My final two weeks were spent trying to balance relishing my final British moments in Oxford with writing 20,000 words, plus appendices and bibliography. I worked every day, and even pulled an all-nighter trying to get that 20,000-word monster done. It nearly killed me, literally. During that two weeks of dissertation-writing-purgatory, I managed to: electrocute myself (by pulling on my laptop plug just a tad too energetically), punch myself in the face (by pulling my laptop out of my bag just a tad too energetically), bruise my butt (by sitting on my desk chair just a tad too energetically causing its screws to explode out of their sockets and the chair to burst into 9 pieces), and sting myself (by trying to chase bees out of my dorm room with a tennis racket instead of just typing in the library). At one point, since I hadn’t left the one-block radius of the dorm or changed out of my pj’s in days, I started to go a bit mad trying to get it done; this seemed normal at the time. At about 15,000 words, I was deep in the ‘monkey cage’, so I didn’t notice the oddity or unhygienicness of it all. (You know what I mean… the first hour in the monkey cage, it smells like poo, but after a few hours in there, you’re like ‘what poo?’) I finally got the paper to the point that my supervisor gave me the green light to submit (thanks Hubert!), but I couldn’t manage to get it bound and submitted just yet. My last few days, I decided to stop editing, start showering, and enjoy all that is Oxford. I’ll eventually send my completed dissertation to Oxford from sunny Miami via the trusty US Mail.
So, in addition to trying to excrete 20,000 distinction-worthy words into my word doc, those last few weeks were spent seeing the city that I fell in love with (finally checking out Balliol, St. Johns, and Trinity - see pic below),
and visiting with the people that made this experience what it was. When I think back on the year, my greatest memory is the friendships that I made. I’m taking them home with me, and know that I will see these friends, from all around the world, again. Those last few days, with my friends, I went to pubs like the Vic (where Mark, Anna, Fin and I did some celebrating for our friend Ben’s birthday) and the Duke (where we did a little wine tasting),
I played some doubles tennis with Erica, I did some lunching at Linacre with Roh, I had some tea with Jennifer and Andrew (where I handed off The Vic to lucky Andrew, who, along with Jeanne, will act as babysitter whilst I’m away, as The Vic was about 14 pounds too heavy to even consider packing. Consider yourself lucky, guys, as tons of offers came in from peeps wanting the pleasure of Vic’s company. I mean, their lips may have said ‘you can’t leave that freaky head in my house’ but their hearts said ‘I can’t wait to put Vic on my mantle!’ Lucky, lucky you.), I went to my final bop at Green Templeton and final Purple Turtle and Bridge nights with Sam, Eric, Vits and other lovely Linacre peeps, I dined with Kine, I hung out with Stav, Morgan, and Yasmine in the dorm, I made a final presentation to my new family in the Rotary Club at Bicester,
I visited with my classmates over a home-cooked Pakistani meal, I dined with my new British parents Jola and Lars, and, very painfully, I said goodbye to Henry and watched him pedal off into the sunset with his new owner, Anne (after thoroughly freaking her out by asking her to take good care of him; I’ve never seen someone take off on a bike so quickly.)
Yup, I took one last pic of my Henry so I could remember him as he was that day. Oh Henry.
It was the best of times (as I loved every second with these people), it was the worst of times (as I cried each day saying goodbye to them). Corny or not, this year truly was the time of my life.
