Journal #2 – Friday 18^th July

 Please read the note at the end of the blog post

I’m not sure what to really discuss this week: I don’t want to discuss recreational activities, nor do I really want to discuss our group project. I’m actually not sure why I don’t want to- I just don’t. I think that’s ok.

Let’s start with the blackbird leys festival. I liked that. It was very fun. What I liked most was broadly interaction and community. I’m a bit jealous of religious people. They have a way of connecting with each other, over knowledge that they each hold some shared idealised concept, that I envy. Feuerbach would be sympathetic to my jealousy. It felt nice to chat to people I hadn’t met before; and it was particularly thrilling as most people were running stalls about what they were passionate about, so they were in good spirits. I had fun joking around and chatting to them. Interacting with the kids and the parents certainly worked to make our project more concrete. I always knew it would happen, but still am never quite prepared for how much I tend to miss the kids and feel sad when they leave. Dinner with the other scholars was fun and the next few weeks until now were some of the best I’ve had in oxford, but to be completely honest I’m still a bit jealous.

I feel like my blog will be hard to read this week: my prose whilst blurting should reflect my mindset and whilst last blog’s writing featured a vivacious confusion this blog feels somehow monochrome and comfortingly muted despite my mood being increasingly happy. I might partially diagnose the dearth of colour to my non-Laidlaw academic commitments having more recently become more technical, however I don’t think that’s honest. I think I’m prevaricating. Let’s instead betray Krish [5 minutes ago] and directly discuss the group project.

I’ve enjoyed the survey aspect of my group project. I’m excited for interviews. These were fun because we had some nice discussions as a group and were able to narrow down exactly what prevents volunteering within oxford currently, alongside discuss a few potential strategies to circumvent. I think this will be fruitful. At times its hard in a group project to really “know” what’s going on because you have to sort of entrust everyone to do their bit and aren’t allowed constant updates. With this group, I haven’t found that as much of an issue as I may have feared – for which I am grateful. I do feel a broad sense of progress in my life right now which the Laidlaw project is definitely contributing to – I might also chalk this up to the move to “2^nd year uni student” being all the more real.

I think sometimes whilst progressing I forget that I also have a community of my own, back home in Australia, amongst friend groups in different colleges, my own college, any programs or work I have done in the past, people who identify with the same causes or interests as myself, and of course the Laidlaw program itself. It might be nice to stop and reflect on some of those communities I haven’t seen for a while and interact with them again. That might solve my jealousy. 

A NOTE 

A note on my blog: I’ve used both last blog and this week as an exercise where I engage in a short “blurting session” for I find them quite fun and also useful. I acknowledge this makes for a poorer reading experience and apologise to any readers. I haven’t read over this blog yet for I do not wish to make any edits (I write this note just after finishing the blog) but I anticipate that this blog will exemplify the struggles of reading blurted writing moreso than my last blog. Sorry again – it was fun for me though and hopefully still provides some insights.