1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:04,590 Hello and welcome to the Queen's Access podcast. It's so lovely to have you here. 2 00:00:04,590 --> 00:00:08,790 And I hope you find this a useful resource in learning more about life at Oxford. 3 00:00:08,790 --> 00:00:11,850 But more specifically about life at the Queen's College. 4 00:00:11,850 --> 00:00:19,530 My guests this week are Frances Lawson, a second year studying Spanish and beginners, Russian, Austin Haines, a second year studying English. 5 00:00:19,530 --> 00:00:22,650 And Jessica, when a third jam material scientists, 6 00:00:22,650 --> 00:00:28,260 the four of us will have a chat about tutorials at Queen's and generally how our academic lives work. 7 00:00:28,260 --> 00:00:35,250 My apologies for any poor audio. These interviews have all been conducted over Zoome, and the Internet connexion isn't always completely reliable. 8 00:00:35,250 --> 00:00:48,600 For a transcript of this episode, please visit the Queen's website. I hope you enjoy. 9 00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:53,610 Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing well and thank you so much for agreeing to be part of this podcast. 10 00:00:53,610 --> 00:00:57,000 I'm really excited to record with you guys to start us off. 11 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:01,500 Could you tell me a little bit about your queen's journey? So how did you end up in college? 12 00:01:01,500 --> 00:01:06,020 Francis, you wanna go first? Yeah. Okay. So I went. 13 00:01:06,020 --> 00:01:12,360 I care. I come from Hackney in East London. I went to a so middling state, comprehensive. 14 00:01:12,360 --> 00:01:16,920 That was nothing particularly amazing about it. There was nothing terrible about it. 15 00:01:16,920 --> 00:01:23,130 And it was why I was there. And my language teacher in year 11 was the first person to really plant the idea. 16 00:01:23,130 --> 00:01:27,090 Oh, have you maybe thought about applying for Oxford or Cambridge? When the time comes? 17 00:01:27,090 --> 00:01:30,720 I think you stand a decent chance. And I sort of humoured in for a bit, 18 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:35,340 but I didn't really ever think of it as being a really serious possibility 19 00:01:35,340 --> 00:01:39,420 until I put I put it down in the application and went along with the stages. 20 00:01:39,420 --> 00:01:43,710 Still just thinking it would be great. It would be a great experience, just the interview process. 21 00:01:43,710 --> 00:01:48,210 And then I kept getting further and further and ended up in. 22 00:01:48,210 --> 00:01:55,040 Ended up here. So I loved Queens when I came to visit on the open day. And I thought it was definitely the college that suited me best. 23 00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:59,340 And yeah, that's how I ended up here. Really. Oh, fantastic. 24 00:01:59,340 --> 00:02:07,920 How about yours then? Oh, yeah. So I'm from Tom Makoto Auckland in Ontario in New Zealand. 25 00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:16,230 I also spent a lot of time living in Melbourne, in Australia. So I kind of maybe a year or so before coming to Oxford, 26 00:02:16,230 --> 00:02:22,050 I decided I wanted to study in the UK just to various reasons about how uni courses instruction. 27 00:02:22,050 --> 00:02:29,040 You can also I a little bit of family over in the UK. I mean, also, I'm kind of lucky enough to come from a background. 28 00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:36,900 My family is able to kind of pay for me to study overseas. I suppose my kind of journey and kind of coming to Queens was a bit of an 29 00:02:36,900 --> 00:02:41,880 arbitrary choice because you couldn't have like a really good music programme, 30 00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:47,160 which was really attractive to me. Typically pretty college in the cohort for English students, it's quite small. 31 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:56,820 So that was all attractive to me. And a few things kind of ended up happening and I ended up ending up in Queen's just because of music and stuff. 32 00:02:56,820 --> 00:03:00,420 Yeah. Lovely. And Jazz, what about you? 33 00:03:00,420 --> 00:03:08,250 So I came from a private school in southeast London kind of cat area, and I was there on a bursary and a scholarship. 34 00:03:08,250 --> 00:03:13,760 So that school was very kind of intent on sending people to Oxbridge. 35 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:18,780 So we had a lot of support, which I was really lucky with. 36 00:03:18,780 --> 00:03:24,630 So how I ended up at Queen's. So I study material science and because it's a really small course. 