[Insert Pretentious Title About Being an (kinda) Oxford Student Here...]

The first week of February we had our last week of class after returning from Belgium. To commemorate one of our professor’s invited us to join him for drinks, so we took him to our local watering hole, The Thirsty Bear (perfect WashU). Then to go out with a bang, although our Oxford professors had been commuting to us in London all semester, we spent our final day of classes in Oxford!

Possibly one of my favorite pictures of me, don't you think?? At Jesus College of Oxford.

While Oxford is really cool and beautiful, unfortunately, class is class whether you’re in Oxford, London, or anywhere. So after running straight to class upon arrival, we had a brief break before our next class, where we successfully went down the street and bought Oxford swag so we could pretend like we’d actually had time to see it and/or we were legit students. Because nothing says “We go to Oxford!” better than a couple dozen people walking around on the same day with semi-identical matching Oxford sweaters/shirts.

Then class again, ew. Afterwards we were able to walk around a bit and see some sights, but definitely not enough to feel like I really saw all of Oxford. Nonetheless, I will proudly boast my semester (err 1 month but only 1 day actually on campus…) as an Oxford student for years to come.

My beautiful roommates: Arushi, Alex, and Elise (yes I did that merely so I could use an oxford comma in my post about Oxford. I'm cool I swear....)

Wow, I'm actually making a normal smiling face, go me!

Dylan takes pretty pictures and then I steal them

Thanks Dylan!

And with that we commenced the next few days of pretending to work on our paper, sleeping in late, pretending to study, eating lots of food, pretending to work on our papers, laying in bed watching Netflix, pretending to study, rinse and repeat.

Now due to the general laziness/failure of my first days of studying/paper writing, the last day or so before exams was very important for cracking down. Unfortunately, the one time I will ever complain about a package arriving before the estimated arrival date, a certain package came in the mail that day. As you all might guess, I had been going excessively stircrazy with having no sort of musical instrument around me. In fact, going the entire month of January without playing music is the longest I’ve gone in my entire life without playing music since I started playing when I was 7 or so. Crazy. Anyways, come the day before my first exam and lo and behold, what should arrive, but a brand new, shiny, happy mandolin that I had given in and ordered. I have never exercised so much self-restraint in my entire life than I did throughout the next couple days in not touching it. But just like that, one month in, and I successfully completed 7.5 credit hours that Friday. If that gives you any idea how busy our program is.

So alas, after much patience, I finally got to dabble some come Friday when I’d submitted the last of my papers. In honor of my new mandolin, I’ve been appropriately listening to lots of Chris Thile and Nickel Creek. Happiness