Monastic life (mostly)

With the hustle and bustle of Olympics over -- at least the Olympics for which I had tickets -- I have no choice but to return to the library.  But don't feel too sorry for me.  At this point, even most of the grads and summer-research undergrads who were around for the summer have gone home, either because they finished their master's dissertations or just for a visit home.  This means I live a sort of monastic life of semi-solitude.  My day generally looks something like this:

9:30 -- Either just getting up or going sculling with a friend

11:30 -- Settle into my study nest in the Tit Hall library, write a little

1:00pm -- Lunch in the MCR or the lawn

2:00-5:00pm -- Write on my latest chapter until I reach 500 words

5:00 -- Coach people on rowing

6:30 -- Dinner in the MCR

7:00 -- Read

That looks very impressive and studious, but keep a couple things in mind: 1) I waste a lot of time doing other things (blargh, internet); 2) when term starts, I will have very little time for work thanks to being a rowing captain.  So I have to get stuff done now.

Pre-play entertainment at the Globe

But there have been some fun distractions.  One was a trip to the Globe Theatre in London -- you know, the one where Shakespeare worked.  Obviously it's a reconstruction, but I'm not complaining.  I was a "groundling," standing in front of the stage, under the open sky as it faded from blue to dusky purple.  The guy who played Henry V was fantastic, and they even managed to make the wooing scene believable, which I didn't think was possible.

Another diversion was a few days at a retreat/conference on "Life Beyond the PhD."  The English faculty had a bunch of money to send people and were practically flinging it at us, so I joined some thirteen compatriots and a load from other universities at the gorgeous Cumberland Lodge.  Honestly, I was most excited about spending a few days in a swanky country house, and it did not disappoint.  To the left is a picture of part of my room.  Best of all, the bathroom had an actual bath in it!  I used it every night.  :)

My room at Cumberland Lodge

On a walk in Windsor Great Park

Of course, there were also many opportunities to meet other PhD students from around the country, doing many different topics -- in fact, one whole day consisted of giving 10-minute presentations on our research.  It was a friendly crowd, and I even got to know some other Cantabrigians better when we took a long walk one afternoon.  The lodge is in the same park as Windsor Castle, so when the sun peeped out between gusts of chilly wind, it was a lovely place to stroll around.

Now that I'm back in the library, I'm pressing on through the molasses of taking my theories about philology's influence on Tennyson and showing them in his most famous poems.  At the moment, that means looking up every word of "The Lotos-Eaters" in the online Oxford English Dictionary to see what proportion of words he used were of Germanic vs. French/Latin origin.  I may even make a graph before I'm done -- how strange for an arts student!