37 00:03:24,630 --> 00:03:32,070 Only seven colleges do materials. So that means that I had very little choice to start off with. 38 00:03:32,070 --> 00:03:35,880 Which is actually quite a good thing because I was kind of less overwhelmed when 39 00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:43,350 it came to open day and I knew kind of which colleges that I had to go to see. 40 00:03:43,350 --> 00:03:48,000 So I had kind of a selection criteria in mind. 41 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:50,160 The biggest one was like accommodation. 42 00:03:50,160 --> 00:03:58,680 So I wanted accommodation for all four years of my course just because I didn't want to think about, like renting and stuff. 43 00:03:58,680 --> 00:04:04,380 So Queens is one of the colleges that offers four years of accommodation. 44 00:04:04,380 --> 00:04:09,000 And then I went round the colleges that did offer accommodation for all four years. 45 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,420 And I just really like Queens the best. The library just took my breath away. 46 00:04:13,420 --> 00:04:17,310 So I was like, this is the college for me. Oh, fantastic. 47 00:04:17,310 --> 00:04:25,230 Yeah. The library. The library is insane. So this episode is focussed on one of most important aspects of being an Oxford student, 48 00:04:25,230 --> 00:04:31,110 which is the tutorials, which is really what makes Oxford quite unique amongst a lot of institutions. 49 00:04:31,110 --> 00:04:34,440 So for each of you guys, let's start off by saying, 50 00:04:34,440 --> 00:04:41,220 how many tutors did you have and all your tutorials organised by your college or by your department? 51 00:04:41,220 --> 00:04:52,980 So, Austin, do you want to start us off? Yeah. So I had four shooters in my first year at roughly the same thing across each of my three years. 52 00:04:52,980 --> 00:04:56,700 Most of my shoes were organised within college. 53 00:04:56,700 --> 00:05:02,010 So with tutors from my college who teach all the students at Queen's every now and then 54 00:05:02,010 --> 00:05:07,500 you'll get sent to another college to work with a tutor is an expert in that subject. 55 00:05:07,500 --> 00:05:12,580 For example, like my 19th century literature paper, there wasn't anybody that was qualified to take on out of. 56 00:05:12,580 --> 00:05:20,840 And so I got to go to prison. This college about five minutes walk up the High Street to work with a tutor who was a specialist in the. 57 00:05:20,840 --> 00:05:25,560 Yeah. FOB Francis. How about you? Yeah. And so I do Spanish and Russian. 58 00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:34,770 So my degrees and say split between the two. I have so in my first year, I have two Spanish Tutsis and three Russian shooters. 59 00:05:34,770 --> 00:05:39,060 Each language is tends to be split into the language side of that, of course. 60 00:05:39,060 --> 00:05:43,920 And the literature side of the course said the literature side was organised in college. 61 00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:46,320 So my Spanish roots are in my Spanish literature. 62 00:05:46,320 --> 00:05:53,670 Tutorials took place at Queens, whereas my Spanish language tutorials and oral classes also place in the modern languages. 63 00:05:53,670 --> 00:05:59,010 Faculty and the Russian up initiate courses almost completely centralised. 64 00:05:59,010 --> 00:06:06,330 So all of my tutorials that took place in the modern languages faculty with the two Russian tutors there. 65 00:06:06,330 --> 00:06:09,870 But in the set in the third and fourth years after the Arab world, 66 00:06:09,870 --> 00:06:15,540 when you start literature, it will it's all of the literature is based with the teacher. 67 00:06:15,540 --> 00:06:22,350 It's Edmund Hall, which is just across the road as quinson and will share a Russian shooter. 68 00:06:22,350 --> 00:06:29,730 Okay, up. I'm just. How about you? So in first year, I have about five or six tutors, I believe. 69 00:06:29,730 --> 00:06:36,600 So with materials, because, again, it's quite small. Most of the tutorials are kind of set a certain time. 70 00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:45,060 It's organised within the college, but it generally follows the lecture courses, which is done by the departments. 71 00:06:45,060 --> 00:06:57,120 So with Queens, we actually share tutors and materials between Mansfield and when I was in first year, also Corpus. 72 00:06:57,120 --> 00:07:00,840 But then because the year is expanding, I think Corpus pulled out. 73 00:07:00,840 --> 00:07:12,150 But we still share tutors with Mansfield, which means that I think there are about five tutors in total that you'll get to tutorials with. 74 00:07:12,150 --> 00:07:21,210 And depending on the speciality of the tutor, you'll have like tutorials with the tutor who knows the subject the best. 75 00:07:21,210 --> 00:07:24,930 Yes, that's pretty much it, right? Yeah. So for me. 76 00:07:24,930 --> 00:07:30,420 So like jazz, I'm a STEM student, but chemistry is a massive department in comparison to materials. 77 00:07:30,420 --> 00:07:39,210 And so we have 170 students every year. So this year I had four tutors and I'm not because I have the three subdisciplines of chemistry. 