1/22/17: Lots of Football and traveling

How I ended up playing for four football teams

As an offering to the soccer gods, it is my pleasure to announce that I have successfully managed to join all four male football (soccer) teams at St. Catherine’s College. The undergraduate team has three teams that each have incredibly unique names: The Firsts, The Seconds, and The Thirds. I’m still getting used to this new naming system, but apparently, the First team is the most competitive, the Second team is the second most competitive, and the Third team is the third most competitive. I know right, I get it mixed up too sometimes, so I secretly categorize them in my own head as: The Jackrabbits, The Flying Squirrels, and The Terminator, respectively.

The Graduate program (referred to as MCR) team–no I’m not the manager

The fourth team I am on is the Graduate student’s team who call themselves the “St. Catherine’s Football Club”. When I first got a notification on FB from the “St. Catherine’s Football Club” saying we had practice, I had no idea which of the four teams the practice was for. I emailed the captain of The Seconds to see if it was for them, and he told me it “it’s probably for The Thirds.” But I knew The Thirds only practice on Saturdays and it was a Thursday, so I went to “St. Catherine’s Football Club” practice thinking it was probably for the undergraduate “Firsts”.

Well, I’ve never been so self-conscious about my lack of facial hair..

As it turns out, the practice was for the Graduate team which I guess one could technically call The Firsts, as there is only one Graduate team.. For those of you who don’t know, the graduate program is referred to as MCR or “Middle Common Room” whereas the undergraduate program is called the JCR or “Junior Common Room”.

I never intended to play in four teams at St. Catz, but the players on the MCR team were so tight-knit and friendly that I decided I would stay on this team no matter what. I was one of two JCR students–the other player was another visiting student from Georgetown.

Unfortunately, I was used to having three hours of practice every day back at Vassar, so the one practice/game per week schedule didn’t allow me to burn off all the calories I was eating. Thus, I attended The Thirds practice as well and the players there were so tight-knit and friendly that I decided I would stay on this team no matter what (notice the pattern). However, there was another small problem; I also wanted to play for the most competitive team we had. With this, I decided to try out for The Firsts and.. I made the team!

The Firsts are currently leading the table in the top division (out of four) which means the St. Catherine’s football team is currently the strongest team out of the 38 colleges in Oxford (Hip Hip, Catz)!! On top of that, the Seconds are currently in the semi-finals for the University wide tournament for reserve teams meaning if we win, I’ll also be part of the strongest reserve team in Oxford. On top of that, the thirds are near the top of the table for the third division, so I’ll also be part of one of the strongest reserve teams for reserve teams in Oxford. On top of that, the MCR team is leading the table for the MCR division. I think it’s fair to say I chose to come to the right college out of the 38 🙂
Winchester Cathedral, the longest Cathedral in Europe

At this point, I didn’t see the point of trying to decide which teams to join as I was already in three of the four except for The Seconds. I mean, imagine having to explain to someone why you play in the Firsts and the Thirds but not the Seconds. “Yeah, I play for The Firsts and Thirds.. No, not The Seconds, just Firsts and Thirds—I—I don’t know why! No, they all seemed nice it’s just—“.

And here I am now, playing for four teams at Oxford! To be fair though, the fields have a tendency to freeze over due to the chill, so about half of our games end up getting canceled. In this sense, I haven’t really been hit by the full force of four games/week yet though I shall report back to you all how successfully this goes for me.

You did well Kenichi..

I’m also in a society called the “Oxford University Travel Society” (OUTS) which hosts around 3 trips around England per trimester. The tickets are subsidized thanks to economies of scale, so it’s a nice way to explore England without having to spend too much “Quid” (also known as “Sterling”, or “Pound”).

On January 29th, we had a trip to Winchester where we got to see Winchester College—apparently, the oldest continuously operating school in England which was built in 1382. My friend and I joked, “imagine if it was called ‘Winchester High’ instead of ‘Winchester College’..” “Yeah, it doesn’t sound like it’s existed for 600 years *snorts”

All jokes aside, the High School did indeed have an incredible air of the passage of time, tradition, and excellence. The school was home to some brilliant display of Victorian and Medieval architecture which one couldn’t help but be mesmerized by. Apparently, they sold the beautiful stained glass of the school chapel to private collectors at one point, only to buy them back over the years using donations from alumni.

A particularly memorable moment was when we were walking down an alleyway and in the stone bricks surrounding us, there were engravings made by past students. One of them had the date “1919”, and it struck me that there could have been engravings on here that I missed which could have been over 500 years old or something.

There was a memorial for past students who passed away on campus and one of them had a Japanese name. He ran in a school race and got first, but he suffered a heart attack on the podium and never recovered. Our tour guide said the Japanese carvings in his plate said “You got first Kenichi”, but it had actually said, “You did well Kenichi”. I later told our tour-guide this, and she told me “Bless you, I can finally get it right”.

Winchester cathedral–The attention to detail was incredible. How long did it take to make this?

Here is perhaps what I found the most “interesting”. The school categorizes their students into two groups depending on whether they are on financial aid. They have 70 students on Financial Aid called “The Scholars”. Ok, that’s a fitting name right? But the remaining students are referred to as “The Commoners”. I couldn’t help but let out a smile on that one–tradition doesn’t care about the changing times.

