And if you have any more questions, feel free to leave a comment or shoot us an email and I'll try my best to answer them. So I first did a course at Oxford five years ago. It was in partnership with the English speaking union. And it was a course on the history of the English language. And they brought me over to sort of cover it and review it and help promote their. tours. And it took place at Worcester College, which is on the other side of Oxford.

And it was a great experience. I loved it. I loved being a temporary Oxford student for a week. And I got to live in a college room and everything. And ever since that experience five years ago, I've wanted to do it again. As far as I know, the English speaking union is still running these programs, but I don't know what the status of them is post-pandemic. Their programs sort of focus on educators and some of them were a little longer.

Some of them required actual course work to be done because you could use it for credit. So, but I highly recommend looking them up. I will put a link in the show notes to the English speaking union. But this time is not through the English speaking union. This is through the actual University of Oxford directly. And it's through their office of continuing education. And they sort of run courses. for those who just want to learn things and who are willing to pay for it.

So they've got several different options there. The first one is they offer virtual courses. So you can pay a fee, sign up, and do an online course and work with an Oxford tutor and learn Oxford materials. And you can do it all virtually from the comfort of your own home. Now, granted, I could see why that would not appear. appeal to a lot of people, especially after having done e-learning with my own children and having sat through countless Zoom meetings for work that might not appeal to a lot of people.

So that's, but that's just one option. The other option they have is throughout the year they will do in-person courses, usually in the nights or the weekends. And you can get the benefit of learning the material directly from an Oxford tutor in Oxford. on a set schedule. Sometimes the courses will take several weeks. Sometimes they'll take a week. It just depends on the course. And some of them will have varying levels of work. Some will have no work.

Some will have you have to actually write a paper. You have to actually do coursework, do reading, and stuff like that. And so again, those are, you can find out all about these on the Oxford Continuing Education website, which I'll put a link in our show notes to it because this is really the core of where all this is. So, and then there's sort of a third type of course where it's residential where you come and you live in an Oxford college and you learn from the Oxford tutors and you get to live in the college as if you're a student.

You get to eat in the dining hall. You get to have the full thing which they call the Oxford experience. And that's really what it is. You get a temporary, you get to experience Oxford as a temporary student as if you were an undergraduate or a graduate student. Now, again, there's different levels of program here. There's different options. You can take a course that requires significant course work. You can take a course that requires that will, that will award you actual college credit that you could apply to something.

You can, Or you can do a course that's just for your own entertainment and desire to gain knowledge and not have to do any course work and just attend the lectures and be a part of the experience. And so that's the option I chose. So for the Oxford experience in residence, they usually hold these in July and early August. And the reason they do it then is because one, Americans really like to come. to Britain in the summer, when they can usually go on vacation.

And two, Oxford goes on break. The actual university goes on a break for six weeks between terms. I think it's six weeks. And so the college isn't having anything to do for the month of July and half of August. So they open their doors up basically to all comers to come to come do these courses and they keep their college staffs busy. They keep the, the porters and the scouts busy, they keep the kitchen's busy, and you get paying customers coming in using the facilities, and it keeps things ticking along.

And so, yeah, so that's basically what this is. Now, I highly recommend sign up on the Oxford Office of Continuing Education website to their email list, because when you sign up for the email list, you'll be notified throughout the year when information on the course is released. And when they release, the courses for registration, usually in January or February, you need to book your desired course as soon as possible because some courses are more popular than others and they fill up quickly and you don't want to miss your chance.

Now, when you do book your course, there's a different cost level. Like, I can't give you one price for everything. It's going to all depend on the specific course and what you're learning and what type of accommodation you want. So you can just pay for the course and just attend the course and get your meals in Oxford College. And that's it. You don't have to pay for lodging because there are several people on these courses who are staying elsewhere in Oxford and just coming to the college for the course.