78 00:07:39,210 --> 00:07:43,680 And I also took a maths scores in first year and afters after this year. 79 00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:48,990 I get back down to three tutors and my tutorials are organised within college. 80 00:07:48,990 --> 00:07:57,270 But maths is departmentally for chemistry, so we all get given the same problem sheets and we all have a one hour maths class every week. 81 00:07:57,270 --> 00:08:01,380 So my maths teacher tutored at multiple colleges. Yeah. 82 00:08:01,380 --> 00:08:04,170 So our maths can be quite, quite tough by the department. 83 00:08:04,170 --> 00:08:09,660 But generally for chemistry, it's quite college lad in terms of the other the other tutorials. 84 00:08:09,660 --> 00:08:15,840 So what kind of work do you have to do in preparation for each tutorial that you have? 85 00:08:15,840 --> 00:08:23,040 So Jess, can you start us off? Yeah. So I think generally for STEM students we have problem sheets. 86 00:08:23,040 --> 00:08:29,310 So probably states that usually just that just a list of problems really. 87 00:08:29,310 --> 00:08:38,340 It can take anywhere between like five to eight hours for me, depending on how badly I understand. 88 00:08:38,340 --> 00:08:44,040 But yeah. So for materials, they're set by the lecturer. 89 00:08:44,040 --> 00:08:50,770 But then you take them to your tutor, which is usually run by your college. 90 00:08:50,770 --> 00:08:54,850 Yes, Frances, how about you? Yes, sir. 91 00:08:54,850 --> 00:09:00,010 And the Spanish literature tutorials. They work on an alternating best this week by week. 92 00:09:00,010 --> 00:09:04,450 So we take two weeks on each, two weeks on each and text. 93 00:09:04,450 --> 00:09:10,480 We study the first week we would be given a set of passages or poems to look at and analyse, 94 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:14,320 and we'd be asked to read them beforehand and kind of pick through absolutely 95 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:19,450 everything that we would what we would think was noteworthy in the extracts. 96 00:09:19,450 --> 00:09:25,540 And then in the other week, we would write an essay on the on a question that is set about that text. 97 00:09:25,540 --> 00:09:28,730 And then we would go on to discuss that in the tutorial. 98 00:09:28,730 --> 00:09:35,170 So we'd write the essay beforehand and then get it back with feedback in the tutorial for language for Spanish. 99 00:09:35,170 --> 00:09:39,760 We would normally just get prescribed grammar, reading or grammar exercises to finish. 100 00:09:39,760 --> 00:09:46,090 And then sometimes some translations that we would have to write and then send off to the speech to the tutor. 101 00:09:46,090 --> 00:09:47,350 And then the Russian. 102 00:09:47,350 --> 00:09:56,890 Most of the most of the begin, at most, the beginners Russian course in the first year is run based on the best on one particular textbook. 103 00:09:56,890 --> 00:10:05,350 So before each lesson or at the start of each week, we get a set of exercises from the unit that we'd be looking at that week. 104 00:10:05,350 --> 00:10:10,420 And we just get told that by each day you have to have done X number of exercises 105 00:10:10,420 --> 00:10:15,790 and then we go through them and correct them in the in the in the session. 106 00:10:15,790 --> 00:10:18,830 Brilliant. And Austin, what about you? 107 00:10:18,830 --> 00:10:28,290 Like I said, for English, what happens is kind of each week you'll have a kind of group of texts or that you'll have to study in that week. 108 00:10:28,290 --> 00:10:33,760 So the week before you'll get that kind of assignment sheet from your tutor will say something like. 109 00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:38,080 So next week we're going to be talking about maybe prerequisite poetry. 110 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:42,250 And so you'll be looking at for at a dance over a city. 111 00:10:42,250 --> 00:10:50,350 And William Morris, maybe. So you have the list of writers you're studying and then you have you probably can essay questions or maybe something like. 112 00:10:50,350 --> 00:10:53,080 Talk about mediaevalism and poetry. 113 00:10:53,080 --> 00:10:58,440 And then in addition to that, you have like a two page, two pages of kind of suggested reading for you to do your research notes. 114 00:10:58,440 --> 00:11:04,610 Yes, sir. And so in the week that you have to write your essay, I generally spend about two days panicking because I know nothing. 115 00:11:04,610 --> 00:11:12,210 I don't think I'm thinking that I'm personally God, but nobody. 116 00:11:12,210 --> 00:11:17,620 Come on. Go to the library or spend two or three days reading as much as I can. 117 00:11:17,620 --> 00:11:21,790 Then I'll put together an essay and I'll send that to my truth that the day before. 118 00:11:21,790 --> 00:11:28,210 Then on the day of the shoot, you kind of rock up wanting to kind of discuss your story. 