in front of him across St. Mary's Passage:

Which if you look closely...

Has a lion's face on it

And is flanked by...

A faun on either side

And then you turn down the passage and see...

A lamppost

A lion, two fauns, and a lamppost, right outside of C.S. Lewis' church in Oxford. Pretty interesting coincidence! If you see that large domed building behind the lamppost though, that's the next stop on our little tour here.

That is a nice dome.

Earlier I mentioned that we're in Radcliffe Square here, so predictably that building is the Radcliffe Camera. Inside, there are quite a lot of books on English, history, and theology as well as a number of private study areas.

And some fancy arches

And of course the nice dome

Lastly, I ventured through the underground passageway known as the Gladstone Link from the Radcliffe Camera to the Bodleian Library, the central research library in Oxford. Most of the Bodleian is actually surprisingly modern looking, but after a bit of exploration I located Duke Humphrey's Library.

Duke Humphrey's Library is the oldest reading room in the Bodleian Library, dating back to around 1450, and it houses mostly maps, music, and rare books from before 1641, including numerous medieval texts.

You may know it better as the library from Harry Potter. No, actually.

Anyway, that concludes my brief, photo-tour of the interesting bits of Oxford that happen to be really close to me. If anyone has any questions or wants any further information about anything seen here, feel free to post a comment or send me a message via Facebook or e-mail. To my fellow Oxford students: if you have not checked out the Radcliffe Camera or the Bodleian Library yet, I would highly recommend that you do so before the end of term, they are something magnificent.

Oh, but lastly, yet another shout-out to the sweetest girl in the world, Rachel, for keeping me well-supplied with Goldfish during my time here abroad.

For the Brits: not actual goldfish, they're just cheesy crackers

Coursework: Or, Why I Haven't Posted for the Past Twelve Days

Hello everybody! Again, apologies for not posting in such a long time, but believe it or not I am now more than halfway through my first term at Oxford, which more or less translates to "Okay, now it's time to start working for real." As such, it's been proving increasingly difficult to find spare time for any activities outside of my set coursework, let alone maintaining an active blog of my experiences. However, I did say at the onset that I would simply post as often as my schedule permitted, so for the time being I shall continue to be just that and I remain optimistic about posting somewhat regularly in the future.

List of just some of the many things that need doing.

Taking advantage of my presently intense workload though, I've decided to write this post on exactly what I'm studying here at Oxford University and how precisely I've gone about studying it thus far. While I realize that this will not be an especially interesting subject for some - specifically my fellow Oxford students who have taken to reading this blog -, I believe that at least some of my American friends and most of my family will be curious about the particulars of my academic work. If you are part of that former group who do not wish to hear about reading lists, tutorials, lectures, and libraries, then please feel free to skip this post; I promise my next one will be more generally appealing.

For my remaining audience: as you may already know, I am pursuing a three-year course of study here at Oxford known as PPE, which stands for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Given that these three subjects cover an enormous breadth of knowledge, students take Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Politics, and Introduction to Economics in their first year and then typically drop one of the three branches in order to specialize in the remaining two. In the following two years, PPEists then select eight courses - some mandatory "core papers" and others optional - which they will then be tested on at the end of their third year in one insane week of exams that will form the sole official basis for their degree. For more information, those intrigued by the minutia of academic curriculum or just interested in PPE in general can find more information here.

Focusing in on my study of PPE, at Jesus College, we study two of the three branches each term, starting with Philosophy and Economics - or more specifically Moral Philosophy, Introduction to Logic, and Introduction to Microeconomics. However, given that the colleges' schedules for study differ completely from one another, the University offers the lectures for all aspects of all three branches at the same time, meaning that for any given week we have lectures for eight different subjects within those three fields. Aside from lectures, we also have weekly classes in logic:

This is beginning to make sense.

Weekly classes or tutorials in economics:

These are cost curves. Even our lecturer admitted that they are tiresome and tedious.

And biweekly tutorials on moral philosophy:

PPEists quickly learn that this statement makes a lot of philosophers quite upset.

Numerous readings, exercises, and occasional essays are assigned for each of these meetings to such a degree that there is always more to read and more to know on any particular topic. To clarify: classes - such as those for logic and the math-oriented bits of economics - consist only of nine or ten students, while tutorials consist of a mere four students for economics and two for moral philosophy.

In order to explain what a tutorial exactly is, I'll detail the example of my biweekly moral philosophy tutorial. For the two weeks beforehand, I go about collecting the many books and articles on the reading list for next tutorial from Oxford's numerous libraries and surprisingly extensive online journal and e-book collection. Then, I attempt to read as much as possible and somehow refine all of this information into an essay in response to some given, open-ended question such as, "Does Mill succeed in proving utilitarianism?" or "What kind of Utilitarian is Mill? Is there a better version of Utilitarianism?" All very exciting stuff without a doubt.

Both my tutorial partner and I submit our essays the day before, and one of us presents our essay the next day, usually just by reading it aloud and taking questions. After the presentation, the professor - Dr. Levy - then leads a discussion about some of the topics present in the essay pertinent to the question at hand. As I've mentioned to many, the tutorial system was one of the main reasons I decided to attend Oxford over an American university, and I can already safely say that I very much prefer this method of teaching.

Well, that about wraps up my description of my studies in PPE thus far. In other news: last Thursday I gave a brief speech during a debate at the Oxford Union, this past weekend I acted as a judge for the Oxford Intervarsity Debating Competition, and the Library Committee and Role-Playing Game Society continue to be as exciting as ever. Doubtless these events and activities shall feature more in future posts. But until then: I'm gonna get some much-needed sleep in preparation for another day of tough, yet greatly satisfying work tomorrow.

