The Oxbridge Project

Oxbridge = Oxford + Cambridge. You've probably already sorted that out, but if you're from the US, I'll bet you've never heard the term before.

Yup, I'm willing to make that bet, because for the past two years I haven't said "Oxbridge" once without someone asking what it was, or thinking I'd invented the word myself, or laughing like I'd just said something ridiculous like "dinglesnorter hoppenstein." (Note to self: future name for a pet.) And that was just in casual conversation. When I asked actual professionals, a.k.a. the folks who are supposed to know these things, for advice about Oxbridge, they'd often say "Ox-whaa?" and look at me like I'd just asked for directions to Xunantunich. Few people in the US know much about British schools, it seems, and even fewer the unusual Oxford and Cambridge systems.

Hmm yes, I remember those days of innocence. When I first sat down to begin my own applications, I hadn't the foggiest idea what I was up against.

Turns out there are plenty of resources for students coming straight from high school. Entire businesses, in fact, if you happen to live in the UK, whom you can hire to hold your hand throughout the long and tangled process. As for me, an adult student, an international to boot, well...it soon became clear that I was on my own. I was constantly haunted by a sense of ineptness, a bit like if I had shown up at a concert as the only musician who had never seen the music, but hopeful that I could "catch on" to the tune eventually.

Well, catch on I did...more or less. Now that I've navigated the complicated vettings of Oxbridge, I'm determined to help my future fellow clueless applicants by offering my take on how the whole application thing goes down.

(Spoiler alert: it's mostly a crapshoot. At least it feels that way, generally. It likely involves a dartboard.)

I'll try to mention what I wish I'd known earlier, though in hindsight these can be hard to figure out. And how you, my dear applicant, might stumble onto these posts, I can't say. I guess you'll have to get lucky with your search terms, looking for phrases like Oxbridge application, or nontraditional students, or potential punters and pubcrawlers rah! rah! rah! dominus illuminatio mea et hinc lucem et pocula sacra!

Now I'm just getting silly. But that's what Oxonians and Cantabs do. They parade around with boars' heads and walk backwards at midnight and race tortoises. Lesson number one. You must be a wee bit silly in the head. Because listen - this is crazy. Right?

Anyone who actually knows anything about the schools will surely laugh at my perspective, but there you have it. The things I'll try to mention include:

1. Where to look for help, such as it is
2. How to be an optimistic snowball in hell
3. The UCAS, or "The Form that Crushed Entire Cities"
4. The dreaded Personal Statement, or "Sounding Like a Doofus in Four Thousand Characters or Less"
5. Extra, extra, extra forms! (Read all about it!)
6. Do you think you’re clever? The INTERVIEWS

And, of course...

7. Why it's all so incredibly worth it, even if you don't get in

I’m not going to flood my blog with this, but I’ll sprinkle it in here and there. And if I don’t proceed in a logical fashion, it’s because that’s a proper reflection of my internal thought process. (As opposed to my external thought process, which is more or less non-existent.)

Take heart, good souls everywhere, whether you are in the middle of a current journey or at the beginning of a new one!

Probably an Author's Worst Nightmare

Sometimes I'm in the middle of a lovely daydream, that one where I've published a book, and though it's not insanely popular (I wouldn't want it to be) it's solid, a fine piece of work that is rediscovered and appreciated generation after generation long after I'm gone. Then I think of lunchboxes, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

See, the reason I wouldn't want to become insanely popular is because of lunchboxes. And film adaptations, and Happy Meal toys, and mud flaps. It always makes me shudder to see what mass consumption has done to other authors' characters, sort of the same, I guess, as sending your blushing, bright-eyed young daughter into the world and having her come back as a chain-smoking hooker. My reaction is to make a cringing "eeEEee" sound and clutch my manuscript closer to my breast. Posthumous publication is underrated.

Case in point:

Up until a couple of months ago I had never read Little Women. It fell through the cracks somehow. While I was visiting in Oxford I began to pass my nights cozied up in a little library with a friendly, musty old copy of Little Women I had discovered in the "American Literature" section. (A section that had, like, twelve books in it. Biased much?)

