2
12
May

Dear Potential Employers

Dear Potential Employers,

I see you. I see you at your desk with a stack of names – candidates with seemingly-flawless resumes and stellar academic credentials. By this point you may have become bored with the monotonous process of Googling names. Or you may be Facebooking your potential interns and gleefully chuckling to yourself as you come upon some blurry shot of said intern doing a keg stand while making a lewd gesture to scantily-clad female cohorts who are in compromising positions.

As a freelance web designer and a (very eager) future intern, I have an especially great interest in my online reputation, which is why I had my hesitations about this blog entry. You see Dear Potential Employers, I have picked up a hobby while I’m here in England. While not exactly self-destructive or harmful to society, this hobby has the potential to burn holes through my wallet, make my evenings go by in a hazy blur, and raise questions about my status as an alcoholic. The hobby? I am currently a card-carrying member of the Oxford Wine Tasting Society.

At the beginning of term, a friend of mine suggested joining the Wine Society here. At first I thought this was a bit unnecessary, because 1) tequila is cheaper* 2) my palate isn’t that perceptive or sensitive and I will probably mistaken a Chateau Mouton Rothschild – Pauillac 2000 vintage for a £5 watered-down bottle from the Tesco supermarket  3) I’ll be taking HADM4430 – Intro to Wines at Cornell next year anyway. My skepticism eventually gave in to curiosity and I went to my first tasting: Introduction to Alsace.

* This is a joke.

Oxford Bacchus Wine Tasting

A tasting session at Oxford is neither the stuffy hoity-toity scene you imagine nor… okay who am I kidding, wine tasting can be pretty darn pretentious. The meetings usually take place at Merton College and go on for about 2.5 hours. Each session revolves around a geographic region – we’ve done the aforementioned Alsace, Lebanese, Chilean, Rioja, Burgundy etc.so far – and is led either by an expert from the winery/region or the Bacchus Society’s president, the lovely Alex Linsley. The talks are very educational actually – we learned about growing conditions, wine-making traditions, the peculiarities of each vintage, and more.

Oxford Bacchus Wine Tasting

Upon learning about my new-found obsession, my Oxford tutor for International Economics actually suggested that I do a paper on the wine trade and international wine regulation! THIS IS WHY I LOVE OXFORD. For research, my tutor gave me a DVD of the award-winning film about wine, Mondovino, and told me to go to the grocery store and buy a bottle from every major wine-producing region. Needless to say, my 3000 word essay was a tipsy masterpiece.

Over the course of Hilary term, my roommate and I have accumulated a large number of wine bottles. I was horrified to have this shelf collection pointed out to me one day when I was Skyping with my parents. However, my dad was VERY excited that I joined Bacchus and promptly told me he actually just bought a wine fridge. Here’s a screenshot haha:

Wine skype with parents

During Easter break, we took this wine obsession one step further and went to Bordeaux to have St. Emilion wine (now that’s a whole story on its own). C’est la vie.

So Dear Potential Employer, when you come across my resume and see that I have listed “wine” as an item under “Activities, Skills, and Interests”, do not be alarmed. After all, wine – while I’m legal in the UK – fits under all three categories of “Activities, Skills, and Interests.”

Warm regards,

Phoebe

P.S. – Here are some wonderful blogs I found and now follow =)

  • Dr. Vino – The author, Tyler Colman, is pretty prominent in the wine world. He wrote one of the books I read for my Intl Econ tutorials! His writing is accessible and to-the-point.
  • WSJ On Wine – “Incisive criticism and accessible advice on the world of wine”
  • Jamie Goode’s Wine Blog – Expect lots of pictures and tasting notes!
  • The Terroirist – The name of this blog refers to terroir, a French word that holds particular significance for winegrowers. The terroir is basically the belief that the micro-climate, soil, wine-making techniques etc. all contribute to the composition of the wine.  The entire French system of appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) for wine classification is based on terroir.
  • Sociology of Wine – fascinating background into this dynamic industry

Posted in Abroad in Oxford, Europe 2011, Food, Involvement

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0
5
Feb

Tute, Tute

A friend of mine recently linked to a speech given to a West Point class about the importance of solitude in leadership (link here). The gist of the talk is that we need to take the time to disconnect from the world – namely the internet which constantly bombards us with ideas and information – and instead formulate our own ideas in solitude. In a way, it denounces the superficiality, multi-tasking, and sensory distractions that exists in so much of our daily interactions.

I wholeheartedly agreed with the speech; yet the ironic thing is, I stopped reading it halfway to share the link on Twitter and Tumblr and “like” the friend’s post that led me to it. It’s a behavior I’ve noticed when I try to do anything productive online. I start the work night by opening a PDF about the economics of regulatory agencies, and half an hour later I’m browsing someone’s Facebook pool party album from July 2007 and there are four other windows open with Twitter, some half written email draft, and a random video. The motion of “Ctrl + Tab + fa… + Down Arrow + Enter” no longer requires any thought but instead is a reflex on my fingers. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but when I’m trying to crank out essays, every time there is a pause or blank spot in my mind, I almost automatically click another tab to go to some distractions like MSN or GChat.

