Seriously, could one have predicted that I would miss snowy Oxford by being home for Easter and then miss snowy home by being back in Oxford at the END of April?
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Friday, 18 April 2008
Return to Oxford (and its delightful insanity)
So, today is deadline day. Oxford, in all its wisdom (or at least my corner of it) has decreed that everything will be due at once, that is, will be due at noon on the friday of nought week of the term after the course was taken. So that meant that I had four essays due today. And not only that I had multiple essays, but that everyone in the department (if not more than that) had essays due today. So an important day for things like, oh, say, printers to be operational.
At this point you can probably guess. I had been up for 20 minutes when a classmate (who's also in my college) called to wonder how I was planning to print - he had just been to the college computer room only to find out that it was closed for the day. Why today? It's unclear. Higher purpose? Mysterious ways? Simple sadism? We'll never no.
Un-fussed, the two of us proceeded to the vaunted Bodleian Library - surely they who possess a copy of every book published in Britain could print our essays for us. And indeed they could...but, only with great difficulty. We had to acquire a photocopy card (fortunately my classmate had one), top it up with prodigious amounts of British change, then print our files off a workstation. All this makes sense from...well...any other library printing I've ever seen. Here comes the crazy bit - the printouts then come out of a printer behind the desk. We count the pages by hand, and report the total to the staff, who then do all the math (with pencil and paper) to find the total charge (over 8 pounds each!). Then, we hand over the card and they work some magic with it. Oh, and halfway through the paper ran out and the staff were utterly flummoxed as to what to do. Once they figured out that it had run out, they searched fruitlessly for paper. Including - for real - lifting up books and looking under them. Why? It's unclear...maybe in case a single sheet was hiding there? After calling technical services, they finally succeeding in locating the paper - that was as far as I could tell next to the printer the whole time. Sigh. It was clearly the largest printing they had ever had to do.
Anyhow, we did in fact get the printing - all 122 pages (for me) - done, and the essays handed in. And fortunately I print infrequently enough that this can be pleasantly hilarious, not downright maddening.
Seriously though. How does this place not collapse around their ears?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)