When I returned back home I merrily skipped - skipped, I tell you - to my local library so I could keep reading where I left off. There was only one copy on the shelf. I picked it up to take a look...and immediately shoved it back again. "This can't be right," I thought. "Where's the REAL version?" But no, this was it. Someone watching from afar might have thought I was fishing out a dead bird from between the books the way I picked up that copy again.

It was the real version. But this is what the cover looked like:

(click to enlarge)

WHAT.

I don't understand anything about this cover. What is its intent? Is it supposed to attract a younger audience? "Hey look! They have acne! I have acne too! I will now sit down and read 500 pages about 19th century American women's etiquette!"

Did they hope to "freshen it up?" If so, why then do I want to run it down the garbage disposal? I nearly didn't check it out BECAUSE of the cover. And listen, marketing people - I want to read this book. I don't have to lay down money to read it. Yet I was so embarrassed to be seen even carrying it to the front counter that I nearly bailed.

Marketing fail.

The worst part about this cover...no. What can I possibly pick? Is it the fact that none of those quotes are in the book, nor even remotely what any of those characters would ever say? Is it the...liquid...spotty...substance...that seems to be juicing out all over the page? Is it the defamation of the female form? IS IT THAT THING ON JO'S NOSE?!?

Ugh. Luckily for me, once I opened the pages I didn't have to look at it any more.

And this, THIS is why I fear publication. Poor Louisa May must be tearing out her hair from up in the clouds. Oh, no, wait....here she is on the back cover:



Right. Well, she looks pretty okay with it. "MAH GOILS!" she's saying, all sweaty and proud.

Aaaaand....that's all I can say about that.

Last Day of Awards Week - Nudies for Everyone!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! And now for a post that has nothing at all to do with Saint Patrick's Day!

I wish I had the time to create an individualized award for everyone I know, but alas, real life nips at my heels. So for my very last award, I present the Nudie! (a.k.a The Nudibranch Award)

What, you were expecting a picture?

All right, but how to choose?

Nudibranchs, you see, come in all sorts of shapes and colors. If you can imagine a crazy design, there's probably a nudibranch out there to match it. If your sugar-crazed kid scribbles out a random crayon disaster, they've most likely drawn an actual species of nudibranch.

Nudibranchs are a bit like sea slugs, though not true sea slugs. Their name nudi branch means "naked gill," referring to their exposed gills - snails without shells, one might say. They are...well, how can I describe them? They are just the coolest darn things. When I taught outdoor classes in marine ecology, one of my coworkers was absolutely nuts for the little guys. Her excitement was contagious, and pretty soon we were all nudibranch hunting. Whenever we had a few in our bucket, we'd all gather around and watch them for five, ten, twenty minutes.
Some of them drift through the water peacefully, like the Hooded Nudibranch, which smells like watermelon when you lift it out of the water. Some of them can crawl upside-down on the water's surface, clinging to the surface tension. Some eat stinging anemones and incorporate the stingers into their bodies as their own defense.And nudies are tough, man.
They can regenerate lost body parts, though sometimes it takes a while. When we kept them in our educational aquarium, they had a baffling tendency to get drawn to the outlet pipe, where they would end up getting sucked into the front of the grate until someone came along and rescued them. With their flimsy-looking little bodies, you'd think such a battering would leave them in a pretty bad way, but they always bounced back.

Some are actually rather aggressive. Opalescent Nudibranchs will fight each other in a head-to-head death match, winner eats the loser. But they're not tough enough to survive in polluted waters, and they have the bad fortune to prefer coastal habitat, where pollution is often the worst.

Nudibranchs are found all across the world, 3000 species and counting. New ones are being discovered all the time. You can have your space exploration, but I don't think you'll find anything wilder than what's right here.

Oh hey! There's a green one just for St. Patty's Day! And here I thought I didn't have a tie-in.

Because nudibranchs come in so many wonderful varieties, I found it only appropriate to use them for my final award. The Nudie goes to...

