Out of Egypt:

First day of term

A rather nice day by British standards (I love Tacitus' description of this as a generally unpleasant, wet, yet fertile country), "spitting" rain in the morning, clearing in the evening, moderately cold (it's probably colder at Covenant).

The city explodes with life. Pedestrians and, perhaps even more so, bicyclists own the streets. It's an exciting, albeit stressful, time. The "beginning of term panic," as my first lecturer of the day called it.

Lecture theatres are packed; students spill out of benches onto the floor. People are still testing the waters, seeing what they want to attend for the term.

I was all over the city today, getting library resources mainly, when I was attending the two lectures I went to today. Library matters are still a pain and I can only hope I'll become more acclimated soon. That will probably be the biggest factor cramping my ability to write a good essay for my first tutorials. I thought today, a bit, that it would be great just to go to lectures and study without having to worry about grading, sort of the Dr. Barker school of academic affairs. But this trial by fire approach does have its merits, though orientation certainly couldn't prepare us adequately for it.

The lectures I attended were excellent, containing far more information than I could copy down and assimilate. I had to think about multiple things at once just to extract a main thread of instruction from the lecturers' steady stream of speech. It was interesting to see how the lecturer in Literature and Religion 1660-1782 deals with the era with no personal Christian commitment; I would take issue with much of his interpretation of facts, although I think he did a fairly good job of accurately representing Renaissance attitudes. I'm glad I've gone to a Christian college, since we have the ability to view knowledge more holistically from the standpoint of our faith (despite what Derrida might say about the ills of logocentrism). However, I think that Oxford students graduate with much more knowledge of detail than we do, even if they don't have a coherent framework in which to put them.

Other thoughts:

English fashion tends toward the extreme, and sometimes would even be called skanky in the States. Or is it just that I've been living in the Covenant bubble too long to see how students actually dress? Long boots are popular here, which used to be somewhat disreputable (one staff person at SCIO used the phrase "hooker boots," to describe her friend's attitude toward her own choice of footwear). I don't mind that, though - it's more the short skirts and some indefinable clothing attitude that makes me uncomfortable.

England is a land of great linguistic variation. The U.S. pretty much has three (or four) regional dialects, some of which have sub-dialects. Here there's much more of a class distinction, which is reflected in the existence of dialects peculiar even to particular cities or counties. More of a tension between the written and spoken forms of the language, as well as between spoken forms that are learned at home and the one taught in school (the "Queen's English"). Some of that was discussed in lecture today (Language Change, basically a low-level linguistics course); some in the seminar. But I've mostly just been seeing it play itself out on the streets of the city.

Had a good conversation at supper tonight with one of the other students in the program about the problem of evil, which led into my ideas about the Church's, and the individual Christian's, mission in the world. She asked me what my aims in life were (an always-thorny question to answer) and I told her a bit about the kind of writing I would like to do, the kind of popularization of theological concepts that I believe needs to take place, so that these ideas can move out of the realm of the theoretical into the practical. That led me off on a bit of a monologue, I'm afraid, about academic study as a practical good, as secondary, contrary to Aristotle and the other Greek philosophers' view, which I believe disparages the body, which in Christ is the vehicle of our redemption, an inescapable part of what it means to be human. Our chief end, I said, is not to comtemplate some kind of abstracted truth, but rather to glorify God and enjoy Him forever - and one of the principal ways in which we do that is by loving and serving other humans, who bear His image. So, I said, I make a bad academic in that I always would want my work to have at least a potential application - using the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, I would want to understand the text better as a means of understanding what D.B.'s view of the Sermon on the Mount has to say to us today as we act within the world. I could say more, of course, but I think this is all I'll say for now - I have reading to do (that's an understatement).

(I'll try to fix the look of the comments page in the next few days, though I don't know how much time I'll have to devote to it.)

I was listening to "Why Can't the English Learn to Speak?" from the My Fair Lady soundtrack. The lyrics aptly illustrate the great emphasis on class distinction that intonation variations can exhibit. Fortunately for us Americans, the English aren't quite as knowledgable about American dialects. Thus, they might ask me, "So what part of the States are you from?" They knew I was American, but I escaped utter codification...

Posted by: funke at January 16, 2006 5:21 PM

"An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,/The moment he talks, he makes some other Englishman despise him."

Why Can't the English Learn to Speak?

Posted by: funke at January 16, 2006 5:25 PM