Try catch yourself sometimes. It’s like we’re afraid of deep thoughts, yet it’s this very lack of activities in our brain that leads to new ideas being born. Multi-tasking is an illusion.

We talk a lot about “critical thinking” in secondary and higher education. Yes, college classes are challenging and usually require us to go beyond merely summarizing and regurgitating the facts. However, with some basic tools and a dose of common sense, it’s not that hard to cruise by in college, in the U.S. anyway (I know Cornell engineers would beg to differ but bear with me here). The academic system at Oxford is an entirely different story. For those not familiar with the tutorial system (also known as a “tute”), it basically involves meeting one-on-one with your tutor once a week or biweekly for an hour to discuss readings, problem sets, or the paper you supposedly spent a whole week researching and writing. Only a few people have lectures to go to while the rest of us have no classes at all. Our days are supposed to be immersed in books, self-learning, and deep reflections.

This is what my week actually looks like.

Instead of doing the  sacred academic rituals scholars before us have practiced for centuries, our generation mastered the art of procrastination and manages to “enjoy life” more (which incidentally involves drinking cheap liquer dancing like an madperson in close quarters in a sweaty nightclub til 2am) while cranking out a largely sensible essay at 9 a.m. the morning it’s due.

Um, maybe that’s just certain people…

My friend Phil, who’s another visiting student here, wrote an interesting entry about life structure at Oxford. Oxford is challenging in the sense that it requires our own impetus, discipline, and resolve to make learning happen. From now on I want to make a conscious effort to embrace academia and solitude in learning. To have a tutor’s brain to pick for an hour a week is a precious opportunity that ought not to be wasted. It also doesn’t hurt that my next paper for my tutorial is on international institutions and regulations of wine! Gotta run and do wine sampling for research, be right back.

Posted in Abroad in Oxford, Academics

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6
27
Jan

That’s It, I’m at Hogwarts

It would be incredibly overwhelming to write about everything at Oxford so far, so I thought I would rely on the tool that gets me through life: incessantly draw Harry Potter comparisons to everything.

* I haven’t gone to the Hall at Christ Church college yet, where they filmed the ACTUAL Great Hall and staircase in the movies, but I’ll get there soon.

For dinner (isn’t it fitting that I start this entire study abroad experience off by talking about what I have for dinner?) we have the option of “scaf”, or self-serve like those at Cornell dining halls, or “hall”, where you sit and wait to be served a formal three-course meal. Some colleges even require dinner attendees to dress of for hall, but over at St. Catherine’s we’re pretty chill about that.

This is our hall.

This is our hall during dinner (photo credit: webshots).

The faculty (the “Master” who is our dean plus other professors, tutors, and fellows) sits at a slightly elevated table at the head of the room. They arrive every night in a procession and everyone immediately stands up when they come in. The Master then says some blessings in Latin, like “Benedictus Benedicat” and then bangs a gravel. Everyone sit down and lively conversation immediately erupt in the hall. Sounds familiar?

Oxford has 38 colleges – think of them as the different Houses in HP (University of Toronto has a similar system). You basically eat, sleep, and hang out in your college so it’s a nice, intimate community. Dorms are grouped by staircases, so someone might be Staircase 17 Room 2 or something. Every college has a Common Room where there are tons of cushy chairs for big groups to watch football (soccer), play pool, or drink at the college bar.

Hearing the English accent everywhere is lovely. After a week here, I’ve finally stopped in squeaking in delight every time I hear one.

I’m glad malls are an American invention because I love the boutique style of shops that characterizes Oxford town center. I like to think Blackwell’s, which sells textbooks, leisure books, posters, music etc. is Flourish & Blotts. Cornmarket St. could easily be Diagon Alley. Walking around town, there are so many nooks and crannies you can sneak into and find yourself in a totally different world.

Now, Hogwarts wouldn’t be Hogwarts without… house elves! Now I’m not going to tell you that I have big-eyed, floppy eared creatures wearing tea cushions visiting my room every day. We DO have maid service, called scouts, who come to our rooms every other day to take out the trash and every week to change our sheets, vacuum, and clean the bathroom. Since my roomie and I are nocturnal, we sometimes don’t even see them coming in in the morning (probably judging us American kids for sleeping in so much).

I’m constantly in awe of how beautiful Oxford is, inside and out. Yesterday, while exploring a floor of the Bodleian Library we’ve never been to before, we stumbled upon the Duke Humfrey’s Library, which contains rare manuscripts. Photography was not allowed, neither are pens, highlighters, touching the books without washing your hands first, reading a book without putting it on the book stand first… etc (photo credit: beattiesbookblog).

Look familiar?

On the other side of the Bodleian, we saw these gorgeous windows of the Divinity School. We circled the place twice but still couldn’t find a way in (photo credit: someone’s picasa account).

I climbed the wall under one of the windows there, peeked in, and immediately recognized the ceiling that served as the backdrop to this:

Really, all I need to do is take a train from London to Oxford and my life is pretty much complete.

Coming up next

  • Tutorials – how you can go from smug to horrified to relieved in two minutes
  • Hall food
  • Oxford Fashion Week
  • “Extracurriculars”
  • And other musings

Posted in Abroad in Oxford, Dorm Life

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