So you can do that if you wanted to, if you want more flexibility. And then you can choose varying levels of accommodation. Now, I chose to have my own room and my own bathroom, which you have to pay a little extra for. So I wanted some more privacy. There are other rooms where you can have your own room, but share a communal bathroom. There are options to share with another person and everything. And then you can choose to opt out of the meals or opt into the meals.

And I opted for the full package. So when I picked my horse, I picked private room, private bathroom, and all my meals provided during the week I'm there, which means breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the college. And I'll talk more about how great that is later on. So when I chose the course, there were probably a dozen courses that interested in me. Now, the way they structure the courses is so every week, for the six weeks they do this, they do like 10 separate courses, and each one is in a different topic area.

And so it keeps the group small and manageable, and everybody can kind of intermingle with each other and get to know each other. And so, like, you'll, you'll talk to people who are in other courses, and it creates interesting conversation at the meal times. So, like, right now, there are, for this week, there are 10 other courses going on. Mine's Nelson. There was one on archaeology. There was one on criminology. There was one on criminology. There was one on the philosophy of free will.

There was one on the history of medical science and a bunch of others that I can't quite remember. So it's quite a variety of courses. And so I said back in February, I was choosing the courses. There were a couple that I wanted to do, but the ones I really wanted to do were full. Like I originally wanted to do the Churchill one that had filled up. I wanted to do the Turner one, like a history of British landscape painting.

I believe that one was full. And so the one that still had a couple places in it was the Nelson course. And as I'm a huge fan of all things Nelson, I thought, okay, that ticks my boxes. I will be perfectly happy to sit and learn about Nelson for a week. So that's the one I picked. So like I said, I picked that course with the full room and board and a private bathroom. And the total price for my package was 1,700 pounds, I believe.

which comes out to like, I think back at then the exchange rate it was like $2,200. Now, it does seem like a lot, but it includes your lodging and your meals for, and basically your entertainment for a whole week. So when you think of it as like a package tour, that's actually a great deal. Also, and I'll talk a little more about this a little bit, the classes are only in the mornings. So you have the rest of the the afternoon to either do what you want, or they put on a series of excursions and and tours and lectures and stuff that you can opt into.

So to give you some examples here, pull up my schedule in the booklet they gave us. So I'm in week four. So everything is structured in the week. And so that, like, it's kind of a set schedule. So like everybody arrives on Sunday. And that's when check-in is. There's a, there's a, was a buffet lunch provided. Then there's an orientation meeting in the evening. And there's sort of a reception on the quad called Tom Quad here at Christ Church.

And there was drinks and you meet your tutors and meet with the classmates and whatnot. And I should add that these courses that I, that were all at Christ Church, some other colleges will do things like this. Some other colleges will host these courses. Just this year, these were all at Christ Church. So back to Sunday. And then there was the first formal dinner in the hall. And then after dinner, you had like an informal meeting with the tutor where the tutor, you all met up.

You met your classmates. And then you went to where your lectures are going to take place. So everyone knew where it was. And then you were free for the evening. So, yeah. And so I'll give you an example that Monday, the, the first day. You have breakfast from 735 to 845 and you eat that in the hall, which here at Christ Church is the famous dining hall that was used for Harry Potter and is the inspiration for the Harry Potter films and they ended up building a replica of it in the studio which you see on the studio tour.

But I believe that for the first movie they actually filmed it here and there's all kinds of Harry Potter staircases and stuff. So if you're a Harry Potter fan, this is the place to come. And then classes, your class starts at 915, and then you meet for an hour and a half, and it goes by pretty quickly, and then you have tea and coffee break, because, of course, this is Britain, you have to have tea break.

And then classes resume at 1115, and then you meet for another hour and a half, and then it's lunchtime. You have lunch in the Great Hall. And then from like 2 p.m. onward is usually when the optional excursions or tours are. So like for this much. One day, they offered a tour of Christ Church, which was free and included in the package. I did that. That was great. And then that evening, after dinner, there was croquet and wine in the Master's Garden, weather permitting, which actually, I think it started raining, so I'm not completely sure they even had it.