119 00:11:28,210 --> 00:11:32,800 So in that time, you've you've got your essay. You've done your reading and your research. 120 00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:36,260 You develop an argument. You put your essay together and then you go to the troops. 121 00:11:36,260 --> 00:11:42,790 Had to defend your argument. Brilliant. Yeah, I think it's interesting as well because it's so different from my experience. 122 00:11:42,790 --> 00:11:48,220 So I'm similar to jazz and the eye problem sheets based. 123 00:11:48,220 --> 00:11:51,160 But the difference to me is that my maths sheets, the department style, 124 00:11:51,160 --> 00:11:56,980 and they followed electricals chronologically, but for organic and inorganic they share. 125 00:11:56,980 --> 00:12:03,880 I didn't necessarily always have the tutorials after I'd finished at covering the topics and lectures. 126 00:12:03,880 --> 00:12:11,590 So in a way, more like a humanities student, I often do quite a bit of prereading before I start my cheat sheets, 127 00:12:11,590 --> 00:12:17,050 which was always interesting because it meant it made the tutorial sheet perhaps more challenging. 128 00:12:17,050 --> 00:12:23,130 But also it is then really, really good because you wanted to the lectures with a baseline understanding or read a man. 129 00:12:23,130 --> 00:12:29,740 You really understood the lectures and a lot of detail. So that's just based on teachers preferences and what hours they work and 130 00:12:29,740 --> 00:12:35,270 things like that in terms of in what order you'll have tutorials vs. lectures. 131 00:12:35,270 --> 00:12:41,900 So, for example, I had most of my organic tutorials before I'd done the electrical says. 132 00:12:41,900 --> 00:12:48,910 But that's because at the start of first year in can, what they currently do is they start you off with quite a lot of physics and maths, 133 00:12:48,910 --> 00:12:54,610 because that's generally why people have to kind of catch up to close a gap between people 134 00:12:54,610 --> 00:13:00,500 who've done different A-levels as you actually start organic cam until later on in the term. 135 00:13:00,500 --> 00:13:03,910 Obviously, they still want to run the tutorials. They still want you to be getting that understanding. 136 00:13:03,910 --> 00:13:11,140 So you often do the tutorials before you've actually covered it much. But yeah, it just what I was definitely based on different teachers preferences. 137 00:13:11,140 --> 00:13:16,180 So you talked a little bit about it already. But what happens in your standard tutorial? 138 00:13:16,180 --> 00:13:25,120 So, Francis, can you can you start us off. OK. So in a Spanish literature tutorial, once we've brought in obviously the pre rating that we've done, 139 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:29,590 all the essay that we've done and get that back with some feedback. Plus, 140 00:13:29,590 --> 00:13:36,730 the tutorial is directed by a worksheet that we would get given that largely consists of various 141 00:13:36,730 --> 00:13:41,920 different quotes from critics about the text that we're studying at stake in that particular week. 142 00:13:41,920 --> 00:13:50,610 And essentially, we would all take it intends to go through to look at each quarter in particular, look at each core index and really. 143 00:13:50,610 --> 00:13:59,400 I agree with that challenge, let's have a discussion and a debate between us, and sometimes if we've done an essay for that tutorial, 144 00:13:59,400 --> 00:14:06,380 sometimes some of the sometimes the tutor will let particular quotes out of your out of your essay and said, 145 00:14:06,380 --> 00:14:10,200 say, Francis, in your essay, you mentions such and such. 146 00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:17,570 Can you either explain on this, explain this, justified this develop this point further or maybe even challenge it. 147 00:14:17,570 --> 00:14:21,230 So that's how most it's very discussion based. 148 00:14:21,230 --> 00:14:27,720 For the and for the Spanish side. And then on the Russian side, we would take a look at the time. 149 00:14:27,720 --> 00:14:33,720 Each week is dedicated to focussing on new grammar points and also new areas of vocabulary. 150 00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:37,740 So we would spend a lot of time doing doing grammar exercises and doing vocab 151 00:14:37,740 --> 00:14:42,660 building exercises to put into practise the rules that we sort of get stuck. 152 00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:50,520 We get to grips with that stuff on our own over the weekend and then we spend the whole week just putting them into practise. 153 00:14:50,520 --> 00:14:53,010 And we dedicate a lot of time as well to oral practise. 