Hilary Week 0

Week 0 of Hilary term wasn't that exciting, as I spent the majority of the week studying for final exams. There was a fun Google Bop over the weekend, which is what this photo is from.

I arrived back in Oxford on Sunday afternoon and forced myself to stay up to study for exams. I went to bed early and had no problem getting used to Oxford time.

Exams:
I had my final two exams from Michaelmas term this week: three hours of Social Dynamics of the Internet on Thursday morning and three hours of Internet Tech and Regulation on Friday morning. There were also undergraduates (not in sub-fusc) at the Examination Schools to take collections, which are like finals for their Michaelmas courses that don't really count for anything besides showing their progress. Most grad students don't have finals at this time, and I didn't know about collections at first, so I was shocked that the library was so packed.

Radcliffe Camera lower reading room

We knew the format of our exams in advance. We had to write three essays, and there was one question about each week's topic, so we didn't have to "revise" (study) everything. I wrote about youth and new media, the Internet in China, and democracy and the internet for SDI, and online copyright laws, dataveillance, and content filtering for ITR. For those of us taking Advanced Qualitative Analysis this term, the ITR exam was our last final exam of the year (and potentially ever). At the end of the exams, our invigilator (exam proctor) told us we were very well-behaved and well-dressed. Only in Oxford...
After Friday's exam, a bunch of us went in our sub-fusc to the same pub on High St., Chequers, that we went to for lunch after our stats exam back in Michaelmas term. Some of us hung out for the rest of the afternoon all the way through the end of a long and late dinner.

Google Bop:
On Saturday night, St. Antony's College held a Google Bop with a "fancy dress" (costume) theme of 'anything you can find on Google.' My classmates, of course, were all very excited about this, and about half of us attended.
I went with my Canadian friend Elizabeth as Google+. We made the front of the shirt an OII stream and wrote funny quotes that classmates and professors said last term. On one sleeve we listed all of our circles, and on the back we made an Oxford stream and wrote 'share what's new.' We bought bangles and belts in Google colors, and attached permanent markers to the belts for people to use to write on the stream. Our costumes were a hit.

Other costumes included Google Street View, the pepper spray cop, binary (ones and zeroes), 10 to the 100th power (a google), the Bronx Zoo Cobra, a Google Labs scientist, BackRub (Google's original name), the cup in '2 girls, 1 cup' (the cup contents ended up on the floor (don't worry, it wasn't real, but still, ew), the 'I'm feeling lucky' button, and a loading bar.