My Travel Adventures

Reflecting on my last term at Oxford, I think I spent it well. Perhaps I should have started studying for my exams later, as I was barely even going through the motions in the last two weeks, but at least I felt confident in my answers. I took exams in two subjects: the International Relations of East Asia and Russian International Relations and Foreign Policy. I revised for the first in the usual way: I read through my notes until I was absolutely sick of them, and I copied the most important points onto a word document. Realising that I had learned practically nothing about Southeast Asia during the Cold War, I also studied a few Wikipedia pages and boiled them down into digestible bullet points. Finally, I prepared a few paragraphs of definitions that I could copy straight onto the online exam (which is perfectly within exam regulations).   

Little photographic evidence exists of my second Michaelmas term at Oxford, for it was a dark time. Both my electives for the entire year took place this term, on top of which I had to complete my PhD applications. Autumn’s only saving grace was that, by a massive stroke of luck, one of my electives clashed with a course seminar that I consequently – and with sorrows overflowing – had to forego.

Towards the end of my summer days at Oxford, I realised I had not taken any pictures or even visited any of the places I had intended to see. I was so engrossed in my thesis that every minute spent doing something else seemed like a waste. Towards the end of the third week, though, the weather became really nice, so I spent one morning and another afternoon simply sightseeing. Maddeningly, perhaps half of the colleges I tried to visit were closed either for graduation or summer school, both of which seem to last the entire season. I had thought summer would be a good time to explore them in peace, but when Oxford is not turning unholy profits on its regular student body, I suppose it must make up for the shortfall somehow.

Oxford is beautiful in May . The trees  in the parks are all covered in vibrantly green leaves, as of yet untouched by disease and the voracity of insects. So many flowers have bloomed at University Parks, that I can hardly keep track of their names. I have made many walks during the past few weeks, some along the canal, some to Christ Church Meadow, and others still to University Parks.

We spent the last two days of my friend’s visit in and around Oxford, as we had another mutual friend and his boyfriend fly in from the States. As soon as they arrived early in the afternoon, I took them on a tour of the most picturesque colleges in Oxford, but because I did not have enough time to do my research, I had to make up fake histories and interesting facts about them.

Ninth week at Oxford – a time when classes cease to meet and some exams are held – is a time when the mad gallop of the year slows down to a trot. Many people either party or try to leave early, and some even manage to do both. With the weight of schoolwork lifted from my shoulders, I ate a few long meals with course-mates and visited the botanic garden with a friend before the consequences of the omnipresent carefree atmosphere inevitably caught up with us. My housemate tested positive for covid, which forced us all into isolation for several days. Luckily, the contagion stopped there, which meant that no one else’s travel plans were impacted. However, the happy send-offs I was eagerly expecting would not happen.

Given how busy the terms are at Oxford, both this post and the last have been backdated. I wrote them while sitting at home in the Czech Republic on the 20 th of December, occasionally dodging my memory by consulting the photographs still on my hard drive (goodness, I really need to migrate those to my external hard drives already).