*drumroll*

...you!

Yes, you! If you are one of the many varied, wonderful people who have faithfully read and/or commented here, then this award is for you! It's my way of showing my appreciation, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!



The rainbow is there to make up for the fact that the featured Alabaster Nudibranch is more or less devoid of color. The Alabaster is a common nudie in my neck of the ocean, one of my favorites.

But if rainbows aren't you're thing, here's an alternative. The Hooded Nudibranch!



Well...um...

*facepalm*

All right, so the Hooded Nudibranch looks like a teddy bear that went through the garbage disposal. In real life they are graceful masters of the water, honestly! (And they smell like watermelons. And they don't really look much like this.)

Here's another try. What about the Shaggy Mouse Nudibranch?



Fuzzy.

While it may be impossible to design a neat-looking award starring a nudibranch, that doesn't negate the fact that you, my readers, are the neatest bunch around. D'aaaw! Hooray for everyone!

Next week, blog posts that don't involve hours of drawing...hopefully.

All cool nudibranch photos courtesy the National Geographic site.

Awards Week: Day 5 - The Angry Tree Octopus Award

Today's award is inspired by one of my favorite little critters, the elusive Pacific Northwest tree octopus.

Found in the dense rainforest canopies of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, the tree octopus has been driven to near extinction due to bow hunters, alkaline rain, suction blight, and over-harvesting by increasing numbers of Sasquatch, their natural predators.

(Thanks to the Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site for this rare picture.)

I've been advocating for tree octopuses (note the proper plural) ever since I set up this blog. In fact, that was THE reason I started blogging. Many of my faithful readers will remember my petition to stop the cruel trade of tentacle-related goods, like shaped rubber bands, which led KiddyTime Bandz® to introduce an Octo-Safe™ label on their entire product line (excluding red shapes.) Simultaneously I continued to post tips on mollusk photography (best time of day for lighting: 3:47 pm) and warn about the dangers of travelling in Sally Sucker-Cup Country. Indeed, many a hiker has been driven to drinking by the maddening howls of these arboreal cephalopods.

This is why we have so many microbreweries in the Northwest. Check out the bios of their founders, and see how many first started drafting after returning from the woods.

So now I'm pleased to offer on tap, for a limited time only, the illustrious Angry Tree Octopus Award.



The ATOA goes to a blogger who makes regular, frequent appearances. This angers the octopus, who doesn't like it when someone shows up more than he does. (Which is never, because he doesn't actually exist.) He would rather see a blog disappear entirely...but that's what the White Dolphin Award is for. So the octopus must go to a place he hates the most, a highly visible blog, and thus he exists in a state of perpetual indignation.

I award this award to Snarke over at Snarke, who wins it hands down. Not only does she blog like a fiend, but she also posts a vlog with equal frequency, once updating every day for an entire year. That's commitment. Really, she deserves to win this award twice. She writes about many things, but most of all the wondrous network of super-nerds that makes the Northwest such a great place to live. She is a font of knowledge for every quirky fun event that goes on in the Portland metro area. And now I know who John and Hank Green are thanks to her.

To accept this award the recipient must appease the ego of the tree octopus by blogging at least five tree octopus facts. These can be, for example, which type of tree it prefers, or its migration patterns, or what restaurant you two ate at together recently, or boxers vs. briefs. And then, if the recipient so desires, he/she can make the ATOA angry again by making it appear on someone else's blog.

Tomorrow, the last of the awards! Will it be...for you??

Awards Week: Day 4 - The Bull Kelp Award

Well, this post has certainly been a fine kettle of fish.

By now I hope you've all noticed that my awards are sticking to a nautical theme. And why wouldn't they? They're each coming from fifteen feet below, rising up out of the depths. Just like pulling up a crab pot, you never know exactly what you'll get.

At its conception this next award rose up like the mighty Kraken itself and nearly strangled me to death. At first I thought I was concocting something nice and simple. Then Blogger and its "I hate all your images, I CRUSH YOU!" interface stepped in to shrink my award to the size of a hairpin, so I had to spend an hour chopping it into pieces to make it display correctly. It's times like these when I wish I had an insanely large readership as motivation.

