04.21.06 A Mertonian is Born

Dear Ean

We have heard from Merton that they have given you membership - horrahh!

They will be sending you a letter shortly, congratulations

Kind regards

Sally

...this showed up in my inbox today. I had called Sally Webb at SBS a few weeks ago to see how the college auditioning process was going, and it turned out that Balliol (1st choice) had rejected me, and the application was now off to Merton. Sally let me know that since Balliol had rejected me, I was likely to be rejected by Merton and any of the other "top" or "picky" schools, including Christ Church and a couple of others whos' names escape me just now. So, she suggested a slighlty less difficult list to pick from, and I chose Brasenose, Exeter and Hertford. But apparently, Merton was into it after all, and now I will forever be a Mertonian. What that will really mean is to be determined. Given that I won't be using up a room there, probably won't spend a huge amount of time there (between the SBS and home, I won't have a lot to spare), not even taking classes there, and I'm shelling out £3000 to become a member, I would think that I would seem like a pretty good deal to just about any Oxford college. But then again, I'm a fairly ignorant "yank" about this whole Oxford business, so my views on this matter probably aren't worth much. Plus, with an endowment of £104million, they probably don't care too much about my measley £3000.
Some stuff about Merton:

• founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton
• 1 of the 3 oldest colleges at Oxford
• JRR Tolkien taught at Merton
• TS Elliot, Admiral Robert Blake and Randolph Churchill (Winston's dad) graduated from Merton
• apparently you have to wear robes at dinner sometimes
• has a square called the "mob quad" which is from the 1280s... that name makes me laugh for some reason

I have no idea how belonging to this college will effect my life downstream, if at all. I think that a lot of undergrads and graduates students spend 2 or more years here, so I will probably be a bit transient in the eyes of the other Mertonians. Above all, I really hope that the folks there like me: it would be really cool to make friends and cool connections from a set outside of the SBS MBA folks I will mostly run with while at school. Here is a pretty cool drawing of the college, and here are some pictures of my new clubhouse...

the fancy view!

the Mob Quad: a little more spevyhousesque...