Through the Looking Glass

(September 31st - October 26th) “Downings, Fox Chase Lane…”

It wasn’t that the cabbie was repeating the words that I just said to him, but rather the way in which he was saying them.  His accenting of the syllables was odd, almost as if he was trying to tell me that yes, he could take me there, but it wouldn’t be the same as before.  Perhaps Murakami’s 1Q84 is still too recent in my head, but the trip through Oxford to Boar’s Hill felt as if I was falling down the rabbit’s hole.  Wasn’t it Jane Austen who wrote that ‘God forbid you live in a numbered house?’  Well, this quaint American notion of order surely evolved in response to the gentrification of the English road system.  No numbers in the nice neighborhoods, but rather names…the Downings, the Red Eaves, Grace Rest, the Yellow House, the Ram’s Tavern, etc.  These inherited names weren’t the first sign that things were different, but they sure were a telling sign.  I suppose if I had to put my finger on it, the damp sky and green growth was my first clue that I didn’t wake up back home in Albuquerque…but this is something to be expected.  The rest of the world on this side of the looking glass, though, I’m still trying to figure out.  Such as, what is that small thing with a faucet next to the commode?  It’s not the sink, which is behind me, and it can’t be a bidet, can it…?

Not the Downings, but fairly close...

After many long months of planning and dealing with bureaucratic regulations, I finally managed to make it to Oxford.  The last time I was here must have been about 20 years ago, so it is all essentially brand new to me as I gaze upon these sights with adult eyes for the first time.

Merton College, peering over Dead Man's Walk.

Oxford, city of spires, steeped in lore.  World famous for the educational institution that takes its name from this otherwise quiet town that sits at the confluence of the Thames and the Churwell.  Like many European cities, it's a strange juxtaposition of the old and the new...

A hot air balloon lingers over All Souls College.

Ancient inns give way to college shops that, in turn, become Thai restaurants, not an unusual site for a city inhabited by countless establishments over the millennia.  That's right, millenia.

Juxtaposition of architectual features dating back hundreds of years with the new in Chiang Mai Kitchen.

Some things never change, such as The Bear Inn, which has been in continuous operation as a pub since 1242.  Just think about that, since 250 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, 534 years before we declared our independence, and 660 years before New Mexico even became a state, let alone opened their oldest, continuously operated bar...

Just down the alley from a certain 22 Bear Lane is the Bear Inn...

Every day as I walk to work, I'm constantly reminded of this fact, namely since I live through the door on the right. 

The view from my apartment.

During this sabatical of mine, I'm fortunate to be staying in Lincoln College graduate dorms.  Though, given that it's been over ten years since I last lived in a dorm of any sort, it's taken a slight bit of getting used to I'll admit.  The thoughts of once again being thrust into close quarters with students ten years my junior (save for Fred, but we'll come to him later) left me with a few apprehensions.  Luckily, though, things have a way of working out...

Lincoln College library and Turl St.

I suppose, rather than starting from the mundane roots which we might consider the beginning, I should start from the perspective of why I'm here.  A few years ago, I was approached by one of my colleagues at a conference.  He was wondering if I'd like to come visit Oxford and work here for a bit of time.  It was one of those opportunities that I couldn't possibly say no to, even if work didn't like the idea of me taking a sabbatical.  So, here I am, researching interfacial mechanics, and learning what it's like to live in Oxford.

Lincoln College's Inner Quadrangle.

Thanks to the professor that I'm here visiting, I've been admitted into the senior common room of Lincoln College.  The college (and university, but more on that in a minute) system here is, frankly, something alien to me.  While everyone is a member of the university, professors are hired into, and students are admitted to, specific colleges.  Some have reputations for being conservative (such as Trinity), others as being highly exclusive (such as All Soul's, which has a very formidable application exam procedure).  Every college, in turn, has it's own recreational grounds, dorms, dining halls, libraries, lounges (common rooms that is), and bars.  Yes, plural in some cases.

Lincoln College dining hall.

What strikes me the most about the colleges is that they're not out to squeeze every last penny out of the students.  This is in stark contrast to the overly corporate American educational system that justifies raising tuition by astonishing amounts year after year because all of their peers raised their tuition the previous year (this process called benchmarking is a horrible concept, especially once things start to snow ball like they have recently).  As an example of how bad benchmarking can be, when I started college, tuition plus room and board totaled about $28,000 (expensive, but this was a private university as opposed to a state university).  By the time I finished my last degree about ten years later, that same institution was charging incoming freshmen approximately $60,000 for the same expenses.  Is the degree now worth twice as much?  The answer to that is a resounding NO! as most students are forced to complete masters in order to find a job that they previously could have coasted into with a bachelors from a lesser institution.

