An Education

I can honestly say I think I will learn more in the six weeks I'm here than I did this entire past school year. Last night, with the help of some serious coffee and English tea, I pulled my first all-nighter here. It definitely paid off, as my first one hour tutorial session with my Oxford don, Dr. Archer, went surprisingly well. Going into the meeting at his flat was one of the more intimidating experiences of my life. We walked into a room filled to the ceiling with books, one of which I'm pretty sure he wrote. His cat named Europa was sitting on his shoulder as he sipped his tea. The three students from his session before looked somewhat sheepish and I assumed he had already sized me up. To my surprise, I began to lead the discussion. Dr. Archer continually kept questioning me because I had the most opinionated and less "popular" belief about what he was asking. The question we were asked to research was, "How adequately did the Church meet the needs of English people in the years immediately preceding the Reformation?" I took the standpoint that they were not met, because the Reformation was in fact successful, as there were several graphs, stories, examples, etc. in the books I found to show how people less and less became dependent on the Roman Catholic Church and England began thinking for their own. I even named off this guy Gilbert Johnson who was one of the first to be prosecuted for speaking against the Church, and talked about how he catapulted the Reformation, and he didn't even know of him until I showed him in the document that I found. He seemed impressed and told me I had made really good connections and that he even agreed with my opinion. We also had the former British Ambassador of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Ireland, Sir Ivor Anthony Roberts, come speak to my International Mass Communications class about public diplomacy and I asked him a little about 9/11. Not quite sure how I managed to do all this since I was functioning on an hours worth of sleep. I just booked us a 6 person hostel to stay in for the weekend in London. First time to London, first time staying in a hostel, first time for everything.

Did I mention a bird flew into my room?