July 10 : Our Day of Higher Education

On this bright and warm Sunday, we decided to visit Oxford. Oxford is found 56 miles north-west of London. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, Other than its education facilities it is also known for its buildings in every style of English architecture since late Anglo-Saxon.

The day did not start off well.  The BritRail web site told us to catch the train to Oxford at the Canon Street station.  When we got there, we couldn’t find Oxford listed on the departure board.  The web site said the train left every 30 minutes.  So, I found an attendant, who look at me as if I was crazy when I asked which platform the train to Oxford left on.  It turned out that the train didn’t leave from the Canon Street station, but from the Paddington station which was on the other side of London.  Thank goodness the Underground is quick and efficient.

When we finally got Oxford, Marg decided she wanted to take the Hop-On Hop-Off bus, so she could the sights.  I decided to take a student guided tour of one of the colleges, so that I could see what student life was like inside the college walls.

The university is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous colleges. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. The university does not have a main campus, and various college’s buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre.

Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided through the facilities of multiple colleges.

My guide was a University of Toronto medical student, who was a graduate of Oxford University in English.  He was here doing research on Oxford medical history.  He took us on walk through the Balliol college.  We got see the college’s chapel, dinning hall, lecture hall, its residence, and the commons.  We also got a tour of the university’s Bodleian library.

Marg got to see many of the university’s buildings, Oxford Castle and the old city.  She even had time to do a bit of shopping in the main outdoor mall of Oxford.