My Saturday nights from here on in (see photo)

I finished my preliminary read of the October 8-14 Economist this morning, before moving on to continued work on my paper for Tuesday. Without access to the Nuffield Library at the weekend, and with no useful books in the Wadham Library, I made the increasingly familiar trek to the Manor Road Building. I am trying hard to get the hang of this whole ‘graduate student’ role. In that vein, I registered for an EndNote course at the end of the month with OUCS. That’s not to say that nothing social has been happening. Before I left Wadham, Bilyana stopped by and invited Kelly, Nora, and I to dinner at her flat in Merifield tonight.

Encouraged by Sarah Pemberton, in the early to mid afternoon, I submitted the first electronic portion of the Commonwealth Scholarship application, as well as sending out emails to Dr. Hurrell and two UBC professors asking them to serve as referees. Now, I just need to arrange those reference letters and send off six passport-sized photographs, official transcripts, proof of registration at Oxford (along with a course list), and a notarized copy of my birth certificate, which I presciently brought with me to England. Apprently, the preselection results will be available in mid-December.

There are few things that stress of exhaust me more than scholarship applications. Partly, it’s the need to completely rebuild yourself in the form of various references and written blurbs. Partly, it’s the complexity of deadlines and paperwork. Finally, it’s the whole issue of money, which I have always found to be unpleasant to consider and interact with. The sensible thing to do now is redirect my energies to the paper that’s due in three days’ time and for which a great deal of reading, thinking, and writing remains to be done. To some extent, the deluge outside should help with that. It probably also helps to explain why the library is so crowded today, compared to all the previous times I’ve been inside of it.

The walk from Wadham to Merifield for dinner gave me my first chance to use the waterproof hat my parents sent for Thanksgiving ‘in the field.’ It served the purpose quite well and I arrived at Bilyana’s dry-headed. In retrospect, I am very glad to have gone. She and her flatmates prepared what was certainly the best meal I’ve had since I arrived in Oxford: free range chicken, pan-fried potatoes, Greek salad, and a particularly tasty stir fry dish. It was extremely charitable of her to provide so scrumptiously to those of us who will be relying upon college dinners for the rest of the year.

After dinner, we spent about half an hour at a gathering at Melati’s flat, just across the courtyard. Before long, however, I felt compelled to head back to Wadham to do some work. I am genuinely quite nervous about this paper. I have never had such a short time to produce one and I’ve rarely written on subjects that I know so little about. In addition to all of that, I feel pressure to impress my supervisor. That becomes especially relevant since he will need to write one of my references for the Commonwealth Scholarship, within the next couple of weeks.

Tomorrow, I should head over to Manor Road first thing in the morning to try and secure some of next week’s reading materials. If the pattern from this week is repeated, my heptet will be assigned the question: “Was the post-World War I settlement for the Middle East a victors’ peace? Why did it prove unstable?” The syllabus lists nineteen books on the subject.

PS. Some deadlines for myself:

PPS. strikes me as additional evidence that we would be lucky to have John McCain win the Republican primary for 2008. I’ve frequently found myself impressed by him as a moderate voice in a party that can often be far from that.