Submitted by Makenzie Beshel on the 2020 winter session study abroad program in London, England sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice…
The second week of our London program has flown by and I have to admit to feeling culture shock after our visit to the Oxford Castle and Oxford University. It was hard to believe how different the student life is at such a prestigious school. We learned that they mostly study very traditional majors like theology, philosophy, politics, and occasionally newer things including engineering. The whole idea that I grasped from our tour of the University was that they like to keep things traditional, as they were in the 1600s, because they truly see no reason for change. Even the clock strikes at 9:00 pm to signal curfew for students, just as it did back then. The campus had separate buildings just for taking examinations to graduate, and this requires formally dressing up to pass them. Each college was separate and had its own Cathedral, dining room, and dorms for housing students.
It truly is a different way of life and I am amazed to see how some students can learn the same in such different ways. Of course, there were also similarities that I noticed, like their commitment to sports. Here, the big sport for them was rowing. I also noticed that not far from the campus they had many different campus shops and restaurants, just like we do on our Main St. of Newark. It is neat to see how the culture surrounding education can be so different from our own.
