September in and out of Oxford
September is always my favourite month, as it’s my birth month! I have just had my birthday and so I’m giving this blog thing one more go. Starting not at the start of a calendar year but starting with my birthday and the start of a new academic year. Or at least, the build up to the academic year as term doesn’t start in Oxford for another 2 weeks officially.
PhD Work
I kicked off September with a last burst of PhD word before my two week holiday. I do like the aesthetics of studying in Oxford, so I went down to the Radcliffe Camera to get some work done. I had reserved two books in the Rad Cam which could not be taken out of the library, so I am glued to this library while I need these materials.
The first book was “Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of new England” by Cronon, 1983. Mostly this was just to provide some background information on the early beaver fur trade and then expansion westwards, as the area I’m really interested in is the Rocky Mountains which was explored later.
The second, that I actually haven’t finished yet is “The hatters of eighteenth-century France” by Sonenscher, 1987. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m not actually doing a biology degree. This is again just more background information which will provide really useful context to my thesis, such as actual numbers of the beaver fur trade more broadly, the cost of pelts and hat sales, and the social status of having and wearing beaver and why it was so valuable.
Then I took over two weeks off where I did not think about my PhD once!
Obviously, it was a really hard time…
But once the holiday was over, it was straight back to work. Catching up on all the correspondence I’ve missed, cleaning my inbox (of 2750 emails… but it’s so clean now!), and starting to work on my presentation. Each term I give a talk to my lab group about what I’ve been working on. This time will be a very chaotic talk on Yellowstone beavers and I can’t wait!
Trips and Holiday
So September was my holiday time. I think this has been the longest period of time I’ve stepped away from my PhD since I’ve started (And oh look, sudden motivation for blog writing reappears in that time!).
The first four days were at Swordpunk; essentially a bunch of crazy people get their weapons and get together in the woods to teach each other. Everything from ax throwing, slingshot, atlatl, to sword fighting. There’s also whip cracking, circus skills, and martial arts too. There are also two fire shows in the evenings (which you can take part in!). There are constantly classes to learn new things, music and band performances, and really good food.
We had just enough time to get back to Oxford, pack our bags, before getting ready to travel to Sicily the next day. Just to make things fun, we climbed Etna on the day after we arrived. Still exhausted from swordpunk and running around to catch our 5am flight, we choose to do that first! We covered essentially the whole island on our trip. Starting in Catania and climbing Etna, before travelling south to Syracuse via the Villa Romana, before moving on to Palermo via the Valley of Temples. On the western side of the island we stayed in Monreale, visiting Palermo, Segesta, and Selinunte, before catching our flight back out of Catania.
Extra-Curriculars
Not to be caught sitting down, the day after we landed back in the UK, we entered the British Side-by-Side Championship on the Saturday (I won Ladies High Gun!) and went to a swordfighting competition on the Sunday. That one I didn’t participate in – maybe next time!
But speaking of shooting, the end of September has been filled with preparations for next term at the Oxford University Clay Pigeon Shooting Club (OUCPSC). As Women’s Captain I’ve attended two captain training events this week, and chatting to the committee about final details for the competitions and training sessions for the term ahead. I’m looking forward to getting in some good shooting practice in and visiting some new grounds before the competition season really kicks off!
Completely aside all this, I also managed to fit in an event at the Bodleian. I popped into the “Come Collect!” event in the Bod last week with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and to catch up over dinner afterwards. I am hoping to attend more events offered by the University and write about them. It was a gathering of people who collect things, showing off their personal collections, the collections from within the Bodleian Libraries, offering some things to collect at the event and a chance to use their letter-press machines!
Going forwards
So hopefully, this has given a little summary of what I got up to in September. God knows if anyone will read this, but maybe if I keep writing it’ll catch someone’s interest. I know I spend far too much time watching other Oxford student’s videos and liking Instagram photos of pretty buildings and study inspiration, so let’s see how it goes! Just writing this has shown me I have completely forgotten everything I’ve learnt about writing blogs and formatting websites, so I’m going to have to learn that again. Here’s some cats, to end on a high note!