I have a hard time comprehending how salaries and expenses nearly doubled the operating cost of a university - the constant excuse that I hear now days in the news is that these tuition increases are necessary for the university to not be operating in a deficit.  Simply astounding...either they are being operated incredibly poorly by incompetent administrators (which I doubt), or the concepts of shareholder capitalism have finally taken root in the board of trustees.  But, I digress...

Lincoln College library.

Instead, it seems that the colleges here are trying to help the students make the most of their experience on as little money as possible.  Dining, for instance, is about as cheap as possible for relatively good food: a three course meal (either formal or informal) in the dining hall is typically on the order of $6.  Considering that at the many adjacent restaurants a single course typically runs around $10-$20 depending on the quality of the food, that's pretty darn cheap.  Offsetting this savings, though, is that students aren't allowed to have part time jobs...if you're at the university, you're there to study, not to work on the side for Burger King.

Radcliffe Camera, a liberal arts library.  All Souls College in the background.

A second noticeable difference is the instruction.  At American institutions, it's not uncommon to have relatively small classes (100 students being considered large in the US), in which each class might have 2-3 interactive lectures with the professor a week, 1-2 interactive recitations with a graduate student per week, a laboratory session every couple weeks, homework or papers due weekly or biweekly, and several exams throughout the course of a term.  As I learned in my visit to Stuttgart, not all systems are set up in the American way.  At Stuttgart, my colleague's introduction class for all incoming mechanical engineers is 1200 students large.  So large that it's split into two lecture halls because gatherings of more than 800 students is considered a mob!  You've got to love archaic German laws.  These 1200 students he'll lecture 10 times through the course of a term, and give them one exam at the very end (can you imagine grading 1200 exams?  ouch!).

Oxford is different still.  Mostly, it's similar with other continental systems - no or very little homework assigned, no exams during a term, no recitations, one lecture per week, one lab per term if you're lucky, etc (some majors will, for undergrads, require periodic papers turned in, but from those that I've talked to, this seems to be the exception and not the norm).  Further, for some degrees, it's possible that you'll only have one exam (or assignment to turn in) per year - at the very end.  This exam, then, is on the entirety of the material that you studies throughout the three terms composing the year.  Not my cup of tea, but when you think about it, I've been raised to succeed in the American educational framework, whereas students over here are educated throughout their whole lives to succeed in this British framework.

Merton, again, from Christ Church Meadows.

What sets Oxford (and Cambridge for that matter) apart from other universities is the tutorial system.  Every student within a certain major at a college is assigned to a professor of the same major also within a college.  By the numbers, this seems to work out to be about 20 or so students.  These students will then meet with that professor regularly in one-on-one or two-on-one sessions, almost weekly.  As a result, students are constantly put on the spot by the professor ('So, what do you think the answer to this problem is, and why?'), which causes them to be much more confident in interacting with them.  In remembering back to my experiences and those of my classmates, there were definitely times when, through intimidation really, we had no desire to interact with the professor and just never developed the same set of skills that the students here need to succeed.  The differences further compound as we look at the graduate education.  For those students pursuing doctorates, they don't take a single class!  Anything that they want to learn, or need to learn, they're expected to learn on their own.  Whereas during my graduate education, I took enough classes to garner a minor in mathematics, in addition to my mechanical engineering classes and organizational behavior (i.e. group psychology) classes.  While the structured classroom setting and forced learning through exams and homework isn't present, this process of throwing the students into the fire encourages them to be more independent and more resourceful from the start than the American system.

Is one system better than the other?  We may never really know to be honest.  Certainly, I can say that with the way I learned in school, the American system was better for me, but how would things be different if I attended grade school in Europe instead?  As I've no identical twin that's been kept at the age of two for thirty years, with whom we could try to find out by having him raised over here in order to see how well he succeeds in this educational system, we'll have to wait for some other researcher to come along with a better (and ethical too for that matter) way to compare and contrasts learning in these two vastly different systems.  Perhaps, I should see this as a learning experience and, in order to complete it, I should take another sabbatical or two to completely different parts of the world, such as Japan...

The Bridge of Sighs.

Is this the end?  Of this post, yes.  But I still have much, much more to share about Oxford as we continue down the rabbit hole.