Day 96/99: Final things

I've done quite a few things here for the last time now - last fencing session, last Princetonian column, last Junior Seminar, last Greek History seminar, last Butler Gallery meeting, and tomorrow's my last Latin class. I've probably seen quite a few people for the last time, too. I'm quite good with goodbyes, but even so, it's a bit odd.

Day 92/99: End of the road (almost)

I've just finished my paper on the decline of Greek democracy after Alexander the Great, 3,577 words long - it's a month before the deadline, so after Christmas I'll reread the four main texts and look at it again, but it's basically finished and - I think - pretty good. My Junior Paper also doesn't need much more than a bit of reorganisation - section headings and the like - so basically, the Princeton work that counts towards my Oxford degree is done. I still need to pass my final Latin exam and produce some kind of ten-page paper on Roman Portraiture, but the former shouldn't be too taxing and the latter doesn't really count - it might look nice on my CV if I do well in it, but I'm not going to stress myself out doing work for it.

Day 89/99: New hair!

I got a new haircut today - I'm not going to bother with a self-portrait, but I'm sure you'll see it in photos before long (and you'll probably all see me within a month anyway). I had it done at the Princeton Barber's Shop, just outside the campus gates - didn't have to wait, it only cost $18, and the guy just cut my hair rather than trying to talk to me (which is always annoying, as they either speak into my deaf ear or are holding a buzzing razor right up against my good ear). He also didn't ask me what exactly I wanted done - it's great to find people who accept "make me look nice for my grandparents at Christmas" as a valid instruction rather than expecting me to think about layers or side partings or ears.

Day 85/99: More snow!

After dinner, I traipsed around the Princeton campus taking as many photos of snow as possible on various camera settings (ordinary, "snow mode", flash, no flash, high ISO...). My hand hasn't been that cold since Christ Church Regatta, but it was worth it - I ended up with 85 photos and put the best ones on Flickr with the others.

The U-Store has a Christmas tree up, which was cool:

Also, since I had my camera with me, I thought I'd take a photo of my dinner, just for fun.

Day 85/99: Snow! (also, Quad Club)

Despite the blue skies earlier in the week, it's now snowing at Princeton! I've taken about 45 photos of it, of very varying quality - the best 7 are on my Flickr.

More photos will follow when it settles. It settled - I went out at twilight and took more, so the above Flickr link now has eighteen photos.

Day 84/99: Flickr

I decided, in the end, that I ought to get Flickr. I've signed up for a free account just to get used to it, but I'll probably buy a Flickr Pro subscription soon so that I can upload full-quality photos and view them all (rather than just the most recent 200).

Anyway, in celebration of the fact that it's sunny and blue-skied here rather than miserable in England, I took a few photos this morning and grouped them into a set.

If you hover over the cart in this one, I've added a 'note' just to try the feature out.

Day 83/99: Charter Club

So, I went to Charter Club as Janice's guest for dinner last night - my first and probably only experience of an eating club, which are the social hubs for a lot of Princeton students. As always, I took my camera (scaring a lot of people with the flash in the process, but hey).

Campus Club from the outside (in the dark)

Day 82/99: Tea and eclipses

First, a few criticisms of American tea, particularly in the Princeton dining halls. The photos below are of the basic tea-making essentials:

Day 79/99: A few photos

Nothing interesting recently - just writing up my junior paper. Should finish today - only a thousand words to go. I also found a couple of news articles about Mary, who ran the Thanksgiving kitchen I blogged about. Apparently she's both a nun and an insurance lobbyist.

If anyone doubted my claim that Princeton was practically deserted for Thanksgiving, here's a photo of brunch on Friday:

Day 76/99: Happy Thanksgiving! (photos added)

Nothing that interesting from the past couple of days - been hammering away at my junior paper (now 4,000 words in) and I went to a dinner linked to my DC trip on Sunday, but that's all.

Today, though, was much more interesting - it was Thanksgiving Day, which meant that (unable to go home like 95% of Princetonians did) I decided to sign up to volunteer at a street kitchen in Harlem instead, armed only with several bags of dessert that we'd all baked last night, my trusty pink Sony CyberShot, and a desire to write a really good photoblog post.

