Oxford Day One: Arrival

Today is my first day at Oxford for my Materials Science Headstart course. I'm going to make it brief as it's already 11.30pm and I should really be asleep!

I travelled here my coach at 11.10am, but the coach arrived slightly later than scheduled so I was in Oxford at one. The journey was pretty standard except I did feel a bit travel sick during it, but I just slept through the most of it so it was okay.

Something that I immediately noticed upon arrival was that Oxford is not as stereotypically as "pretty" or "quaint" as Cambridge - the architecture is much less homogeneous. There are far more typical 70s concrete buildings which some may say are ugly. There are also less cyclists as the city centre is not pedestrianised like in Cambridge.

I then directed myself to the college I will be staying at for the next 5 days - Mansfield College. I actually really like this college as it is not too claustrophobic as the site is not particularly small. We are also allowed to walk on the quad grass which is pretty rare for Oxford colleges. The student mentors who attend Mansfield emphasised how it is the friendly college and I have felt that vibe during my short time of being here.

Anyway, I arrived at Mansfield pretty early, so I decided to sit by the quad and read some of this library book that I've renewed about 5 times as I keep putting off reading it. Then once few more people had arrived, I got my key from the Porter's Lodge and went to dump my bags in my room A14. Turns out that someone else had accidentally mistaken their bag for mine, but I managed to retrieve it in the end.

We then congregated in the Junior Common Room and a boy/girl split was immediately apparent. After some socialising, we had two lectures regarding course rules, guidelines, blah blah blah, before starting our first actual activity that involved some thinking - "guestimating". We were separated into groups of four and had to "guestimate" the answers to some potentially unsolvable questions, including how many atoms would there be if a solid football was made from bucky ball, how many packets of crisps are eaten in the UK each year and how many golden eagles are needed to lift an elephant - the answer was 3500 if you are wondering.

Next we had a short break before a talk on Year in Industry and our dinner. The dinner was a bit disappointing to say the least, simply because when I last went on a trip to Oxford to Somerville College, the food was outstanding. I had chicken with a white sauce, roasted potatoes and sweet potato and a yogurt for dessert. The lack of vegetables was a bit concerning. I also got a tiny portion so I am still hungry whilst typing this up.

After dinner we had a tour around Oxford which was very lovely as the weather was surprisingly warm. We awkwardly walked into colleges, looked at their quads, walked out and repeated several times at various different colleges around Oxford. During this tour, I got to see more of Oxford and some parts are very beautiful. There were some houses painted in various quirky colours that caught my attention. We then made an all important trip to Tesco where one guy on our course almost got pooed on by a bird.

Lastly we just chilled outside playing Irish Snap illegally on the perfectly manicured lawn until the sun set and I wandered back into my room to write this blog post. The first day has been welcoming. I feel like I've done a lot of nothing today so looking forward to doing some more work and getting to know everyone better tomorrow

Night!