Greetings!
I cannot tell you how glad I am to be back on this side of the pond, and in the beautiful, beautiful town of Oxford. I miss my loved ones back in Boston, but I am SO glad to be back.
Everything is so beautiful here! I can’t believe I ever started taking Oxford for granted towards the end of my last term. Now it’s as if I’m seeing everything with new eyes! All the architecture is fresh and newly beautiful to me again! I love just walking around town–it’s like receiving an eye massage. So soothing.
I love the Oxford tutorial system, too! On Monday, I met with one of my tutors for this term (who incidentally was the tutor for one of my tutorials last term as well) and we ended up talking for two hours in the cafe and completely redesigning my lesson plan for the term to revolve around what I want to learn!! Incredible! We literally emailed back and forth last Friday, before I’d come back to Oxford, about my first essay topic, the reading assignments, etc. and how he’s open to hearing what I want to learn this term and that I should bring an agenda to our Monday meeting. And so I did! I brought an agenda, printed out, of what I wanted to learn. My agenda was heavily influenced by the fact that I’ve resumed working for the startup I was with last September (and subsequently stepped away from due to starting at Oxford), College Outside. I picked up working with them again over winter break and have decided to stay on for the rest of this school year.
Anyway, we’re really focusing on growing our business right now–but growing in the right way, if you will, not just growing wildly and having things spin out of control–and so my “agenda” printout on Monday consisted of a lot of questions, like “What makes things sell? Why do people buy things? What is good marketing?” and while there were some popular, modern nonfiction books on this topic that I suggested adding to the reading list, my professor also brought forth his years of experience (he’s run a business school before, and worked for many major, international consulting firms, etc.) and together (but mostly him) we designed a new trajectory for my tutorial this term. 😀 It was SO COOL. I absolutely LOVED it. This kind of autonomy is what I live for. It’s what I live for.
There’s only a slight inconvenience which is that most of my team (actually all, except me) is in the US and anywhere from 5 to 7 hours behind me, depending on which time zone they’re in. Naturally, this makes team meetings difficult. But no worries! I’m sure it’ll all get sorted.
I’ve been cooking a lot more, too! I think I’d just been eating so unhealthy while traveling around Europe (and to a certain extent, whilst in Boston, too) that when I got back to Oxford I was just tired of eating unhealthy and my body was craving healthy stuff so these past few days I’ve actually been eating a LOT of vegetables! Like a lot! And I’m discovering the joy of following recipes and having your food turn out just the way you wanted it to. 😀 I’m going to learn how to make lentil soup tomorrow–as soon as I buy the ingredients!
Ahh. It is so good to be back. I can’t stress that enough. It is so. Good.
It is also past midnight over here so I’m going to turn in, goodnight!
Until next week,
~Emily