154 00:14:53,010 --> 00:15:01,800 And we do a lot of reading poems or even sometimes doing role play exercises just to start and getting comfortable with speaking 155 00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:09,360 in Russian and practising spontaneity because the oral exam is one of the exams that you take at the end of the first year. 156 00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:14,610 So that's a skill that they really focus on building. That sounds really good. 157 00:15:14,610 --> 00:15:18,650 I think I like the fact that the difference between the two. I think that's really interesting. 158 00:15:18,650 --> 00:15:23,280 The highlight is the fact that you take a language that you're very familiar with and a language is a beginner. 159 00:15:23,280 --> 00:15:29,160 And I think that's that's a really interesting contrast. Austin, how about you? 160 00:15:29,160 --> 00:15:34,650 So a standard tutorial for me is a machine is generally a tutorial. 161 00:15:34,650 --> 00:15:39,870 I would have written an essay beforehand and kind of done my research and become like an expert in the topic. 162 00:15:39,870 --> 00:15:45,900 In the time I've had and I'm usually doing a shoot with one or two other students who've done the same essay. 163 00:15:45,900 --> 00:15:51,990 So you get to you kind of basically chat about your essay with the tutor and the other students there, 164 00:15:51,990 --> 00:15:56,970 and you kind of ask questions and the tutor will ask you questions to kind of push your 165 00:15:56,970 --> 00:16:02,310 knowledge and kind of test how you're kind of arguments will work under pressure, 166 00:16:02,310 --> 00:16:10,110 which is usually a kind of really interesting opportunity to kind of test out your ideas with somebody who's an expert in their field. 167 00:16:10,110 --> 00:16:18,180 And also the kind of you to compare your ideas with those students around you who you've kind of gotten to work with over the last few months. 168 00:16:18,180 --> 00:16:19,020 Other things you might do, 169 00:16:19,020 --> 00:16:27,930 you might kind of discuss a lecture the tutor knows you've seen or you might have discussed some articles you think of them beforehand. 170 00:16:27,930 --> 00:16:32,390 So two is really kind of an opportunity as an English shooting to take your ideas further, 171 00:16:32,390 --> 00:16:36,920 to kind of get them an extra stage of refining from the essay written. 172 00:16:36,920 --> 00:16:45,320 Yeah, I got you. And Jeff's what about you? So having handed in the work like a couple of days before the shoot. 173 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:51,440 Usually the tutor then gives the white back marked to us in the tutorial. 174 00:16:51,440 --> 00:16:57,470 So there's usually two or three people putting it. Plus the plus the tutor. 175 00:16:57,470 --> 00:17:03,610 And then we go through the questions that we didn't really understand or didn't like, didn't get right. 176 00:17:03,610 --> 00:17:07,400 And so it depends. This all depends on the tutor. 177 00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:11,750 So some teachers would prefer to go through the questions themselves. 178 00:17:11,750 --> 00:17:18,590 Some teachers would ask people who understood the question to then go up and show everyone else how to do it. 179 00:17:18,590 --> 00:17:22,220 But most of the time, it's just a discussion base. 180 00:17:22,220 --> 00:17:33,770 So, like, they try and prod us to apply the knowledge that we've learnt in lectures to try and get to grips with the questions that we were given. 181 00:17:33,770 --> 00:17:39,680 Mm hmm. Yeah. For me and my standard tutorial, there's usually two or three of us. 182 00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:45,980 But I'm for maths classes for me. It's all of us. And even then I say about there's five of us in my year. 183 00:17:45,980 --> 00:17:49,760 So it's not like there's loads and loads of people. But yeah. 184 00:17:49,760 --> 00:17:54,150 So we are class sizes vary depending on what the charter is about. 185 00:17:54,150 --> 00:17:57,390 And yes, similar to Jass, most of the time we just go through the problem. 186 00:17:57,390 --> 00:18:01,940 She sometimes with students explaining, sometimes to the teacher explaining. 187 00:18:01,940 --> 00:18:07,580 And then also what my tutors will often do is they'll bring either extra resources or extra 188 00:18:07,580 --> 00:18:14,240 questions or they'll try and contextualise some of the work we've done in current research. 189 00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:23,690 So sometimes my tutors might say, actually, you know, here's a current research topic that's still being debated that vaguely relates to this. 190 00:18:23,690 --> 00:18:30,830 What's your opinion on that? And it's not an exam. It's just a way to kind of really broaden the depth of your understanding. 191 00:18:30,830 --> 00:18:38,570 And that can be really, really helpful. So for each of you, what does a week look like in your life at Oxford? 192 00:18:38,570 --> 00:18:41,780 So, Jess, can you start us off? 193 00:18:41,780 --> 00:18:53,210 Oh, so I guess Monday to Friday, it's kind of like standard like quite a lot of lectures and contact hours, including Labs and Toot's. 194 00:18:53,210 --> 00:19:01,190 So in the mornings I generally have lectures from 9:00 till about twelve or one and usually two to three hours of lectures. 