For all intents and purposes, I finished my term on Thursday—the day before my final exam—when I gave up on studying, unable to convince myself anymore that learning to do ANOVA statistical tests by hand or to ramble about epistemological approaches to ethnography had anything to do with, well, anything. Paul Willis, a Professor at Keele University, had invited me to lunch in Stoke-on-Trent, so I braved the English rail system for the first time.  It was a pleasant afternoon: Professor Willis is moving to the Princeton sociology department, and wanted to grill me on such mystical things as the Woodrow Wilson School, JPs, and departmental gossip.  These moments in which I feel like a part of the academic club—more colleague than student—are part of what keep me optimistic about the future.

A high point came when I tried to explain the eating club system.  I expected Willis’ first reaction to the street to be that of any good sociologist: indignation at its role in perpetuating racial / class / gender stratification.  His reaction, though, was quintisentially British: “So, do professors drink at these places too?”  Before I got on the train to go home, I asked him whether I should drink with the boat club or study for my exam that evening.  Under the advice of someone whose book has been cited 8,000 times, I passed the rest of the hours until sunset on the Thames, bidding fond farewell to my undergraduate friends before they disappeared into the summer.

Friday was examination time, which meant sub-fusc and red carnation.  I can’t say much about the actual examination, because as tends to be the case, I basically blacked out for three hours and came to having written 24 pages of keyword-laden theoretical non-sense (the graders will probably love it).  Before my first year of graduate school could be officially laid to rest, however, there was one last Oxford tradition: trashing.  While finalists have been known to be doused in baked-beans and hit by rotten fish upon emerging for exams, I got away with a bit of glitter thrown by my wonderful housemate, Nicola.  She, I, and another friend, Evan, retired to a pub, as a good chunk of stress rapidly fell off my shoulders.

Early Saturday morning, I was off to go narrow boating with a fellow PUBandie, Josephine, and her family.  Narrow-boating strikes me as perhaps the quintessentially quaint English activity, in that nothing really happens.  We puttered along at two miles-per-hour and stopped every couple hundred meters to go through a lock.  Apparently, this was sufficiently exciting, though, to bring lots of locals out to watch us, and despite the fact that my house in Arizona was further from the airport than Oxford is from Manchester, the regional variation in accents is ridiculous. I basically couldn’t understand anything the passer-byes said, until Josephine pointed out that they were probably always talking about football and I started focusing on catching a few critical words (in this sense, it was good practice for being in Ecuador).  The relaxed pace gave me lots of opportunities to take in a new city, eat some amazing vegan food, and catch up—it was, all-in-all, a pretty fantastic weekend.

Back in Oxford, I’ve been trying to adapt to the idea of being here and not being stressed out of my mind.  Sticking with the boating theme of my week, I watched the drawn-out solstice nea-midnight sunset from a ferry in the Thames.  Today, I completed the circle, watching the sun rise at three-thirty a.m., having spent all night around a bonfire in Port Meadows, roasting pita bread and drinking cheap wine among good company.

I try not to treat experiences like these as belt notches.  The fact that I have done X and seen Y reflects little on the richness of my life or my appreciation for it.  Even as I sit at my desk—reading about political ecology, writing questionnaires, and stuying Spanish, como siempre—though, I can feel a different sort of optimism and appreciation for life that’s been missing for too long.  Despite the redundancy, I don’t think I can ever remind myself too much of what a ridiculously privileged life I lead.

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Jukebox: Against Me! – Wagon Wheel