OXFORD ABROAD: LILY CONNOLLY

Oxford continues to be an amazing experience every day. A normal day for me involves waking up and going to the beautiful Radcliffe Camera to work on essays for my tutorials, then I will go get lunch with some friends at Christ Church, New College, or Trinity college or somewhere in town like Nando’s or Bella Italia. After lunch I will go to a coffee shop, like the Jericho café, or back to the library to finish my tutorial work for the day, and then go home to make dinner with my housemates. I appreciate that the schoolwork is completely self-paced, so I can become acquainted with different libraries and coffee shops throughout the city to get fully ingrained in the culture. While the academics are challenging, I feel that I am learning and growing everyday as a writer and student. At night, if I am not going to a student organization meeting, I will often go to a pub with uni friends (The Eagle and Child is one of our favorites because it is where C.S. Lewis and Tolkein frequented). I think something that is particularly great about this program is that the living situations lets you stay with different students who are also experiencing Oxford, and sometimes England, for the first time. Through this connection, I have become friends for life with my housemates.  I am also making the most of the weekend by traveling to new places like Sweeden, Ireland, Budapest, and Germany, and Switzerland. Also, a group of my friends and I rented a house in the Cotswold’s for a weekend so we could experience a different part of England. But there is also so much to see in Oxford like going to the museums and art galleries, shopping at Westgate, or grabbing a coffee at the Barefoot café (my personal favorite). I will be sad to leave my new home in a few weeks, but this adventure has been an incredible experience.