Pictures of various university buildings

Turns out I'm too lazy to borrow people's cameras and actually take pictures, so I'm just gonna steal facebook pics from people who aren't too lazy.


Classes just started.  Oxford operates on a "tutorial" system, where students meet with professors one-on-one once a week with a paper.  The professor then critiques the paper.  I'm taking two tutorial classes this term, with my first paper due Monday.  The reading list for that paper was 32 books long (!), but hopefully it turns out ok.

Anyway, on a less stressful note the campus is absolutely gorgeous, so on to some pictures!

Not even sure what building this is to be honest, or what college it is part of.  Oxford is divided into 38 colleges that are all quite independent -- for example, as a member of new college I can't use the facilities of any of the other colleges, including their libraries.  This has made finding books rather annoying.

 

 Yeah, the whole place looks like this.

Lots of US colleges claim to look like castles.  First, after seeing Oxford those claims seem like jokes.  Second, the interiors of those sorts of buildings are never like castles.  In Oxford, you get the complete medieval experience, inside and out.  If I ever get pictures of New College, it looks even more medieval, with cloisters and whatnot.  The dining hall has huge portraits on the walls.  Also, dining halls have traditional seating, with long tables.  No cafe style seating with groups of four to a table -- here professors sit at high table, looking down at lines of students.  Who wear academic gowns to dinner.

 Half of the stuff here seems like it should be a museum.  There are lots of tourists who are charged admission to get access to rooms where I'll just be chilling, reading a book.

 One of the buildings of the main library at Oxford, the Bodleian library (at least, I'm pretty sure this building is one of the Bodleian buildings.  Interestingly, underground this building (where most of the books are), it looks like a modern office building, which is something of a jarring contrast to the exterior.

 One more picture.