(Me to Self: I'm doing it for the children!)

But I didn't give in. I labored through the long night to defeat (maybe) Blogger's impossible interface just so I could go all Scott McCloud* on you today. Therefore I'm happy to announce the inauguration of the esteemed, inestimable Bull Kelp Award!

Ready?

Here we go!


Whew!

Giant bull kelp is one of the fastest growing seaweeds, and when they grow they mean business. They get up to 120 feet long. That round bulb, which is filled with carbon monoxide, floats the kelp to a vertical position. Imagine thousands of these all growing together and you have one of the most amazing places on earth, a kelp forest - the Redwoods, only underwater. These forests are breeding grounds for all kinds of fish. Even fine kettles of fish.

Fun fact here, if you want to see a good example of the domino effect. People hunted out sea otters from the West Coast for their fur back in the 19th century. Sea otters love to eat sea urchins. Sea urchins love to eat bull kelp, but they, being short little critters, can only reach the kelp at its base. When they chew through it, it's the equivalent of felling a tree, except instead of falling down the bull kelp just floats up and drifts away. So...no sea otters to eat the urchins means swarms of urchins crawling across the sea floor chomping through the bases of bull kelp - massive deforestation of the kelp forests. Without the forests the fish don't multiply, fisheries start to fail, and we all end up eating tilapia.

So the next time you eat tilapia, look down at it and say, "Damn you, Victorian fashion trends!"

Speaking of eating, the urchins aren't wrong about the kelp. I love eating it too. It's crunchy and delightful. Most seaweeds are delicious, as long as they grow in clean water. (When I taught classes in this stuff, I once ate some rockweed off the coast of Seattle. Ugh. Bit of a mistake, was that.)

What does this have to do with awards, you say? Well, despite the amazing towering structure of giant bull kelp, it lacks the same kind of specialized cells found in vascular plants. A cell taken from any part of the kelp looks more or less the same as a cell from anywhere else.

Isn't science fun?

The bull kelp, one might say, keeps a consistent theme no matter how large it grows. Consequently, the honor of the Bull Kelp Award goes to a blog that maintains its theme throughout the passage of time. I've got two for you:

The first is the Misadventures of the Monster Librarian. The Monster Librarian is an actual real working librarian (for real!!) who writes on all manner of book- and library-related things, including reviews, library lesson plans, literary awards, and so forth. She sprinkles in bits of poems and reflections about her real life to keep things interesting, in case you're not as die-hard a bibliophile as you ought to be.

The second is my friend over at CatholicLand! (which, despite its name, has no "Seven Deadly Sins"-themed rollercoaster, sadly.) Although most of his posts make me want to jump up and start a theological debate, I've really enjoyed learning about the Catholic perspective through his site. It's important, I think, to see where someone else is coming from, especially as our country gets slogged down in partisanship. If you don't have enough information to argue for someone else's view, then you probably don't have enough to argue for your own.

And that's how my post somehow went from kelp to politics in three paragraphs or less.

To accept the Bull Kelp Award, the recipient must somehow figure out how to write about bull kelp while still staying true to their respective blog's theme. The gauntlet has been thrown.

Tomorrow, another award unveiled!

*If you don't know who Scott McCloud is, see footnote.**

**Oh, wait, I guess that was the footnote. Well, you person-who-clearly-doesn't-draw-comics, Scott McCloud is an artist who challenges other artists to break the normal boundaries of the panel and the page. Go find some of his online stuff and be amazed.

Awards Week: Day 3 - The White Dolphin Award

Remember how I said the most amazing thing about my blog was that I'd recently discovered how to make image mouse-over titles?

I take it back. My best new discovery has been Blogger's scheduling tool. Here on the Northwest Coast we get snow oh so very rarely, maybe once every five years, but this year was the year. An unseasonable cold March storm rolled in and dumped five inches of wet snow yesterday, knocking out the internet for most of the day, but thanks to the scheduler my post got put up anyway.