I didn't go down. I was too tired. And then again, for the next day, the afternoon tours were you could take a, you could either take a walking tour of Oxford, or you could do a Morse-Lewis' Endeavor Walking Tour. I didn't do either of those because I've actually done both of those in previous trips to Oxford. I highly recommend doing them, whether you're in the course or you come to Oxford. They're great. And then there's a special classical music concert at 4.30 on Tuesday that was in the, quote, new library at Christ Church, which is actually 400 years old, which it's an incredible space.

It's the combination of old wood, old books. Like, the smell is wonderful. It's great. to listen to chamber music in there. It was a lot of fun. And then there was dinner. And then after dinner, there was another lecture you could do or you could do. There was a guided pub walk around Oxford, which sounded like a lot of fun. Now, that night, our tutor actually put on a movie, and we watched that Hamilton woman, since it was, you know, very related to our coursework.

So that was a lot of fun. We had in like an informal meeting where we watched in the classroom when we watched the Hamilton Woman. So fast forward to yesterday, again, the schedule followed the same. And then there was an optional excursion to Rousham House and Garden, which that was a mixture of people from other courses. That was a ton of fun. I loved Rousham House and Garden. I cannot recommend it more highly. I'll write more about it later on, share more pictures.

And then today, so every, the big thing that the courses do is usually on the Thursday, is the field trip day, the quote, field trip day. So for the Nelson course, today we went to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard down in Hampshire, and we saw Smith's victory, we saw the Mary Rose, we saw HMS Warrior, toward everything. It was a grand day out. We were gone all day because it's one into two-hour drive, and there was a lot to see.

So that was a ton of fun. Now, the other courses, they do, they do excursions as well. The criminology course, I believe they went to the Oxford, the former Oxford prison slash jail. The archaeology course, they went to an actual archaeological dig nearby, which is, sounds a lot of fun. And so that's, that's kind of an overview of the program. Now, I guess I should start talking about the social aspect. You can, you can get out of the program, really whatever you put into it.

But it's an opportunity to socialize with other kind of like minded people. Like I said, all the courses eat meals together at meal time. And so usually you, you know, you meet people when you're reading. You'll also encounter people when you're doing these extra excursions that aren't that everyone can opt into because not everyone does every single one. And you have a chance to meet people from all over the world. I will say that a majority of the people I've encountered are actually other Americans.

Most of them, most of those Americans are of retirement age or above. I'm one of the youngest people here. There are plenty of young people. I'm 38 years old. I consider myself young still. But there's plenty of young people to socialize with. And you meet a wide gamut of interesting people. A lot of people with a lot of different life experiences and they all bring something different to the course. So, so that, that. That aspect of it is interesting.

You also meet people from Europe. One of the guys in our Nelson course is from Australia. There's met, I met people, I met people from Germany. I met people from Spain, Italy. So it attracts people from all over the world to do this experience. And then I suppose I should talk about the meal time, which is a really interesting part of this that you don't really think about when you're booking this. So if you offer the package that includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you're going into the Great Hall three times a day and eating three times a day.

You don't really get much choice in what you're fed. There are many options, especially in the buffet style. There's usually like a meat option, a vegetarian option. And then they will attempt to cater to any special dietary requirements, but you have to like let them know so that they can plan in advance. But for the most part, though, the meals are set. Like, you don't, you can't, like, order what you want. It's really what you just either eat what is being served or you do something else.

Breakfast is usually, I would describe it as continental, full English. You can get a fried egg, a poached egg, British-style bacon, sausages. There are vegetarian options, hash brown, oatmeal. You get toast. They have croissants. You can get tea, cereal, coffee, fruit, like, and that you can sort of help yourself, too. There are people serving you, and you get it on a tray, and you go sit down at the table, and you eat, and you leave your tray, and it's picked up for you.

