The Lecture War, A Habit of Mind, & Friends

I've had a wonderful morning. Granted, I woke up at 6 a.m. or so (for the second morning in a row) to read several hundred pages on the 16th-century trade in Lutheran books. But then I arrived at my first tutorial and all my fatigue faded. My tutor, who is a very kind Italian scholar, began the session by asking me more about Amherst and its history department and how I'd come to be in Oxford.

Then she asked if I had been attending lectures. Uncomfortable, I stammered a very ashamed "no." She shook her head slightly and then looked up and said, "Well, let's go off to the History Faculty and pick up a lecture list, shall we?"

So off we went, out of the Taylorian, past Gloucester Green, and onto George Street. When we entered the Faculty, there were no lecture lists* to be found. So she walked into the only office with a human inside and asked if there were any lists left. When the guy, a porter, replied that they were all gone, she said, "Well, my student needs one. What about that copy there?" The porter took hold of the 14-page list and, shaking his head, told her it was his only copy and that we could easily access the list online. Ah, but Dr. Dondi was undeterred: "Is there a photocopier?" "No, it's only for postgraduates, I'm afraid." Twitching slightly (she's a faculty member, for heaven's sakes), she peered at him. "Well, I'd like a printed copy, please." "It's a full fourteen pages, Miss." "Well, if you'd show me to a computer with a printer, I'll print it out myself." "There's no printer available; sorry." "Well," she sighed, with a bit of a grin, "I need the list." He got up suddenly and, rushing out of the room, he yelled from the hallway: "Fine! I'll make it double-sided!" She's my hero.

Anyway, after getting the list and watching two adult people nearly break out into a playground fight, we walked back to our tutorial room and she went one by one through the fourteen pages of lectures and pointed out the ones I should attend, skipping over the one about "the linguistic turn" and the few about "gender in such-and-such-a-period" with a smile. When we finished, she told me to compile the list and send it to her so she could keep track of what I was learning. Now I have an advisor.

It was a very nice gesture, and she gave up her hour of teaching time (for which she'd brought early modern pamphlets to show me) to do it, which is incredibly considerate.

So now my task is to really form my Oxford "habit of mind." A weekly schedule of lectures and essays and reading for tutorials -- plus my other routines -- will be a lot to juggle, but I'm ready to try.

But the day's not over. In an hour's time I head to Hertford College for my other tutorial (on Victorian politics) to hear how good or bad my week's essay is. Then I've got a lecture on William the Conqueror at 5, and at 11 I'll head back to Gloucester Green to meet two good friends from Amherst who are arriving from Ireland and Scotland, respectively, for a weekend of Oxonian exploration.



*A note on lecture lists. The University of Oxford, like Cambridge, is organized in a few different ways. Besides splitting students and scholars into separate, independent colleges (I'm in St. Catherine's College), the scholars further organize across colleges into subject "faculties." The History Faculty is the organization of historians in Oxford. Some of those scholars are also lecturers, and anyone in the University at large is able to attend their lectures. The lecture list, then, is the list of all the history lectures for the term.