Two observations ( Read more... )

Today we submitted our final extended essays. Now the only work left is the Schools examinations themselves in May. After all walking down to the Exam Schools at 10.30 this morning (accompanied by the usual last-minute fretting about footnotes from one of our number) we all returned to college, looked at one another, and said, 'We shall sleep now. ( Read more... )

For an end-of-term dinner party tomorrow, I volunteered my usual flourless chocolate cake. Today I was baking it, with the help of one of the dinner party hosts, whose kitchen I was borrowing to cook, and who wanted to learn how to bake this cake ( Read more... )

Well, maybe not quite so dramatically. But I went a lecture today on exam revision technique, which has extraordinarily multiplied my nervousness about finals. The lecturer was kind, clever, and sympathetic, and had many very useful things to say; but the overall tenor of the whole event was basically, 'The next two months will be, in some respects ( Read more... )

I just saw the most extraordinary concert I've been to in quite some time---certainly since arriving at Oxford. A full orchestra, 80 or so people, in the teensy tiny Sheldonian Theatre (and I was sitting fairly near the orchestra----near enough that I wouldn't have wanted them to play any louder ( Read more... )

I burst out laughing after returning to my room a few minutes ago following my History, Use, and Theory tute, which was about my Legal Language essay, and (of course) managed to stray way off topic to the question of Whether Democracy Is Bad For Art. This discussion was (perhaps luckily) truncated by lack of time. But not before he had muttered ( Read more... )

Hee. This made me laugh. Possible only me.

( Judges occasionally have a sense of humor. )

When I'm in Seattle, if I am at home listening to NPR and cross the magic line when Morning Edition ends into the 9 AM Weekday hour, what do I hear? An extraordinarily dull set of uninformed people ranting about fairly boring local subjects ( Read more... )

Not my own genius: 'the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to a few on this earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand ( Read more... )

I just walked down the street to deliver my Oxford application. It's kind of pleasant not to have to trust it to the post office.