Lunch is a little different. It's, like, a buffet style. There's usually, like, a hot option and a cold option. So, like, there's, like, a main, like, for example, Monday, it was, like, chicken. It was, like, a chicken and a, some kind of sauce. It was fine. Or you can have cold cuts and have, like, a cheeseboard or a sandwich, you know, whatever kind of takes your fancy. And then, so breakfasts and lunch are very informal, and you can wear what you want to them, and you can, there's not, it's not as rigid.

Now, dinner, however, is a formal occasion. And there's also varying levels of formal. So, like, you're not allowed to wear jeans or shorts, if you're a male, to dinner. You have to wear, you know, appropriate slacks, like they say business casual in the manual. So you have to dress smart for dinner. Ladies do as well. And that's the bare minimum for everybody who's dining normally. There's no assigned seating at regular dinner, but you come in and then you have to wait to sit down and start eating until the high table sits and starts eating.

So, and that's the next thing I'll talk about is the high table. So the high table is at the discretion of the head of the university, and he invites people from different classes every day to come dine at high table, and they get to eat first, and they get the view of the hall, and they get to chat amongst each other and everything. And that is a much more formal occasion. And you're expected to wear a jacket and tie, basically.

Thankfully, I brought a suit with me because I read the manual and warned me to do that. And it's a much more rigid. You come in 15 minutes before everybody else and have 15 minutes of sherry, which was a very key part of the high table dinner. I don't partake in drinking, so I just had a non-acoholic. I think it was sunflower juice. It was interesting. And then you have formal dinner. at the high table and you sort of set the speed of the rest of the place eating.

No one's allowed to sit until the head of the college has said grace, which is said in Latin. It's most impressive. And then you can sit and everyone can start eating. And then like you're not supposed to get up until the head of the table is done eating. It's very much like if you're dining with the queen, like you kind of follow what the head of the table is doing and it's very formal. And you get a, like I said, you get a special invitation to that.

And so, like, you have to go that evening when you're invited. Not everybody get, and I don't think everybody gets invited. I don't know. I think everyone gets an invite. Some people opt out of it, and that's fine, especially the people who aren't partaking in the meals. Again, you can really do what you're comfortable with. If you don't want to do the formalities of dinner and high table, then you don't have to. It's optional. They are, when you're doing the full program, you're sort of, expected to do everything in the college.

And if you're not going to, they kind of want you to say that you're not going to. But I think in practice, no one really does that. I've eaten a couple meals outside the college. Like I had friends come visit that I hadn't seen in a few years. And I ate lunch out of the college and no one seemed to really care. You can also invite people from outside to college to come visit. You just have to pay for their meal.

And then they can come join the meal in the dining hall or our at high table, and they also have to dress appropriately. So that's interesting aspect of it. I'm a kind of a picky, finicky eater. So I haven't loved every meal, but I've done my best to sort of push myself out of my comfort zone and try new things. I haven't gone hungry at all the entire time I've here. Normally when I stay in something that's self-catering or a hotel, like I'll go to the local convenience store and get some snacks, and I haven't.

snacked at all. I haven't bought any food. So I've been kept well fed. I love the breakfasts. Breakfasts are hearty and filling and good. And one of the fun things about Christ Church specifically is they have their own tea blend called the Christ Church blend and it's really, really good. I'm actually going to try and buy some. It's like I can bring it home because they have a shop where you can buy it. And then they also make their own marmalade and their marmalade is really, really good as well.

So those are some some fun. little tidbits there. So trying to think what else related to the course. Now, from talking to people, like, when you do this once, a lot of people get addicted to doing this. And a majority of the people I've talked to, like, this is not the first time they've done this. Granted, the pandemic made everyone take a break, but a lot of the people have done this many, many times. Some people will come for the whole six weeks of the courses for the during the Oxford experience break and they will do a course a week.

That sounds exhausting. And you also don't have to stay on the college for all of that either. But many people will do more than one course when they come to get the most out of their Oxford experience. And like I said, many people have come back to multiple years and some people have been doing it for 20 years. Like, it's a lot of people have different reasons for doing it. Some people do it because, you know, they want the intellectual enrichment.

