Day 3

This post, for a switch, will be much shorter. Morning classes were much like the first day, though a little less packed information-wise. We began to discuss the different issues that would be coming up in the conference, scheduled for the following day.

I should mention that there were about 10 people in the class: five "junior scholars" from IPS (meaning we were only doing one academic credit-worth of work) and five "senior scholars" -- not from IPS -- who were taking the course in conjunction with a major research project or thesis. These were primarily students of Dr. Giordano (who, in addition to teaching at IPS, teaches at Georgetown and is involved in editing countless academic journals and running various international forums. You know -- in his spare time). The senior scholars stayed for individual tutoring sessions with the professors in the afternoon to work on their papers, in the true Oxford style, while the rest of us hob-nobbed around the town. The two groups kept mostly to themselves for the first part of the week, and we were pretty fairly divided between the philosophical (us) and the scientific (them). Happily, we began joining one another's tables for breakfast in the mornings and walking to classes together, and we were fairly well bonded by the end. Great people, all of them.

This was the worst day for my back, sadly. All the travelling and suitcase-maneuvering and sleeping on a poor mattress before sitting for hours in class was getting to me. Around lunchtime, my back seized up so badly it looked like I could be spending the rest of the week flat on my back in the dorm. Obviously, this could not happen. After lunch, I made my way down High Street and found an aromatherapy shop that offered massages. A sweet elderly lady with dyed blonde hair and a gentle, lilting voice assured me that she had been a registered nurse for 50 years and she'd find a way to work me in. Ten minutes later I was on my stomach getting a really first-class massage. With my face pressed down into the paper towel covering the headrest, I listened to her prattle on about the lovely things there were to do in Oxford -- sadly, I didn't know the whereabouts of any of the places she mentioned, but I tried to keep a mental list to look them up later: botanical gardens, organ concerts in chapels, outdoor Shakespeare plays, baroque concerts by candlelight, and on and on.

I left feeling still amazingly sore, but much more limber -- that is, I could actually swing my arms as I walked. I sat through evening classes then took a taxi back to St. Hilda's and called it a night. I vowed it would be the last night I would spend "in College" lying around the dorm!