First week of classes!

Hey y’all,

This week campus became a whole lot busier now that everyone has moved in and classes have started. Oxford was suddenly bustling and now there’s people everywhere, but it’s still got that small town kinda feel.

Monday 26 August

Spent this morning chilling out and watching some Netflix. I also finally got my American SIM in the mail so I now have an American mobile number (message me if you’d like to have it). Finally at 5pm I had my first class – Foundations of Sport. This class is a journalism unit that looks into collegiate and professional sport. I spent a lot of the class super confused because the professor was rambling on a lot about issues in American sports (scandals, rulings etc.) and I hadn’t heard about any of them. At the end of class when we had to complete our Hot Topic submission (a little written piece we have to complete each class where we write about a news story in sport that’s currently popular, and this is how our professor marks attendance), I had to quickly google something. I introduced myself at the end of class (because that’s what’s customary/polite here) and asked for some advice with finding sources to keep up with American sports news. She loves to talk, which is why the first class went for 2 of the 2.5 hours it usually would be. This was annoying because most of my friends’ classes only went for 30 or so minutes since the first class is usually just about the professor introducing themselves and going through the syllabus. This class was about as interesting as my day got.

Tuesday 27 August

Another chill morning today, which will be pretty standard every day I have classes since they’re all later in the day. Grabbed some lunch at the dining hall with Georgia before we headed to our first class at 2:30 – Drug Abuse Enforcement and Criminality. Our professor is a retired drug cop/detective. He’s funny and loves to talk, and he’ll definitely have a whole lot of stories to share over the semester. The only annoying thing about how chill he is is that he hasn’t set any dates for any of our assignments. Georgia and I asked about this after class and he kept his position of “I’ll set them when the class is ready for them, we’ll see how we’re travelling!”. Also, during class, he called attendance and made us all say where we were from. Every head in the lecture theatre turned when I said I was from Australia, and again when Georgia’s name was called shortly after. We were let out of class super early which was a great bonus.

We chilled for the next few hours (I had a nap because I wasn’t feeling great), grabbed an early dinner and headed to our next class at 6pm (Georgia is in this one with me as well). This class was another criminology one with a heavier emphasis on law, called Domestic Crimes and Family Law. Our professor, a current Justice, was also super cool. He even let us vote on whether we wanted classes to go the full 6-8:30pm every week and go through work at a slower pace, or we could smash through it all and finish by 7:30pm every week. Of course we chose the get-out-early option, and he even appointed a timekeeper to keep him on time every week. We ended up getting out of this class super early too, so we joined the others for dinner 2.0 at one of the other dining facilities across campus. This one had way better food than the one near our dorms.

I ended the night facetiming a few of my friends.

Wednesday 28 August

Again, a chill morning and afternoon was had. I didn’t have class until 4pm, and I was hoping it went quick too. This was my Negotiation and Dispute Resolution class. Unfortunately, this professor loved to talk too, and about 30 minutes in I knew this class was going to go the full length. It ended up being alright though, and I actually enjoyed the negotiation activity we did. The class was split in half and given different information pertaining to a scenario. Half of the class was representing Elle Woods, who was wanting to move to a new law firm in a different state. The other half were representing the new firm. The goal was to negotiate her employment contract based on the information you were given by the side you were representing. I was representing the firm, and my partner and I had to go up against two guys representing Elle Woods. We were all soft negotiators so it was resolved pretty easy. We swapped sheets afterwards and realised we both could have gotten a lot better deals for our clients if we’d known more information.

I finally got out at 6:30pm and had to dash back to my dorm, because there was an international welcome dinner going on at The Lyric, a venue in the Square, that had started at 6pm. Ciara and I took an Uber and got there just as the party was getting going. We had a good feed, chatted to some new people, and even got a photo with our mascot Tony the Landshark.

Thursday 29 August

I didn’t have class until 2:30pm today, and it was my Drug Crimes class again. Since it was the second class of the week for this course, we actually got into a bit of work. The funniest part was when our professor asked “how much does a gram of heroin go for in Oxford? C’mon kids, everyone knows and friend of a friend” and then reassured us that he was no longer a cop and we could tell him haha.