Some people do it because it gives a structure to a holiday and also, like, you're very looked after. And as a lot of the people who are doing these courses are at retirement age, there's kind of a staff of people kind of looking after everybody. I'll give you one example. One of the days here, there was an ambulance in the quad, and we all kind of wonder what was going on. And it turns out a classmate who was very elderly had fallen down the stairs.

So the college called the ambulance. The ambulance took him to the local NHS hospital and patched him up and gave him stitches. And he was fine. And it was no worse for where. So they sent him back to the college and the college kind of kept an eye on him to make sure he was okay. And he was back in class the next day. So that's kind of a nice example of how you're kind of looked after us, which I think that's kind of, it appeals to the to the retire week crowd because you're not, you're not staying in the hotel and you're not being ignored.

Like you're going to be missed if you don't show up to breakfast or lunch or dinner. And you're, you know, you're kind of expected to be where you're supposed to be when you're on these courses. So your absence will be noted, but not in a negative way. Like nothing's required. Some of these courses, I don't think any in the Oxford experience require any course work. But again, it depends on the course you pick. You'll have to look when on the Oxford continued education website and look at the various courses.

And it will tell you. you what work is required. My course, the Nelson course, does not require any work. I do not have to write a paper. There was suggested reading. It wasn't required, but you suggested you read. And I'm glad I did do the reading because it really helped fill in a lot of the blanks for the course. But yeah, you're not expected to do a lot of work. You're just expected to sort of enjoy the intellectual enrichment, enjoy the experiences, and then go on your way.

I would say having done something like this twice now, I love it. I definitely want to try and make it a regular thing and do it again. I don't think I could do it every year because it's quite expensive because it's not just the cost of the course, but you've also got to get over here. But it's been worth every penny that I paid for it so far. I've been a very satisfied customer, which is a weird way to think about it.

I've really enjoyed being in this college. Christ Church is beautiful. It has the biggest quad in Oxford. And granted, it's not green and beautiful right now because of the heat wave they had kind of turned to brown. It's still quite an impressive place. Architecturally, it's amazing. I mean, I'm looking out my window now. It's dark, but everything's all lit up. I can see Christ Church cathedral and the other buildings and you can't beat the setting and it's so utterly peaceful inside the college.

Know that many of the colleges, they will also do a B&B during the term time is over. So you could come stay in the college and the rooms on your own as a B&B style and not do any courses. So you could get the experience of staying in the college just by by paying by the night and you can still eat in the hall and everything. But, and I would consider that too because, I mean, Oxford's got really nice hotels, but I think staying in the cottage and on one of the colleges is a true experience because you're, you've really got to feel the cloistered feeling and quietness and stillness of these colleges.

You can see why they're such wonderful places to learn. It makes me really wish that I had gone to Oxford in my youth, but, you know, time goes on and now I can come back and do things like this and be a student temporarily. Again, there's lots to see in the college itself. The tour was really illuminating because they gave you a kind of historical background. There's plenty of places to walk around, you know, corridors and claysters and cloisters and buildings and there's the new library, which is 400 years old, but still incredible, beautiful, beautiful space.

Christ Church actually has its own art gallery that has a great collection of old masters. That's definitely worth seeing. It charges the public defeat to go in, but as a part of the course, you don't have to pay admission. There's beautiful grounds and gardens, and then there's the Christ Church meadow outside the walls. Oh, this is kind of fun. The college closes its doors at 9 p.m., and you're locked inside. Back in the olden days, that's how they'd manage.

student behavior. Like, if you weren't in by 9 p.m., you were locked out. You were out of luck. And you couldn't sneak out either, or students would always find ways. Anyone who's read Brideshead or visited knows that students would find a way. Nowadays, I mean, you're not forced to stay in here. They give you a key fob, and these beautiful old 400-year-old doors have a little electronic lock on them, and you just key fob in and out.

