A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #83 Oxbridge in My Dreams
Weight: A scale is a scale
Mood: Good
I’ve been deep into bittersweet romances (The Last Letter From Your Lover, Always, In December, and The Ottoman Lieutenant [a boring film with the chemistry of cardboard]) as of late. And as I sniffled my way through, I started to get very angry. I am so tired of books (and tv and movies), regardless of genre, where there must always be the death of a thing or a complication of a thing to the protagonist to make the book “good.” No one, it seems, is allowed to want, and get something and just be happy. Of course, there would be conflict somewhere because you do need the literary tension, but why is it so set in stone that the want and ownership of something means you must suffer to get it or to give up something to have it? There is always a choice to be mad and characters tend to do what is good for all and not what is good for them.
It’s fucking ridiculous.
I started taking classes via the University of Oxford Continuing Ed (yes, that Oxford) and I’m really enjoying. I’m taking the classes for credit on the off chance that one day I shall find myself in a situation to get yet another degree, I would come in with some background already filled. (If that education happened in the UK that is.)
My first class was “Britons in the Roman World” which is as it sounds and then“Who Are the Celts?” which also about as it sounds. The next class, which starts in September, is on the Vikings and I have a class starting in January on the Elizabethans.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s, long after I finished all (five) degrees. I was an above average student with a solid A- average but I could have done more. Been more if I had known about my affliction during my school days and learned how to work with it. (By the by, my mother knew I was bipolar when I was in my teens and choose to do nothing about it which is the cause to fuck with my head of a lot of “what ifs” on my life.) Taking Cont Ed classes are important to me because I want to do better than before, even though an A-/B+ isn’t shabby, because I have this burning desire to make sure everyone knows I’m smart and I have a brain. (Lot to unpack therapy wise.)
For the Romans class, we had 1.5-hour video lecture every week and we met live via Microsoft Team on Thursday at 9A EST (2P BST). The video lectures would take far longer than 1.5 hours as I took notes up the wazoo, included screen shots, and replayed sections I need to have clarity on. I did not participate much in the live sessions, but I imagined this is what it would have been like if I had been at Oxbridge(1) in person. But my biting wit remained silent as I absorbed, and I learned.
My final paper, which was relatively short at 1500 words, was on Boudica’s representation in pop culture. There is a lot out there if you look and my tutor (prof) was impressed not only with the quality of work (I got a perfect grade) and research but also with the topic. You can turn just about anything into representation of pop culture, I was surprised this is not something he had heard of.
Irregardless (2), I was over the moon.
The Celt class was structured a bit differently. Using a education knowledge management portal (Moodle), we had 10 sections, one each week, with each section on a different related topic. We were given articles to read (so many academic articles), videos to watch, and websites to visit. I was slightly more active on the forums then the Romans’ class but not by much. We had four topics to choose from for our final paper and I choose to write about Roman colonialism and consumerism contrasting with American colonialism and consumerism and answering the question if the Roman influence on Celtic Britain lasted.
"I really enjoyed the opening paragraph which set a very good analogous example for the Americanization of part of global culture today. The essay does not disappoint after that engaging start. You have taken on board a lot of information and make good arguments and original observations based on strong support. Well written and well referenced, this is a very fine piece of work – Well done indeed!"
The success to the class has gotten me thinking about applying to Oxbridge for a master’s program of some size. I don’t want to do English Lit so I thought about anthropology and started researching what that would take. Long story short, I would have to quit my job and go to school full time for three years before applying for my master’s/PhD which would take anywhere from 2 – 8 years to complete which puts me dangerously close to 60. (How am I so OLD?!) Sure, I would get great satisfaction of having not only gotten a PhD but also one from Oxbridge, but would I want to start a new career at 60?
This all conflicts with TEH’s and I plans to shuffle off to Europe when he retires at 50 (I would be 57). We have high hopes of buying a place in the south of France or northern Spain (or maybe Italy). A nice warm place to help with TEH’s near crippling depression. We would have a home base and travel all over the place. Don’t know if we’d keep a place in the US (lord knows how if we COULD live permanently in EU).
But that’s the goal anyway.
Plus, I really like having my own money. I like dropping cash on fancy lipsticks and new handmade leather bags without feeling a tight pinch.
You can see this is all conflicting dreams.
The likelihood of making my Oxbridge dreams a reality while simultaneously saving to live in the EU are put on hold unless I can figure something else out.
But then I thought: What if I wrote about it? What if I wrote about a woman in her early 40s who gets into Oxbridge, makes it a success, and everything works out in the end. There would be conflict for sure but what if she got her dream and it was everything she was looking for and is not trapped on a hedonic treadmill? Why can’t this book be a thing?
And it could be.
There would have to be some research, of course, and more of an outline of how to make it juicy and readable. I don’t know how I’m going to start, just yet, but I do have the opening paragraph in my head.
I may not be able to go to Oxbridge, but I can be happy taking classes through OU’s Cont Ed system (and maybe a one-year program at Cambridge to get a diploma in creative writing) and writing about something that could very well happen to someone like me if that me was in another world.
Why not indeed?
Oxbridge is the combination of Oxford and Cambridge and is typically used when talking about both schools as one since they are so similar.
It’s in the dictionary. It has been in use for 100 years. Fuck off with your pedanticy.
Wonderful Thing
My Cambridge reader card. When I visited some friends who live near Cambridge in 2012, they took me a tour of the grounds and we ended up at the library. It’s so crazy to walk in place hundreds of years old with books just as old waiting to be read. Don’t tell me you can get Dan Brown from the library. It would break my heart.
I found out that you can request a reader card which gives you all the privileges of the library for research. I, of course, got on with some cockamamie story I was researching women’s roles in the middle ages. It was the best £10 I ever spent. The card expired at the end of 2012. It’s a bit cracked from when my wallet got ran over by a car but no matter, I still keep it in my wallet.
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
I’m on the hunt for a blue undertone red lipstick and I’ve been directed to MAC’s Ruby Woo and Fenty’s Uncensored with additional recs of Mary K Jo Lipkit. I bought Ruby Woo. I’ll report back.
Links to Read That Are Not (Terribly) Depressing
He predicted the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago. Why did no one listen?
Advance copies of Sally Rooney’s unpublished book sold for hundreds of dollars
The androgyny of being Ernest: A gender-fluid reading of Hemingway that upends his macho image
Old Navy Is Redefining What Plus Size Shopping Looks Like (I went on ON’s website after launch and confirmed this is true. Any item that is designed for women or is gender neutral carries up to a 4x and is the same price. Now only if I needed clothes!)
Get vaccinated and mask up! There is a pandemic going on.
lisa x
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