After class we hung around the dorms before going to the soccer game. We rode there again and managed to get to the game early and experience the pre-game antics. We got a free headband, and even found out that one of the freshman players on the team is from Tasmania! The atmosphere was electric and we were sitting with a larger group of our friends so we were having heaps of fun. The team ended up winning 2-0 again – woo! I’ve never been more excited by soccer in my life haha.

Friday 30 August

Georgia and I both have Friday’s free, so we headed into town to do some shopping. We were told to go to Belk, which is a department store here in Oxford. Upon walking in it looked super expensive, having many high-end brand names we recognised. However, we eventually noticed the sales signs displayed above every rack of clothing, and we got so excited! They had everything from active wear, to handcrafted clothes, work wear, dressy clothes, and even homewares. We spent a good 2 or so hours in there, and I left with so much stuff including Nike and Steve Madden for prices that were reduced up to 75% in some cases!

We finished off the shopping trip at a Sushi restaurant which was okay, but wouldn’t go back.

We spent the afternoon getting ready for a frat party tonight! We met a freshman girl and we went up to her room for her to do Georgia’s makeup. There were several frat parties going on tonight, but we followed the loud music and ended up at Delta Psi. When we rocked up and said we were internationals, their response was “awesome, come in! We need the diversity”. Unfortunately they only offered beer so I didn’t really drink (just held one and struggled through a sip every now and again to look sociable lol). We ventured out to the backyard and found that they had a massive stage set up with stage lights and the whole shebang, and we were told a band was coming on soon. The band’s vocals were subpar, but they played absolute bangers (Sweet Home Alabama, Footloose, Mr Brightside, I Want It That Way, Livin’ On A Prayer, and other classic throwbacks) as well as a whole host of country songs. They also riled up the crowd by chanting things like “Fuck *insert one of our SEC rivals*” and got us to do the Hotty Toddy chant multiple times (shown below).

The party wrapped up at 11:45pm which was a bit of a buzzkill. We tried to find something else to do but to no avail, so we just went back to our dorms and crashed.

Saturday 31 August

Today we slept in quite late and had a leisurely morning before a group of us headed to The Hub, one of the off-campus student housing blocks, to spend the afternoon day-drinking by the pool they have with our friends who live there. We got there just as the Ole Miss v Memphis game was ending (they had a massive screen by the pool so we could all watch), and we unfortunately lost 10-15. This was really disappointing because Memphis is supposed to be worse than us and they’re not even in the SEC, so everyone was pretty crushed. Nonetheless, we partied on, played many drinking games, basked in the sun, and eventually headed off at around 5:30pm.

The general consensus was to turn the day drinking into night drinking, so we went back to the dorms to change and headed to the Square. We went to Roosters Blues House and were eventually met by a bunch of other people we knew. We spent the night boogieing to some live blues music by a local group. We spoke to them during their break and found out they’re going to be touring Australia in November.

Someone then had the bright idea that we should all walk home drunk again. We ended up walking along the main road here in Oxford (very smart) and hiking up the big hills on Sorority Row. I was so exhausted when we got back to the dorm. I had just enough energy and brain function to wipe my makeup off, put some pj’s on and crash into bed.

Sunday 1 September

Safe to say we woke up a little bit worse for wear this morning. I actually woke up just after 10, made myself feel a little better with a shower, and headed to the kitchen for some food. Eventually everyone else peeled themselves out of bed and met me there. We sat there and got some work (or in my case, procrastinating) done while we had some laundry going in the laundry room (which is right next to the kitchen). I sat there for a few hours while we did our several loads and tumble drying.

We spent the afternoon lounging around watching Netflix in our rooms, only leaving to go and grab dinner from Rebel Market (the nearest dining facility).

We watched a movie in the lounge, and headed off to bed early.

Overall the first week of classes was pretty good, and I’m looking forward to learning more throughout the semester. It’s good to be getting into somewhat of a routine.

- Emily xx