ESU-SF Scholarship Programs

Tyler Shores

Tyler also has additional photos available at his online Oxford photo album.

Hello Everyone! It's been a surprisingly quick - and eventful - few months, adjusting to life in England and life as an Oxford graduate student. The atmosphere of history, tradition, and intellectual rigor at Oxford has been an even more impressive experience than I could have imagined or hoped for. Christ Church, the college I have been residing at has been an exceptionally interesting place to live at. The college seems to be quite a popular location for visitors, since it's famous for having been the location of scenes from the Harry Potter movies. It's quite a neat feeling to sit in the same room (included in the photo above) that Albert Einstein lived in while at the college; those sorts of experiences have made me appreciate more fully the tremendous sense of history that Oxford prides itself on. Out of all of the many Oxford colleges, Christ Church ended up being a fortuitous location for me - I recently contributed a chapter to a new book on Alice in Wonderland, which was coincidentally written at Christ Church by Lewis Carroll in 1865. My current one year Masters program is extremely work-intensive, but I am thrilled to be back in an academic environment and doing what I love to be doing in studying literature. One of the most rewarding parts of this past term has been a course on Virginia Woolf taught by a leading scholar in Woolf studies. Our readings covered all of her novelistic writing, much of her shorter fiction and prolific personal writings, letters, and diaries. Oxford's Bodleian Library has been one of the most impressive libraries that I have ever seen and quite a place to spend the majority of my study hours. Through participation in one of my courses, we were even fortunate enough to able to spend time with hand-written manuscripts from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" - a truly exciting experience for literature students! The many people I've met so far have been one of the best aspects of my Oxford experience. It's been quite inspiring to meet so many bright, talented, and extremely motivated people from all over the world. Learning and broadening my perspectives through interactions with people from such different backgrounds has been an extremely valuable way of broadening my worldview. One of the most culturally memorable activities so far was being able to see (very briefly) the Queen as she visited the newly renovated Ashmolean Museum in Oxford last month. In between the very busy coursework, I have continued to work on my own personal academic writing projects - I'm very excited that I have four new publications that are scheduled to debut in bookstores over the first half of this year. Because of my growing interest in publishing, I also took the opportunity during this past term to sit in on a publishing industry conference - which gave me an interesting look into the British publishing industry. During the conference I was able to observe firsthand what prominent people in the book industry saw as challenges as a result of evolving cultural and technological developments. In addition, I have just begun to work at The Oxonian Review, a literary magazine produced by Oxford graduate students. I'll be contributing the occasional book review or author interview when I can find time between classes to do so. I'll also be helping to improve the Review's online presence, which allows me to leverage some of my previous work experience at Google and from managing online content at an educational non-profit organization. I'm looking forward to becoming more involved with the magazine, because it allows me an additional outlet for what I love to do - writing. My goal will be to continue my involvement with the Review through the following year hopefully as a contributing editor. In reflecting upon the past few months and my first experiences as a graduate student, I feel that the time I had spent away from school over the past few years has given me a valuable new perspective on education -- if possible, I appreciate having the opportunity to pursue my education as a privilege more than ever. While I deeply missed school during my time away, I see now that those intervening years were a chance to now have a richer understanding of just how important education is to me. I couldn't imagine taking for granted even for a single moment the wonderful situation of being at Oxford of all places to study literature and philosophy. At this very moment I'm hard at work designing my PhD proposal, which I will be applying for the next three years, hopefully right here at Oxford to continue my graduate studies and research. I enjoy the challenge of being at a place of such tradition and unsurpassed intellectual standards as Oxford. I wholeheartedly believe that Oxford is the best possible atmosphere for me to continue to grow and thrive as a scholar, and as a person. Oxford's library resources and abundance of literary world experts has convinced me that I couldn't imagine being happier anywhere else to continue my education. I hope very much to be able to see you all again in person the next time I return to the Bay Area and I also look forward to sending along another update at the end of this coming term. I've included a few photos from my first few months, and also have provided a link to my online photo album if anyone is interested! In the meantime, I will also try to update my new website, in which I try to post news on my new publishing activities and upcoming projects: http://www.tylershores.com/ I wanted to be sure to thank you all sincerely for the opportunity in supporting my experience at Oxford. It has been a genuinely wonderful experience so far, and I'm eager to see what the future will hold. Very sincerely, - Tyler Shores