04.01.07 the stack

Here you have 1 stone (14 pounds) worth of reading, not including the ass-pile of electronic documents I have to read. This is what I will be digging into this term. It's not nearly as many books as I had last term, probably because the subjects are less standard this time around, and there are less textbooks to choose from.

1 stone of reading

Being back at school is a bit of a conflicted thing for me.

First, while it was great to stay with Tasha and Keith, it's nice to be back in my own place with my own stuff and my own bed, etc. But, the trip home was so much fun: I really really like my Seattle friends and family. Baby brother lunch, the dummies, Kurt Bloch and his latest rock, the old Wamu gang, etc. were all so great to see. My favourite haunts as well: the Sunset, the Javabean, Hattie's, Keisha's house, etc., were places I was glad to see. Also, I had sort of forgotten how good my Seattle friends are at having a good time. To protect the guilty (and any innocents, if they exist) I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that they really put the Oxonians to shame in terms of whooping it up. To be fair, it was new years, and folks back home share my predilection for live rock that the Oxford folks apparently lack, but still: those Seattle folks really know how to have a good time. In other ways, the return is a relief because I don't have a hectic schedule of reconnecting with old friends and family. I was bad about this, but Reba really overdid it: often having breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks meetings with different friends/family each day. Seeing everyone is a kick, but it is also exhausting. I imagine that our next trip will involve significantly less meeting and greeting. In another way, a return to Oxford is a return to anxiety: we still don't have our final grades back, and won't until February. The exams weigh so heavily in our assessment that a really big failure on almost any exam would mean a resit (2nd try at the exam) at exam time this term. The horror of having to take 7 or 8 exams in one week instead of 6 would be pretty damn overwhelming. And, I really like to know this stuff asap, so waiting around for results seriously bums me out. Also, the workload is supposed to be pretty gnarly this term, even worse than last time. The number of assignments is clearly up, and there is also a business plan to write. On a more positive note, I'm really looking forward to seeing my MBA buddies, as many of us have grown quite close over the last term. Plus, I guess that after 4 months out here, it is so totally obvious to me that the place in the world that I fit into most is Seattle. The people that I know there really get me more than folks I've met anywhere else... obviously because many of them have known me for 20+ years, but also because we share musical, aesthetic, political, etc., tastes. In some ways, that level of homogeneity was what drove me to leave Seattle... I wanted to experience something really different. But, after being away for a while, it's really obvious how comforting that homogeneity is. The plan is still to live and work overseas for 1 to 4 years after graduation, so there's a long road between us and a final return to home. But, if this trip was any indication, Seattle is certainly the ultimate destination. So, there it is... some good and some bad, but now I'm back in Oxford (home).

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