"With aspect stern and gloomy stride..."

Sorry for all the Mikado-themed titles lately--I downloaded the whole opera onto my iPod recently, and I've been rather obsessed ever since. But in both cases, the titles have been relevant ;)

So after I handed in my dissertation, the rest of the day was filled with celebrations. I met the other graduate language people at the Turf for drinks and lunch, and later on I went to dinner with a bunch of friends at a beautiful Indian/Thai/Bangladesh restaurant on the river. It was great fun. The next day, my friend Mark came to dinner at Catz, and the day after that I had brunch with some friends at Christ Church. I also volunteered at the Cancer Research UK's "Race for Life" that day, so I got to spend several hours in the beautiful sunshine and help a worthy cause all at the same time. So things have been very nice for the past few days.

I was starting to forget that I'm not *quite* done here. But today, I got the notice of my impending doom: the date and time of my viva voce exam. It doesn't take place until 15 days from now, but already, I'm feeling quite sick about it.

For those of you who don't know, the viva voce is an oral exam where I show up in my sub-fusc garb (the stuff I'm wearing in my photo on this blog) and sit in front of a group of mysterious examiners who ask me questions about my dissertation. This is not like a Master's thesis defense, where you know the people really well. I have no idea who these people are. They have not had any contact with my dissertation until this week. I have no idea what they'll ask me. To be honest, I'm not sure how they'll do it, because my supervisor is the only one who specializes in what I'm doing here at Oxford. And since he's not one of the ones examining me, I'm not sure how that ends up.

They can also ask me about any of the other work I've done this year. So I'll have to go back and re-read the papers I wrote way back in October/November/December so I remember what I said!

I still have time, I know. But now the date is set in stone, and it looms over me ominously. Yikes!

Much love,
Me

"With joyous shout, with joyous shout and ringing cheer..."

Aaaaaaand that's a wrap!!!!!

Dissertation is completed, printed, bound, submitted. All that's left is the viva voce exam, but right now, it is time to celebrate!!!!! Hooray!!!!!!!!

Ooops.

I, ummm, seem to have surpassed the word limit.

Oh well.

"But if memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck" *

When I posted about my visit to the Bodleian a while back, Greg left the following comment:

You know, whenever I think I'm over my horrible envy about your academic situation, you post something like this. Grrr...

Hang in there, I'm about to do it again.

Last night, Mark and I were invited by Eleanor to the Christ Church GCR Garden Party. Garden Parties are very classy events, where men wear suits and women wear lovely dresses and everyone hangs out in the garden and does classy things like croquet and punting. Unfortunately, the weather was questionable, so we couldn't punt, but the party was still (or perhaps even more) amazing: it was moved to the cathedral cloisters quad, the first time in the history of the college that a party was held there.

So there we were, looking classy, having a great party in these centuries-old cloisters, which are, of course, featured in many scenes of Harry Potter movies. There were maybe three tables of food (I didn't get to try it all - the crowds ate it up fast - but it was good), and two tables of desserts, including two chocolate fountains, and a whole bunch of cakes. Their GCR (what we call an MCR) has its own CAKE REP - that is, someone whose sole responsibility is to make cakes for graduate events! Amazing!

Entertainment was provided by a classical music quartet and then by the Oxford Gargoyles, a jazz a cappella group. They were very cool, and made the ambience very classy. I've seen them before in concert, so it was cool to see them again.

And of course, as we do at virtually every other event in existence, we took photos of ourselves looking gorgeous:


More photos on the Flickr!

At the end it was getting a bit coldish, so we headed out of ChCh and over to the graduate apartments for tea and cake and stuff. It was lovely and classy and very Oxonian.

In a few weeks we will be having our own garden party, so I hope to steal some of the best ideas I've seen/heard from other garden parties and use them at ours!

Well that was fun, but I have to work today and get stuff done...
Much love,
Me


*Bonus points to anyone who knows why this song lyric is relevant!

How YOU doin'???

Of course, whenever I have a paper due, I spend my time doing important things like checking Facebook. I think many students do the same, as I tend to see the most activity during heavy exam and due date times. This is the time when groups are created, photo albums are posted, wall messages left, and friends poked.

But my favorite feature is the new "status" section, where you can put down what you're doing at the moment. They have a list of pre-made choices, like "at work," "at home," and "at a party," but the best ones are the custom messages that people write. By reading these, you really get a feel of the atmosphere in the colleges right now.

Here is a sampling of my friends' status messages, which should give you an idea of how stressed out everyone is right now:

"Michael is looking into heat separation at the rotor-bristle interface within a jet engine's secondary airflow."
"Tom is wrestling his dissertation to the ground."
"Mark is giggling nervously. His dissertation is shit from start to finish."
"Ruth is hoping her supervisor likes section 2 draft 2."
"Elise is in the library until June 1st."
"Ebba is is killing herself trying to finish a draft version of her manuscript. Hopes to resurface next week."
"Christopher is gnomically palimpsestuous, wondering when it's all going to end."
and one of my personal favorites, "Justin is in hell."

I didn't go to guest dinner tonight because I'm going to two garden parties tomorrow, so I decided to save my liver get some work done so I can have fun. I'm wearing the aforementioned green dress to these parties, so you will get to see it in my photos!

G'night and Godspeed -
Me