Day 72/99 (barely): NYC

Only a couple things of interest in the last couple of days - I had another column published, for one. I'm becoming deliciously controversial! Comments on my article include "From his writing, I really like this Rob Day kid", "Please refrain from contributing to our newspaper again in the future" and "Stop giving the real Rob Day a bad name" (the 'real' Rob Day edits the Princeton Tory*, the most recent issue of which was entirely devoted to criticism of the new gender-neutral housing policy which Princeton instituted to help make the LGBT population, particularly the transexuals, feel more comfortable - but it would be entirely uncharitable of me to suggest that he's doing quite well enough at giving himself a bad name).

Day 67/99: The Megapost

Sorry for going over a week without updating! I've been really busy and literally haven't been able to spare the time, but after biting the bullet and skipping my two-hour fencing practice tonight, I have just enough time to blog. I can't believe two-thirds of my time here has gone! It's scary.

Day 58/99 (barely): Photos

It's just gone midnight and my camera battery finished charging, so I took a couple of snaps of a water bottle on my table to try it out:

Day 57/99: Back from DC!

I got back from Washington DC yesterday evening, with a ton of Deaf-related badges, shotglasses, t-shirts, bags, bookmarks and stress balls. As everyone who followed my Twitter will know, I really enjoyed it - the other eleven students were awesome, I got much better at ASL over the week, and Deaf culture and public policy issues are both really interesting. At some point, I'll dig out the trip schedule and talk about exactly what I did, because Twitter forced me to summarise a lot and I couldn't really get my mobile out when meeting with US Government officials.

Day 51/99: Off to DC...

Well, midterms are over - I got 99.6% on Latin, and while my Greek History one hasn't been marked yet, I think it went pretty well. My Junior Paper work is also trotting along steadily - I have a draft title ("How did etymology affect origin myths in the early medieval period?") and some thoughts on how to fill up those 7,000 words. So, all's good.

Day 43/99: Demon squirrels

Sorry for the massive radio silence - I had a lot I wanted to say, and couldn't find the time, so put it off, so had even more to blog about, and it was all a vicious circle. Anyway, here goes.

First, photos of things I saw a while back but never had my camera around to photograph - black squirrels are really common at Princeton (they scared me when I first saw them):

Day 37/99: Phones and deafness

So, I finally bit the bullet, braved the hour-long round trip to RadioShack and bought a US cellphone (I've adapted and instinctively say "cellphone" rather than "mobile phone", but I can still absentmindedly refer to it as a "mobile", and can't bring myself to say "cell"). It's quite nice - a fliptop phone, cost me $20, plus another $30 for 120 minutes of airtime (plus sales tax, naturally), so less than £34 in real money. It also lets me play sudoku on it. It'll be useful when Steve's here, and moreso in Washington DC.

On which note, I've now been to two of the pre-trip activities for my Deaf Education in Washington DC trip. I know the American Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet (radically different from British Sign Language), we all watched a documentary on deaf culture and cochlear implants (a lot of deaf people, especially the older generation, are violently opposed to them, because they don't view deafness as a disability - one grandmother described her deaf grandchild as having been "blessed by God" - and feel that 'treating' it destroys their culture and their language. The other side of the argument is people who claim that for a parent not to try and cure a child's deafness is abusive, and that they're being selfish rather than wanting the best for the child - it leads to social difficulties, some Deaf schools are appaling, and even the deaf-culture enthusiasts admit that it limits their job opportunities.), and a teacher at a local deaf school taught us some basic ASL words, so I can now make small talk with deaf people.

Interestingly, one of the other trip members (there are 13 of us, but no more than 7 ever seem to show up at once) is from Burma, and since that's a former British colony (I didn't know that - it's great when other people tell you "you used to rule us", and remind you where their country is) everyone's really into football and he was wearing an England shirt and jacket. It's a nice touch of home.