The Oxford Union

Apologies for not posting earlier everyone; I don't know where the past week went to be entirely honest. From my first tutorial and beginning my study of German to yet another week of lectures, logic, and non-academic activities, things have been rather hectic. For this post though, I want to focus on a particular part of my experience thus far: the Oxford Union.

The Debating Chamber. It's like a mini-Parliament.

For those of you not familiar with the Oxford Union, it is a debating society that - predictably - primarily consists of members of Oxford University. Although it does indeed field a strong competitive debating team, the Oxford Union is far better known for the huge variety of famous speakers that it hosts every term as well as its Formal Thursday Debates. To drop some names briefly: this term's guests include Billy Joel, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Buzz Aldrin, and Jesse Jackson, amongst many, many others. In fact, I just got back from seeing Hamid Karzai a couple of hours before this post.

Hi Hamid!

As one might expect, he talked about the great progress that Afghanistan has made in the past ten years during his presidency, and then proceeded to take numerous questions from the audience. Though I'm perhaps not quite as informed about Afghanistan as I ought to be, I took quite a liking to him over the course of his speech. He spoke in a very practical, methodical, and intelligent manner, going through each specific policy area and citing statistics on how each has improved dramatically in the past decade. In this way, despite the many problems that undoubtedly still plague his country, President Karzai rather effectively communicated a reasonable optimism in his nation's future. But enough about that.

In addition to such illustrious speakers, the Oxford Union also holds weekly formal debates on Thursday, where prominent political and societal figures debate motions such as "This House Has No Confidence in Her Majesty's Government" or "This House Believes Religion Harms Society." In addition to speeches from members of Parliament, chief business people, and other prominent persons relevant to the debate, members of the Union themselves can give speak from the floor. Regrettably, I have yet do so.

Nonetheless, I have attended and thoroughly enjoyed all of these debates so far. Of particular note, last night's debate was on the motion "This House Believes University Education is a Right, Not a Privilege." When the last speaker for the proposition - Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts - took a point of information (read: question) from the audience, it turned out that the person he had called on had some rather strong views about his policies. Specifically, strong views that he felt the need to shout rather loudly and aggressively, in conjunction with a large, obscene banner hung from the gallery by two accomplices.

Specifically, this banner. Click for context.

So that's fun.

Even though I've yet to speak at one of these formal debates, I am still doing my best to get involved in the Oxford Union, as it is obviously a very interesting and entertaining society. To that end, I have been attending its debating workshops on Sunday evenings, from which I have learned that competitive debating in the UK is very very different from anything I have ever done before. I won't explain the intricacies of the British Parliamentary debate format here, but suffice it to say that I have no idea what I'm doing and if you want to know more, you can drop a comment or send me a message.

But in addition to slowly exploring the world of competitive debating, I have also joined up with the Library Committee of the Union as a junior member. Essentially, we meet on Mondays and decide what books to buy for and withdraw from the Oxford Union Society Library.

It is a very nice library.

Well, as you might have guessed by my increasing brevity, this post has already exceeded the time and space I had allotted it, so I must now draw it to a close. As always, feedback, questions, and comments are very much appreciated. Till next time, this House is adjourned.

The First Couple Weeks

It’s certainly been a busy couple of weeks. I had intended to post earlier, honestly, but unfortunately circumstances conspired to fill the time I had budgeted for writing to be filled with numerous events and a great deal of schoolwork. On the positive side though, this has given me a great deal to write about over the next several days, so let’s get right to it.

I suppose to start I ought to give some description of where I actually am and how I got here. Well, way back at the start of October, my father and I flew over from Chicago to London to spend the week touring around and preparing to move me into Jesus College at Oxford.

The Front Entrance of Jesus, as seen from within

After arriving in Oxford, my dad and I trekked down to the center of the city with suitcases in tow in order to begin moving my stuff to where I'd be studying for the next three years. Now I had been assigned a room in the infamous "Staircase 18" of Jesus College, where many of my fellow freshers had stayed for their interviews.

On the left, the dreaded Staircase 18

However, upon arriving, I was very pleasantly surprised; apparently over the summer they had completely renovated the building, so my room actually now looks like this:

Not so dreadful. I even have a bathroom!

As eager as I was to start my course though, the week prior to the start of term was Freshers Week, an incredibly overwhelming period of meeting new people, learning new things, and nightly outings to various clubs and drinking establishments. Those of you who know me will have already correctly assumed that I did not participate in much of the last activity. Before too long though, it was time to actually start college and given the heavily abbreviated schedule of Oxford terms compared to American semesters, that meant a lot of work very quickly.

Apparently at the end of eight weeks, this will make sense

This term, I'm studying the Philosophy and Economics portions of my PPE (second P for Politics) course, which has so far entailed Logic, Moral Philosophy, Math, and Microeconomics. Once math class ends after a couple of weeks, my schedule will consist entirely of lectures with hundreds of students and tutorials with just two or three. In fact, I just had my first tutorial today, and without getting too much into it, I can say that it was a rather engaging academic experience.

But fortunately, my course has proven rather enjoyable thus far, and there's been a fair amount of time available for fun outside of classes. I've been exploring a lot of different clubs and societies - such as the Oxford Union, the Liberal Democrats, the Role-Playing Game Society, and the eSports Society - that will certainly be detailed further in later posts as my interests develop.

In other news, I've now matriculated both to Jesus College and Oxford University, which involved two separate ceremonies featuring dressing up and Latin. In fact, for the University matriculation, we had to wear academic dress, which for undergraduate men is essentially a suit with a cape-like thing.

The PPEists of Jesus College, Class of 2016.

I do hope to post more often in the future, so again, if anyone wants to see me write about anything in particular, just leave me a comment. Lastly, to conclude, I want to give a shout-out to my girlfriend, Rachel, for sending me this awesome picture of us in China.

Miss you, Rachel!