Essays, Reading, and More Essays

I'm in the middle of essay madness right now. I'm about to pass out from all this researching and writing, so forgive me if any of this post is incoherent.  I'm almost finished with the British Politics essay, I know I'll have some final touches for tomorrow though. As for the EU paper, I am about halfway done with my first draft. I'm aiming to have them both finished by Friday, it's realistic, but with a long day of classes tomorrow it's gonna be hard work. I was expecting to work hard, being at Oxford and all, but I mean come on Professors, this is really tough.

Today's lecture was called Capitalism and Liberalism: Between Reconcilability and Responsibility. It was delivered by the German scholar and Oxford professor Christian Glossner, who gave one of the most interesting talks so far in my opinion. He gave a brief history of Neo-Liberalism, arguing with the popular belief that it started in the 1970's. He thinks, and convinced me pretty handily, that it started about 40-50 years earlier. He also gave a short lesson on Locke, Marx, Keyenes and Hayek, which was fascinating for an Political Science and Economics nerd like myself.

After that I ate lunch and headed to the Bodleian Library's Social Sciences wing and Law Library. I did a lot of journal browsing and headed back to write more in the room. Today was mainly eating and writing again, but I need to get these things done.

My main motivation right now is working pretty well too. I stopped by Blackwells on my way from the Law Library to see if they had some books I could use on the EU paper. While walking through the languages section, I noticed they had tons of French, German, English, Icelandic, Irish, and Spanish literature on one back wall. I was upset at the lack of Italian reading material, being the studente della bella lingua that I am, so I turned around upset and defeated only to find the Italian section was on a shelf right behind me. They have about two shelves devoted only to Dante and tons of dual-language books of short stories. I quickly left Blackwells and decided I would not go back until my essays are complete. Then I will treat myself to some readin', Italiano style.