First Drafting

Today was a small victory, but it began in defeat.

I woke up weary and with my eyes still burning from the long night of staring at my computer screen, making marginal progress on my papers. I reached over to grab my phone and check what time it was, "9:05 is it? Hmm...I missed breakfast." I put the phone back down and thought for a moment before doing a deadly double take/fall out of bed combo upon remembering I had a 9 o'clock class. I expertly brushed my teeth in close to one second and then got dressed as I ran down the stairs, hoping against all odds that I hadn't forgotten any vital books, notebooks, or articles of clothing. I caught my breath in front of the classroom door, and sauntered in like it was no big deal. Unfortunately, the only seat left was at the head of the conference table, literally right next to the professor. Having only missed ten minutes of class, it wasn't really that big of a deal. It still was a defeat though, and I was able to rise from the ashes the rest of the day, like the majestic phoenix, soaring through the skies of oxonian academic success. I also spent about 2 hours on youtube.

The EU class was focused on lobbying in the euro zone, and it was really interesting. We broke up at one point into two groups as an exercise; mine was acting as a Chinese company that just bought the British car producer Rover, and the other part of the class was an eco-conscious group. We had to lobby against each other. I learned that the U.S. does one of the best jobs lobbying the EU actually, in part because they don't have to represent a member state government, while everyone else does.

The lecture of the day was simply titled Churchill. It was given by Professor Ashley Jackson, who did an awesome job detailing Churchill's early and young adult life, showing us how he developed into the man we all recognize. One one the many things I learned was Churchill, apart from being arguably the most recognizable statesman of his day, won a Nobel Prize for Literature and was a prolific landscape painter (he did these things before becoming famous, so he really earned them too, not just because he was Winston Churchill). The talk inspired me to try and one up Sir Winston in each facet of his success. At this rate, I will only need to live to be 240.

I went to lunch in the undercroft bar and then headed to class.  The British Politics course was also really interesting today; Dr. Buchanan continues to impress me with his deep knowledge of the rich history in this country.  We discussed England in the 1930's, the National Government (led by Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour PM), and the abdication crisis. Fun fact: The King's Speech is a pretty accurate movie, but Churchill was portrayed incorrectly.  He was actually in favor of  Guy Pearce remaining King, which upset everyone because A.) They felt he should focus on more pressing maters like the failing world economy and rise of Hitler, and B.) No one had seen Memento yet.

After class, I headed back to my room to write some more. I went to a quick dinner in the dining hall, and then went straight back to write again. I stayed up rather late, but completed my first draft of both papers, huzzah! Hopefully tomorrow I can clean them up some more and be finished by this weekend.