Study buddies are the best

So, the wonderful news of the day is that my friend Heather and I have started a trend of being study buddies. This means that we have begun to meet for coffee and enjoy quiet tandem reading at around 2:00 pm on Mondays. This is lovely news for many reasons. But mainly it has to do with Mondays being notoriously hard days to get motivated, and 2:00 pm being a rather difficult time to sustain the feeling of being productive. What we've realized is having someone else around seems to keep us on task, and also allows us to have spontaneous moments of discussion about what we're separately working on. The fact that we're both historians, but study different areas is interesting too, since we often can offer suggestions, but still learn something new at the same time. What a nice new arrangement!

Today, Heather invited me to her house for coffee and studying there. We spent three hours pouring over our reading, and occasionally chatted about intriguing topics as they came up. I was trying to work through some scholarship on apprenticeship and service, while she was doing some preparatory reading for a presentation she has to give this Wednesday. In the course of my work, I was struck by the fact that the book I was reading, Men at Work: Labourers and building craftsmen in towns of northern England, 1450-1750, didn't list "poor" or "poverty" in the index. That would seem a critical oversight considering the book is about labourers in early modern towns.

Unrelated to history, Heather and I also had an interesting chat about living in college versus living out. I have to say, I loved her place. It's an adorable historic townhouse close-in on Cowley Road. Really close to the cool non-touristy shops, and about a 15 minute walk to the central University area. She shares it with 3 other people, and they have a great kitchen, cute backyard, living room, bedrooms, etc. They even had a table next to the landing on the stairs that displayed a huge jigsaw puzzle in process. The whole atmosphere was so laid-back, homey, and communal. I have to say, seeing it made me very interested in possibly "living out" next year. When I seemed interested in learning more about living out of college, Heather said that she was in the process of trying to figure out who of her current friends/roommates will still be in Oxford next year, and that depending on what they are doing (2 have applied for post-doctoral fellowships at Oxford and elsewhere) she might have an open room for me if I would like to live with her. It seems like living there would be really great in many ways (a house full of nice, studious, and fun DPhil students, and it costs less than living in college), so I'm definitely going to look into it more. Although, I think I would want to stay in college if the possibility of living in Heather's house falls through. Before she explained how great her situation is now, she told me the really bad experience she had living out in her 2nd year. It sounds like if you want to live out, it's critical to find the right landlord and the right housemates. All of which seem to be present in Heather's situation. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'll keep you updated!

Also, I finally had the nerve to ask if one of my friends would mind taking a picture with me for the benefit of those back home. Here is a pic of Heather and me doing our study buddy thing today. Enjoy!