195 00:19:01,190 --> 00:19:04,910 And if we're lucky, we get like an hour's break in between. 196 00:19:04,910 --> 00:19:12,050 And then I would head back to college for lunch and just have lunch with my friends, which is quite nice. 197 00:19:12,050 --> 00:19:19,730 It's one of the highlights of my day. And then in the afternoon, I would usually go and work in the library. 198 00:19:19,730 --> 00:19:31,430 I might have maybe one hour of a two or if it's laughs, then it'll be three hours from two till five. 199 00:19:31,430 --> 00:19:36,110 And then in the evening, I usually have some kind of activity on. 200 00:19:36,110 --> 00:19:45,710 So it might be badminton or I play an orchestra or table tennis training or just chatting with my friends. 201 00:19:45,710 --> 00:19:47,270 And then on the weekends, 202 00:19:47,270 --> 00:20:01,100 I would usually have like maybe football or table tennis or just like just anybody working in between the times when I'm doing other things. 203 00:20:01,100 --> 00:20:08,630 Austin, how about you? Okay, so like my kind of standard week from Standard Day, from Monday to Friday, 204 00:20:08,630 --> 00:20:13,070 I suppose kind of English students will have lectures, usually countries in the morning or around midday. 205 00:20:13,070 --> 00:20:16,630 So you kind of get to decide what you're going to get to then unanswered. 206 00:20:16,630 --> 00:20:21,290 You get to the 9am lecture or the tenant and lecture depending on how tired you are. 207 00:20:21,290 --> 00:20:24,950 Then once you've done you like your lectures are being respectful to you. 208 00:20:24,950 --> 00:20:33,880 I went back to college, have lunch with my friends, but she's usually also really, really nice. I think I did a lot of people really enjoy that. 209 00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:39,110 And then in the afternoons, maybe two days of the week, I'll have a shoot. 210 00:20:39,110 --> 00:20:43,460 And then I might have like one or two classes, depending what day it is. 211 00:20:43,460 --> 00:20:46,280 The rest of the time usually fills up with kind of being at the library during 212 00:20:46,280 --> 00:20:51,200 research and reading or writing an essay and putting that together in the evenings. 213 00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:55,820 I'm kind of I try to do some extra curricular stuff, so I'm not kind of stuck in a book the whole time. 214 00:20:55,820 --> 00:21:03,290 So I try to do a lot of music or kind of learning to cook really badly at the moment on the weekends. 215 00:21:03,290 --> 00:21:08,710 It kind of depends. If I'm working on weekends, sometimes you'll have a really lovely free weekend. 216 00:21:08,710 --> 00:21:11,930 And so you get to kind of rest and see friends. 217 00:21:11,930 --> 00:21:18,390 One of the realities of Oxford is, you know, you're often spending, at least during the day, on the weekend doing some work. 218 00:21:18,390 --> 00:21:21,040 But I'm kind of okay with that. I really enjoy it. 219 00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:27,360 And that's just reading other things kind of books is really nice because everything's really, really close. 220 00:21:27,360 --> 00:21:30,200 So you can manage to fit in lots of small activities if you want to. 221 00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:37,090 So the days are quite variable, but, you know, a lot of reading and then I shoot two or three times a week. 222 00:21:37,090 --> 00:21:44,750 Nice. And Frances, how about you? Yeah. My dad is just like a very typical of each other because no two days are really the same. 223 00:21:44,750 --> 00:21:51,740 In the wake of a modern languages student in terms of weekly organised actions of the Spanish. 224 00:21:51,740 --> 00:21:55,700 I have one 90 minute lecture tutorial every week. 225 00:21:55,700 --> 00:22:03,240 And in my first, that was on a Friday afternoon. And on top of that, there are three language classes for Spanish a week. 226 00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:11,110 And one grammar. One oral. And then one that is either dedicated to oral or translation, depending on what we kids. 227 00:22:11,110 --> 00:22:17,770 And then there are also three lectures during the week that are to do with the text or the literature that we're studying. 228 00:22:17,770 --> 00:22:23,210 That particular 10 in terms of version, we have eight Russian classes every week. 229 00:22:23,210 --> 00:22:27,520 And and within these eight courses, we have three weekly tests. 230 00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:35,650 So we have a vocabulary test on the at the. Every Friday we get a rather long list of new words to end the next week. 231 00:22:35,650 --> 00:22:44,400 That sort of ranges anywhere between about 60 and 200. And then on Wednesday, we get tested on some of those Thursday. 