Sunday, October 22, 2017 – A nice Italian dinner
Highlight of the day: Chris’s birthday dinner at Jamie’s Italian (I met this so-called Chris at the dinner, haha). Had a prawn linguine—expensive and not a huge portion, but good food.
Got through one book for one of my papers that day. Have a sore throat 🙁 seems like everyone has fresher’s flu…
And it’s 1am. Again.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017 – Essays—all day every day
Yesterday and today: papers all day. Drank lots of tea w/ honey since I have a sore throat. Paper 1: started readings Sunday, read through a total of 6-7 books on Monday, wrote outline and paper today. Paper 2: started readings yesterday, started paper after dinner, goal to make outline by midnight.
I’m literally writing papers in one day—to think that in my world politics class at Wellesley I wrote about one paper a month, and only had one or two books to read!
Sometimes I wish I had one major and one minor tutorial like most of the other visiting students. Major tutorials meet every week and minor tutorials meet every other week—two papers every week is a lot, and usually it comes down to doing all the research and writing in 3 days (though I’m determined to start earlier next time). I’m learning a lot but also have less time to fully digest everything, and it’s hard to come up with a well-argued thesis if you don’t have time to do all the readings. Yes I’m here to learn and study, but I also want to enjoy myself and not have to sacrifice hanging out with friends, because the social life is what I’m going to miss most about Oxford too!
Back in the library after dinner, my brain was getting tired…who cares whether health can be solved by poverty and vice versa, I started thinking. I mean, we spend so many hours sitting and staring at a computer screen, how does this help people who are suffering from poverty now? I’d much rather be working for an organization that is actually delivering services to people. But of course, without doing the research we won’t know the most effective way to help the poor. But then don’t we have more than enough data to figure something out? If we haven’t figured it out yet it’s unlikely we will anytime soon. And what’s the point of us students arguing over what causes poverty? Ironically, I felt so unhealthy while sitting in the library staring at a computer screen and writing about health. I’m thinking this as I fight the urge to cough, and my throat hurts every time I swallow. All this sitting and pondering over the relationship between economic growth and health is making me feel very unhealthy indeed.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017 – Still sick
Woke up feeling more sick, with my throat still feeling inflamed, nose half blocked, and throat messed up. Had some lemsip, which is like Emergen-C but with actual medicine.
Need to finish my paper in 3 hours—this is my worst procrastination yet. I put in the footnotes 10 minutes before the deadline. Not surprisingly, it was also the shortest paper I’ve written here. I could not decide whether economic growth was essential for health. I didn’t want to just agree with the prompt. In the end I finally decided that economic growth is essential but doesn’t cause health—only economic development leads to health.
Had interesting discussions at meals about effective altruism. Went running in University Parks to catch up on some much needed time outside and fresh air.
Thursday, October 26, 2017 – My motivation
I struggled with my IR topic this week on what determines a state’s foreign policy. There are so many factors to consider and frameworks with which to view the arena, not to mention I had two days to write the essay. So I was quite relieved when my tutor told me I did a great job making sense of and laying out the competing views in the literature in an orderly fashion. All those hours in the library were worth it for this one compliment. If only I could keep this up.
My development economics tutorial was fine too. My argument didn’t get bashed; there were just things I could’ve expanded on.
Friday, October 27, 2017 – Punting!
Went punting on this sunny and beautiful Friday afternoon with Becca, Filip, and Paul. Punting is a lot harder than it looks. You stand at one end of a long, narrow boat and propel it by pushing a long and heavy metal pole off the shallow river bottom. I found turns very difficult and kept running into the sides of the river and into tree branches (and constantly apologizing to the others). But it was a peaceful and fun ride.
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