I'm also a Daily Princetonian columnist now! I wrote a guest op-ed opposing the proposed new Center for Abstinence and Chastity here, and it was so well-received that they've invited me to join their columnist team, even though applications closed a fortnight ago. If I write another good column next week (they have a team of columnists, so it's a fortnightly thing) they'll confirm me and I can put it on my CV. I'm quite tempted to offer to write for the OxStu or the Cherwell when I'm back...

Steve's just got here, and is reading my article and criticising my American spelling and tendency to say "elevator". Oh well...

Day 33/99: Book geekery

I went to the information session for the Elmer Adler Essay Prize (on book collecting) today. It was interesting - and only six students were there and there are three prizes ($2,000, $1,500 and $1,000) so I have a good chance - but the crowning moment of awesome was seeing an original Gutenberg Bible. I saw some pretty cool stuff when Merton got their archives out for the historians, including a medieval copy of Bede, but the Gutenberg is just symbolic.

I also quizzed the Scheide Librarian about how common it was for librarians to do research and write stuff - he does, but he became a librarian before Library Science MAs were common and has a History PhD, so huh. He gave me a mini-book he'd written (The Invention and Early Spread of European Printing, as represented in the Scheide Library) for free, though, so yay.

Those of you with basic maths skills will notice that I'm a third of the way into my trip - everything's going surprisingly quickly. Why have I not done more work?

Day 32/99: Aida very nice day

So, one of the things that made me decide to write a blog today was a not-so-fun fact I saw in The Daily Princetonian this morning. You all know that the American university admissions system puts a lot more emphasis on "well-roundedness" than pure academic ability. Apparently, when when the modern admissions test (SATs) started in 1901, they were the only deciding factor - if you had a high score (and could afford tuition) you got in. The reason they changed, it seems, was because Jews were too good at the tests - by 1922 20% of Harvard students were Jewish. As the article puts it, "the notion of a well-rounded college (sic) applicant was invented to keep Jews out of the Ivy League".

In other news, I decided to become cultured and bought a ticket to the Opera Aida next Wednesday (apologies for the appalling pun in the post title). It's a really good deal - the ticket's face value is $67.50, but I got it and transport to NYC for $25. Score.

Fencing and academics are still going well - I got 100% on my second Latin test running, so yay. I had a bout of OCD last night and not only tidied my room, but rearranged my pile of loose change:

I have $4.19 in coins. I counted.

Also, I got more information about my Washington DC trip - I'm getting a four-hour crash course in American Sign Language on Sunday and Thursday of next week (two hours/day). Should be fun!

Day 29/99: Americans? Inappropriate? Never!

In Butler's Class of 1942 Lounge, there stands this plaque:

(Within this college from 1964 until 2007 stood Class of 1941 Hall

Given in memory of the members of the class who gave their lives in the service of their country

Glory uneroded and shining

lights them down the ages)

Reflect for a moment: what would be an appropriate tribute to the Princeton students who died in the Second World War? I guess a picture of a tiger, sitting on top of Earth, modified to look like Hitler, would be pretty inappropriate, right?

Oh, you wacky Americans. I guess it makes sense when you consider that they demolished 1941, 1942 and 1943 Halls two years ago.

Lest anyone accuse them of being ambivalent towards Hitler, there's a badge:

And, for those formal occasions where they want to be classy, a Tiger-Hitler-Globe tie:

There's also a polo shirt and a cummerbund with the logo on, but my camera's on the blink.

In other news, my new favourite hobby is telling Americans about arcane Oxford customs ("I have people who dust my room", "we take exams in gowns" and "we eat dinner in gowns and have our food served to us" being the favourites). One guy got confused between scouts and public-school fags and thought that younger students were made to empty my bins; when I introduced the "formal hall" thing by saying we had four meals a day, he also interjected with "afternoon tea?". Which got me thinking...

Sainsbury's sell six-packs of scones, and do a 2-packs-for-£1 deal (gotta love http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/). Cucumbers only cost 70p, bread, clotted cream and jam are all relatively cheap, so £5 could buy me six days' worth of cucumber sandwiches, tea and two scones. I think this may need to be an institution in 59 Holywell come my return to Oxford...