232 00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:54,040 And we do a dictation, which is an lushes test, our listening skills and also an ability to recognise new words in spoken Russian. 233 00:22:54,040 --> 00:23:01,450 And then on Friday, we do a unit test, which is kind of an assessment of all of the work we've been doing that particular week. 234 00:23:01,450 --> 00:23:04,780 My and unfortunately means that I have to have lunch out quite a lot. 235 00:23:04,780 --> 00:23:08,520 I very rarely make that college for lunch, which is a shame. 236 00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:15,760 But and it does mean I can have I spend a lot more my lunch break with the people from other colleges who are also doing beginners Russian, 237 00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:20,860 which is very good because we go abroad together in the second. Yes, it's good to get to know them. 238 00:23:20,860 --> 00:23:26,130 And in the evenings, I also do a mixture of casual socialising with just my friends. 239 00:23:26,130 --> 00:23:31,700 All we do extracurricular activity. So I've been to a few events organised by societies that interest me. 240 00:23:31,700 --> 00:23:36,550 I can the International Relations Sites Society or this is going to make me very unpopular. 241 00:23:36,550 --> 00:23:44,530 But I have done a few things with the liberal Democrats. And in my first year and weekends, Dubarry, depending on the amount of work, 242 00:23:44,530 --> 00:23:49,540 I often quite like to just escape Oxfordshire on the weekend and I quite like to go home. 243 00:23:49,540 --> 00:23:54,650 And a lot of my family still most of my family have been living there whole in a structure. 244 00:23:54,650 --> 00:24:00,610 So I often really like to go back there for the weekend. It's relatively cheap to book tickets there. 245 00:24:00,610 --> 00:24:09,370 And I think it's a really nice opportunity to just get away from the pressure cooker for a second and read and see my family again. 246 00:24:09,370 --> 00:24:17,860 Yeah, lovely. So for me, chemistry is a very contact. I always have a degree and you'll find that most universities because the lab requirements. 247 00:24:17,860 --> 00:24:22,060 So I have this year I had 10 lectures a week. 248 00:24:22,060 --> 00:24:25,570 So nine to 11 every day. And I then had labs. 249 00:24:25,570 --> 00:24:30,070 Eleven till five. Two days a week. And I had a maths class every Wednesday. 250 00:24:30,070 --> 00:24:35,050 And then I would have probably one to two tutorials outside of that. 251 00:24:35,050 --> 00:24:38,740 There was a couple of weeks where I had like forty two hours a week and they were a bit insane. 252 00:24:38,740 --> 00:24:47,320 But yeah. So I have a very, very structured day and I get off at the same time every day and I'm not somebody who's super productive in the evenings. 253 00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:52,870 So I generally make it a rule that unless I have a very impending deadline, I don't want past dinner. 254 00:24:52,870 --> 00:24:57,340 And like the others, I tends to socialise with my friends in the evening. 255 00:24:57,340 --> 00:25:02,140 I also do quite a lot of access things. I volunteer. So I did. 256 00:25:02,140 --> 00:25:07,600 I went to a primary school to help young children learn how to read every Tuesday last year. 257 00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:14,350 I'm involved in some music things and just Jamele, I go to some events put on by my scholarship. 258 00:25:14,350 --> 00:25:19,060 So, yeah, it's just generally it's quite a balance. But and then of course I do. 259 00:25:19,060 --> 00:25:27,790 Sometimes I have my fun. We go out, sometimes our group and go and have a laugh at the weekend in a club or in a bar and. 260 00:25:27,790 --> 00:25:33,520 Yeah. I found that having a work life balance was significantly easier than I thought it would be. 261 00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:40,000 I found I had a lot more time to socialise that I maybe thought before before I got to Oxford. 262 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:48,370 So, Austin, can I just ask, as an international student, how did you find settling into to Queens, on to Oxford in general? 263 00:25:48,370 --> 00:25:52,710 I mean, it's a lot of fun and it's a really exciting time being indigenous. 264 00:25:52,710 --> 00:25:58,000 You should be in Oxford. I suppose when I first moved, especially for like the first three or four months, 265 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:02,800 it was really difficult being far away from my family because, like, the time difference is nine or 10 hours, 266 00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:07,690 which means kind of I'm either I'm either really, really tired of the money for my family or my family's really, 267 00:26:07,690 --> 00:26:14,130 really tired and one when they're talking to me. I mean, you know, little things that kind of annoy you every night. 