Since it’s April Fools Day, I thought I would share this (very real) humo(u)rous / completely awful interchange I had with my adviser the other day. (By way of introduction, I should note that my adviser is a somewhat portly, jovial British economist in his mid-60s.) Me: I’m having a lot of anxiety about my… Continue reading Profound Thoughts on Thesis Writing
Worcester’s college bar is well decorated. This is not a good thing, because usually when I go there I wind up awkwardly staring at the walls rather than talking to people. The pictures of the “Worcester College dart’s team / drinking legends” are always entertaining, as are the pictures of each year’s “beer boat”—senior rowers… Continue reading The Other “Fancy Dress”
Every January, I draw up a wildly optimistic set of goals for the New Year. I gave up on New Years resolutions a long time ago; at this point, I just come up with a long list of tasks to which I can apply myself. Two weeks into my second term at Oxford, I’m already… Continue reading Lists
After much exhaustive research, I have come to some definitive conclusions about the relative superiority of British and American culture. My anthropological training has prepared me to handle such a delicate issue with both grace and cultural sensitivity, so there are no sweeping generalizations made below. vs – – – – – Food: On the… Continue reading U.S. vs. U.K. – Head to Head
Great Britain’s National Health Service is (choose one): A shining example of the power of government to provide health care for everyone. A bloated and sclerotic bureaucracy which demonstrates the impossibility of effective socialized medicine. Both As the debate over health care reaches new heights of absurdity—with the label “socialized medicine” continuing to be the… Continue reading A wholly unsatisfying (for the reader, that is) treatise on the NHS
England, it seems to me, is a land of rules. Before I arrived here, one of the first things I told people about my impending trip to Oxford was that students aren’t allowed to walk on the grass. Coming from Princeton, where as soon as the temperature gets above sixty-two it seems like the entire… Continue reading Rule Britannia
My Great Grandmother Anna is a something of a legendary figure within my family. And quite rightly so: she emigrated—alone—to the United States at age 15, raised a family of seven by herself, and lived to 105, drinking whiskey until the day she died and only moving to a nursing home when her children were… Continue reading Aimless rambling, followed by pictures of Stonehenge
While the anthropologist in me knows I shouldn’t say this, there are some things in foreign countries that just suck. In Uganda, it was cardboard boxes: they were just objectively horrible, fallilng apart as soon as you put something in them (begging the question: what is the purpose of a cardboard box in which you… Continue reading Cultural Exchange
Yesterday’s election wasn’t a particularly big deal for me. I’ll admit that my heart sunk when I saw that Maine voters rejected equality for gay couples, but beyond that, I wasn’t too invested in any of the races. It doesn’t particularly bother me that the multi-millionaire investment banker claiming to be a man of the… Continue reading The Great Disappointment, Plus Five-Hundred Fifty-One Wednesdays of Drinking
Things at Oxford are starting to heat up. My [redacted] day streak of going to pubs has ended. I have numerous papers I should be doing, in addition to the already insurmountable amount of reading. My rowing team even had a work-out that involved sweating and physical exertion (this is new). And I’m spending my… Continue reading Eat Your Heart Out, Julia Child. Or Not.
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 