Michaelmas Week 8

Week 8 was the last week of Michaelmas term. I went through the formal process of handing in a paper to the Examination Schools, enjoyed Oxford's Christmas Light Night, spent time revising for statistics, and tried to fend off my cold before the upcoming stats exam.


Classes:
Topics of the week: interviewing on and offline // intro to regression, residuals, plots for regressions, correlations // media and democracy // technological convergence
Conveniently, I had read some of the supplemental readings for Social Dynamics back in my media and politics class at Georgetown.

We had our first summative due this week on Friday - an essay for Research Methods. There was a strict 2500-3000 word limit, so going over 3100 was a risk (one classmate even found himself with a first draft of 5000 words). I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of using online surveys to explore some aspect of Internet Studies and framed my answer around a hypothetical study about the readership of the Drudge Report.  This one essay determines our grade for the entire Methods 1 core, though this grade is only 1/16 of our grade for the entire course (course refers to the whole program, not a specific class).

How we get graded:
25%: thesis
25%: exams for both Social Dynamics of the Internet and Internet Tech and Regulation
25%: grades for summatives for methods 1, methods 2, stats, and advanced qual or quant analysis
25%: 2 option papers (paper = class) - I'm taking Digital Era Government and Politics and a programming course called Digital Social Research

We are graded on a scale of 100 points, but the numbers have totally different meanings. The 50s are passing (pass), and the 60s are good (merit). Most people in my class got in the 60s on our formative assignments. The 70s are really good (distinction), and if you get above that, it's apparently of publishable quality.

The process of handing in the summative for Methods was fairly complex. We had to print two copies, and our name could not be anywhere on the essay - our candidate number had to be on every page. The essays had cover sheets, but as these had our names on them, they could not be stapled to the essays. The cover letter said that the version we handed in at the Exam Schools was the same as the version we emailed to the OII. This all had to be in an envelope addressed to the Chairman of Examiners at the Exam Schools on High Street.

We had to hand it in at the Exam Schools by noon, fill out a receipt to prove it, then email it to someone in our department by 5. The papers will be read by 2 (or 3 maybe?) professors who must agree on the grades they give everything. We won't receive our grades until the end of February or March.

A bunch of my classmates ended up running into each other as we handed in our papers around 11:30, so we got some lunch before splitting up to go "revise" (study) for our next summative - the statistics exam on Monday. The next day, some of us revised over lunch at the Eagle and Child, a pub known for being a haunt of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. It was my first time there, and I commented on how the place was way bigger than I expected (it doesn't seem particularly big from the outside). A friend responded, "welcome to England."

The reading room in the Rad Cam was dead on Sunday. Since the term was over for undergrads, they all had to completely move out of their accommodations over the weekend (they must do this between each term). Typically first and third year students live in college accommodation, while second years must find private housing. I met a girl from Wales who said she was allotted a space to store some of her stuff, and I'm not sure if people from outside the UK can stay. The accommodations are used for interviews and conferences. High school kids come stay in the colleges they applied to during 9th week for their admissions interviews. Apparently students applying to read for Politics, Philosophy, and Economics once got asked, "are you cool?" Look up the Oxbridge interview on Google or read this article.

Formal Hall:
The theme of STX hall this week was Romanian, but I didn't go. I was busy trying to finish a draft of my methods summative by Tuesday night so I could send it to our methods "TA" who would send it to another student for peer review and then give us comments on the paper.

Christmas Light Night:

Christmas Light Night on Friday celebrated the arrival of the Christmas season in Oxford.

There was a fair on St. Giles and Beaumont Streets, and some of the stalls were open during the day. It was funny to see amusement rides in front of the Ashmolean museum, and there was a ferris wheel in front of my department.

During the afternoon I stopped at a Turkish stand and got some dried strawberries, baklava, and pomegranate Turkish delight. Some of the dried strawberries weren't as good as when I had them from a shuk in Tel Aviv, but I guess that's what happens when you buy them after they've been sitting in the cold weather. It was my first time having Turkish delight, and I learned that baklava comes in many different varieties (I always thought plain baklava was all that existed). They had baklava with pistachio and almond layers, and there was even a sour berry with coconut flavor. I got the cinnamon baklava.


Holiday lights on some of the main roads of the city have been up since late October/early November, but this was the night the lights were actually turned on. There was a lantern procession, but we ended up on the wrong street for that (and it was so crowded), so seeing the lights get turned on was pretty anticlimactic. The lights on Cornmarket Street twinkle though, which is cool.

Cornmarket Street

The Saxon Tower at the church of St. Michael of North Gate was offering free entry, so we went to the top for a great nighttime view of Oxford. Apparently the tower (from 1040) is the oldest building in Oxford. The top didn't seem like the safest place for a child or old person, and I didn't see any warning signs. This surprised me considering the bathrooms in this country have signs that go beyond our 'wash your hands' signs - here they even remind you to dry your hands after washing them.

Afterwards we wandered around the stalls. You could get crepes, burgers, paella, hot Cadbury "drinking chocolate," festive treats, tea cups, ornaments, and other random things. There was a stage with music all night, and we watched a bunch of local kids doing hip-hop. The music was so loud that I could hear it from my room. One of the buildings of St. John's College had lights shining on it that changed colors, and the trees on St. Giles were lit green.