268 00:26:14,130 --> 00:26:18,800 The one really lovely thing is that this is now like something that will really be a lot easier. 269 00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:25,300 Another, you know, the whole world has had to adjust to things like Zoome or kind of like using face time, like reputably because of Koban. 270 00:26:25,300 --> 00:26:30,120 So I'm really looking forward to being able to use that to keep in touch with my friends back home. 271 00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:36,540 Well, let's jump back in the UK, I think, really, really broadly. I found a really exciting kind of. 272 00:26:36,540 --> 00:26:42,390 Learning and living in a new country and kind of getting to know new culture. 273 00:26:42,390 --> 00:26:48,540 Because I mean, like the stereotype for me as somebody from Australia and Altiero in New Zealand is like it was people are really, 274 00:26:48,540 --> 00:26:54,040 really cold or not emotionally available. It's really lovely lending, but that's fake. 275 00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:57,990 Once you take people from age. Yeah. 276 00:26:57,990 --> 00:27:02,550 It's so much fun. Oh, God. I'm so glad. And then just to close. 277 00:27:02,550 --> 00:27:07,470 I'd just like to ask each of you, what's your favourite thing about college and why? 278 00:27:07,470 --> 00:27:11,560 So, Jess, can you start as a. Oh, I think. 279 00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:17,050 Well, everyone always says this, but the people that you meet. So this is gonna be true. 280 00:27:17,050 --> 00:27:19,420 Really, no matter which college you go to. 281 00:27:19,420 --> 00:27:25,810 But the nice thing about having a collegiate system is that you get to meet people studying all kinds of different subjects. 282 00:27:25,810 --> 00:27:32,050 So, like amongst my friends, there are loads of people who do like humanities as well as STEM and arts. 283 00:27:32,050 --> 00:27:37,780 It's a real mix and everyone's so lovely. Oh, that's really nice. 284 00:27:37,780 --> 00:27:43,900 Austin, what about you? You know, I suppose this is pretty similar to what just was saying, but like, you know, 285 00:27:43,900 --> 00:27:49,630 meeting and meeting new people and living near new people who are kind of fascinated and passionate about what 286 00:27:49,630 --> 00:27:55,460 they're studying and kind of being able to chat to them about what interests them and their ideas is kind of, 287 00:27:55,460 --> 00:27:59,750 you know, one of the things I find most enjoyable about being an expert. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 288 00:27:59,750 --> 00:28:02,290 I don't think many people often mention that, but yeah. 289 00:28:02,290 --> 00:28:06,940 Being around people who are so intensely passionate about things that are so different from perhaps 290 00:28:06,940 --> 00:28:11,890 what you're passionate about and it is such a learning opportunity that I think is quite underrated. 291 00:28:11,890 --> 00:28:18,340 And Francis, what about you? Yeah, I would echo what both Justin Usted said, but I think another thing that I really like it, 292 00:28:18,340 --> 00:28:21,130 it's a slightly strange one, is the location of the college. 293 00:28:21,130 --> 00:28:28,830 It's just for me particularly, it's so refreshing because normally when I want to sort of go shopping, I'll go out and socialise. 294 00:28:28,830 --> 00:28:35,770 I have to get a train, a long train in Central. And then if I'm in London or a long trinian's home when I'm up in Yorkshire. 295 00:28:35,770 --> 00:28:41,920 So it's really nice to me to just be in the centre of the city and just have about a five minute walk to almost everything. 296 00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:44,290 It's really nice, refreshing change. 297 00:28:44,290 --> 00:28:50,990 And I think it's a great it's a great part of it's a great part of being a queens that I think a lot of people maybe take for granted. 298 00:28:50,990 --> 00:28:55,330 But I think you need spelling out. Yeah, I'd agree with that. Fantastic. 299 00:28:55,330 --> 00:29:00,900 Well, thank you guys so, so much. That was super interesting. And I'm sure everybody who lesson learnt lot. 300 00:29:00,900 --> 00:29:15,490 Absolutely loads. You guys have been fantastic guests and I'll speak to you all soon. 301 00:29:15,490 --> 00:29:19,600 Thank you so much to Jass Francis and Austin for that insightful conversation. 302 00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:25,330 And a massive thank you to all of you who listened. There are loads more access resources on the Queen's College website. 303 00:29:25,330 --> 00:29:29,260 A w w w dot queens dot org. Dot ac dot UK. 304 00:29:29,260 --> 00:29:34,270 Forward slash access dash outreach. And you can find out more about the college in general through its Web site, 305 00:29:34,270 --> 00:29:42,304 Twitter and Instagram, including on the Access Twitter at Queens Outreach.