Oxford

Went on a tour company trip to Oxford back when we had company visiting. It was mixed with Windsor and Stonehenge, but since we have covered those before we won't get into it again. Wasn't super interesting from a things to see standpoint. Lots of old buildings but nothing that really stood out. Highlight was the dining hall at Christ Church College. It is the inspiration for the dinning hall at Hogwarts, from Harry Potter, minus the magic flying plates, and ghosts and such.

Christ Church College

See the resemblance??

 

Other cool thing was that the dinning hall inspired the book Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll's (The author of the book) father was the headmaster at Christchurch, and wore a robe everyday with white rabbit fur around the collar. Would watch him go through a small door at the end of the dinning hall into his private office, which Lewis wasn't allowed. Thus the rabbit hole was born!!

Characters from the book are built into the stained glass of the hall.



 The trip was pretty cool from an educational standpoint though. Found out a lot about the British education system and lost a lot of respect for an oxford education. Explains a lot about Clinton! No I take that back, we could only be so lucky to see him back in office. I digress...so Oxford isn't one university, but made up of 38 separate ones. Each only teaching one specific subject, and only having something like 100 students. So when you decide you want to go to "Oxford" you have to be super selective about what you want to do. The rumour is that a lot of people just want to say they have an Oxford degree so they just apply at the school with the most graduating students the year before. Now I know what you are saying....that sounds crazy to pick your major that way, but don't worry it doesn't matter because apparently nobody gets a degree in the field they want to work in, its just expected that if you need specific knowledge to do your job your employer will either teach you or send you to school to learn it. That is why the accountants I work with are an engineer, a political science, and a psychology major. Anyway, so you are now in a college at Oxford, whatever you do don't change your degree. You would have to reapply to another school, and since you only studied one subject everything you learned is useless. And did I mention there is no class? Yeah, you read a book and meet privately once a week with your professor.









Now I am sure that my account is full of inaccuracies, but that is the story I got!! So I will let you make your own inferences and judgements, but thought it was very interesting none the less.