The tuition is a staggering 36,000 pounds a year, but the school is a feeder school for elite institutions such as Oxbridge, Harvard, Yale etc. so for many, this is money well spent. There were so many other fascinating aspects of the school, but I’ll leave that up to your imagination 🙂

To the few people actually reading this at Vassar, I hope you have an amazing day and that we JYA students occasionally pop up in your thoughts! For the others, please do let me know if you have questions or feedback or comments~ Tata!

1/15/2017: Arriving at Oxford

“I can feel it, we’re in New York.”

I remember this quote from the movie “The Beatles” because John Lennon said this on a plane en route to America for the first time in his life, and I was watching this on a plane heading to Europe for the first time in my life (England via France). Unfortunately, I didn’t have the observational prowess that John had, and it wasn’t until the plane jolted to a stop on the runway at France’s CDG airport that I realized I’ve arrived in Europe. I later found out in my research that “CDG” stood for the French general and statesmen “Charles De Gaulle” who vetoed Britain’s entry into the European Community (predecessor to European Union) not once but TWICE. I knew that France and Britain never really got along historically, but TWICE!? You know what they say—old habits die hard.

Christchurch College – The college where Hogwarts’s Dining Hall scene was shot

Once I got to the city of Oxford, I thanked myself for knowing better than to go in T-shirts and shorts. I knew England was a country of style—the people, the accent, the fashion, everything was very.. “posh”. Apparently, using the word cool here makes you uncool, so you have to use a word that’s not “cool” to say something is #cool in a cooler way. ANYWAYS, people were extremely kind here, and every person I asked showed me directions how to get to St. Catherine’s College, some even pulling out their iPhones to look it up for me (Thanks Perry!).

When I arrived at St. Catherine’s College itself, I was guiltily happy that it was actually very modern. Vassar has given me my fair share of relic buildings. The college itself had white walls and lots of long horizontal glass windows (kind of like Noyes). There were large geese waltzing the lawn and one of them challenged me to a staring contest, which I lost.

                        It literally stood there looking at me for more than 20 seconds

The highlight of my first day at Oxford had to be when I went to the registration office to sign in. I opened the door, and out walked my roommate from Vassar, Clark. We had both applied to St. Catz coincidentally, and had both gotten accepted coincidentally. Turns out we were to become roommates for the second time in another country!

And here I am writing this post next to my buddy! Actually, our rooms are like a divided double with a shower and bathroom between us both, so it’s a perfect balance of privacy and company. I was quite anxious about my roommate situation, but I felt relieved that I would be sharing this experience with a friend.

Academic life

At Oxford, the program for visiting students centers around something called “tutorials” which is basically a one-hour meeting with a professor in groups of anywhere between one to four people. You have 1.5 tutorials per week; one for each of your primary topics and one every other week for your secondary topics. Most tutorials have an associated lecture session each week, so you end up having an average of three hours of tutorial/lecture time per week. Since I’m studying here for two trimesters, I will have four different topics to study so I won’t get bored! Bear in mind, I’m going off of my own experience and word of mouth from other students.

Now, you may be wondering..

“FOUR HOURS!? I spend more time clipping my toenails than four hours”, and I’m sure you do!

But, I should also mention that for me, I have to write a 2,000 word essay for each of my tutorials. Given that I have 12 tutorials per trimester, that is equivalent to writing a 2,000 word essay every four days.

Front view of St. Catherine’s College on a sunny but chilly Monday morning

Now, you may be wondering, “2000 WORDS EVERY FOUR DAYS?! Good thing I applied to study abroad in Japan”, but the tutorial system is actually extremely fun!

Have you ever gotten truly interested in a topic for an essay at Vassar, but you just didn’t have the time to delve deeper? Well, this program is your answer. I get to choose from a variety of sub-topics within my topic, scour my own books and articles to read for research, and write my essay with very few restrictions.

In the actual tutorial, I read aloud my essay to my professor (he doesn’t require me to turn it in beforehand), and he interjects every now and then to fill in the details or to challenge a claim. Each interjection usually turns into a short discussion, and before you know it, 60 minutes are up!

If you’re wondering, my two topics are “British Foreign Policy” and “Britain in 1900’s” so I’ve covered topics such as “Why did Britain not decide to join the European Community until 1967?”, “To what extent were Reagan and Thatcher’s governance based on similar ideologies” and “When did the decline of the British empire begin?”. Next week, I plan on writing about the success of Anthony Eden as prime minister, and about the Suez Crisis which was seen as one of the most humiliating disasters in British foreign policy.

My roommate Clark eating too much dessert which he later came to regret

Anyways, each college has its own library, and there are separate libraries for each department. The Social Science Library happens to be right next to my college, so I essentially have two libraries within a three-minute walk from my room (hehe). There is also a central Oxford library called the Bodleian Library which is apparently the poshest of them all. I studied there once just so I can say I studied there once. So yeah, I studied there once.

Next post, I’ll talk more about what I actually do on my free time 😉