So, like, I've come in past 9 p.m. and it's not a problem. But it's it's quite fun to try and push open these massive doors and there's just a little door in the door. That's kind of neat. Again, there's a whole sort of inner society here within the college, too. There's the porters, and they man all the gates, and their primary job, as explained to us by our tutor, the primary job is to keep the hordes of people out of the college.

They don't want a lot of people in the college. Now, they are happy to have people do the official tours of the college, but they limit it to certain hours, and you have to pay, and they don't want, they just, they don't want people just wandering around because this is a, you know, a place of learning, and it needs to be relatively quiet. So then in the porters, they're, they will help you with your bags. They will help you arrange taxis.

Like, they're kind of like the concierge of the college, and when the students are in, right? residents, like, they sort of help the students manage their lives. And then there's the scouts. The scouts work in conjunction with the porters, and the scouts, they basically keep the rooms clean and keep the rooms clean and organized, and they're very kind, and they keep things working, and then there's the kitchen staff. They make all the food. Christ Church is a cathedral, so every night there's even songs, so there's a whole staff, So there's a whole staff of priests and laypersons who manage that.

I highly recommend doing the even song. It sounds beautiful. Christ Church Cathedral is a most impressive building. My favorite thing so far is that at 9.05 p.m. every night, promptly, the bell and the quad and the in the bell tower. It's called Old Tom. It rings 101 times. It's quite a noise, and you cannot not hear it. You hear it everywhere in the college. And in fact, a lot of the other colleges, you can hear it in a lot of the other colleges, too.

And that's how everyone knew that it was time to get back in your college because it was curfew time. And so it rings 101 times because when Christ Church was founded, there was scholarships for 100 students. And then a few years ago, they added one more. And so it told every, told for every student, basically. Now there's more than 101 students, but they just kept the tradition. And it doesn't ring at 9 p.m. like most of the other Oxford bells ring.

It rings at 905 because that was the official time in Oxford if you were going by the local time zone before the time zones in Britain were unified into one time so Oxford was five minutes behind London. So it, so it would to keep time, it will go off at 905 promptly. And I've been here a couple times when it's gone off and it's goes on for about five minutes. I even recorded it on a video.

And it's, it sounds beautiful. I love, I love the sound of old bells. Yeah. So overall, I've greatly enjoyed the course. I haven't really even talked much about the content of my course. I'll probably say that for another podcast because there's a lot to talk about when it comes to Nelson. And I also want to sort of organize my own thoughts and figure out, you know, what I want to say. But overall, I've learned, you know, before I came, I kind of wonder, well, what more can I learn about Nelson when I've been reading about him for 20 years?

I've watched countless documentaries. I've read books. Like, what more could I learn? And the answer is quite a bit. It really is quite something to get everything taught to you by a genuine Oxford tutor who knows this subject way more deeply than I ever could know it. And I've learned quite a few new things that have been very fascinating. And so I'd say overall, I've gotten my money's worth. It sounds crass, though. I don't really like that.

I don't like how that sounds. But I've, this is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to come live in an Oxford College and I wanted to come have intellectual stimulation for a week and see some heritage and, you know, meet some new people and basically have a college experience. And I can say 100% that I've had it. It's been great. It was a great way to sort of reintroduce myself to travel on England after a long ad.

absence. And I definitely want to do something like this again. I don't think I'll be able to do it next year, but in a few years, I'd definitely love to come do some more of the courses. I know there's a course about stately homes that I really want to do. There's the one about Turner they do every year. There's one about Churchill they do every year. There's just a lot of variety. And I mean, if it's, if it's an opportunity to learn more about the things you love the most, take it.

If we learn anything during the pandemic, it's, it's, you know, you only have one life to live and you should take the opportunity to learn the things when, do the things when you can. Otherwise, you don't know when you'll be able to do it. So that's, I think that about covers everything. Like I said, I'll put some links in the show notes to everything I've talked about and then stay tuned in a week or two when I talk about Nelson in general and probably do another podcast too about the final days of my trip and how that went.

So that's it for me from Oxford.