If the world suffered a life-ending cataclysmic apocalypse, how many authorless blogs would continue posting for months afterwards thanks to the scheduler?

And on that happy note I hereby announce the noble and much sought-after White Dolphin Award.



The Yangtze white dolphin, or baiji, was one of only three species of freshwater dolphins on earth. Freshwater dolphins are incredible creatures, quite different from their saltwater cousins. One of these days I'm going to write an entire post about the boto, pink dolphins of the Amazon, that laugh like children. Some think they are the spirits of drowned men.

But wait, I'm getting distracted.

The tale of the white dolphin, unfortunately, isn't a nice one. Found only in the Yangtze, they were once called the "goddesses of the river." But they couldn't survive the pressures of the growing Chinese population. Direct hunting, habitat loss, entanglement with fishing gear, and the increasing pollution of the river took its toll, and after years of decline the dolphins at last disappeared. They were declared extinct in 2006, the first loss of a marine mammal in over fifty years. They're also a first for me - the first animal that I remember learning about as a kid, watching my animal documentaries and thinking, "I want to see those!", that now I'll never get to see.

Here's an actual photo:



Extinction. Think about it.

So to honor the vanished white dolphin, I hereby confer this award on all of my friends and acquaintances who have left their blogs untouched for a year or longer. (I thought about listing them, but they are numerous. You know who you are.) Like the white dolphin, they are apparently gone forever, yet I cling to the slim small hope that all the experts are wrong, that someday they may come back again, that I might catch a glimpse of their glistening fins insightful musings once more!

To accept the award, the recipient must pass it on to another blog. To pass on the award, the giver is not allowed to notify the recipient in any proactive way. They must discover it for themselves. If they know they have been remiss in blog posting, then the award is theirs.

Hooray! Isn't making up awards fun? I should do it more often.

Tomorrow, something!

Awards Week: Day 2 - The Horseshoe Blog Award

Today I give out the prestigious and time-honored (beginning today) Horseshoe Blog Award.



The horseshoe crab is an amazing and cuddly (though kind of jabby) creature. Since we don't have them on the West Coast, they're like unicorns to me. Yes, when I've seen them covering the beaches of Maine it's akin to witnessing vast herds of unicorns thundering across the savannah. Like unicorns, they are pointy. Their blood has magical properties. And...that's pretty much the extent of how they're like unicorns.

Horseshoe crabs have been around in their current form for the past 250 million years, and so it stands to reason that the Horseshoe Blog Award goes to a blog that has been a mainstay of regular quality posting for many years running. Therefore I award this snazzy crab to Wendy over at Opera Buffo, whose blog has been alive and well since 2004. (!!!)

Wendy's an editor and author - her first full novel is due out this year (it's going to be awesome) - who blogs about cooking, mommy-ing, gardens, eco-friendly living, and (naturally) writing. Everything she writes has something deep about it, even if she's expounding on rainbow sprinkles. (Which, come to think of it, I don't think she ever has. Post idea?)

To accept the Horseshoe Blog Award, the recipient must continue to blog faithfully for the remainder of the year, although the exact definitions of the words "faithfully" and "year" can be disputed in a court of law.

Tomorrow, another astounding nonexistent award!

In Which I Shower Awards on Everyone in a Reality of My Own Making

Wow, last week was quite a collection of nothingness, wasn't it?

While I was in the midst of regretting that not every post here is something grand and glorious, I was forced to remind myself that this blog was originally created for me, after all. If I had the good fortune to write something others found appealing, then I might enjoy the camaraderie as an added perk. My original intent was to give myself an outlet so I wouldn't clog up my group blogs with long, uninvited monologues. I discovered that blogging provided good motivation to keep the rust off my writing. Happily I've chronicled events that I would have otherwise forgotten, since my memory doesn't cover much more than the last few weeks.

One might wonder why I didn't just start a journal instead.

(But...ah, where's the fun in that? Where are the creepy unpublishable spam comments in that?)

About the most amazing thing about my blog is the fact that I've recently discovered how to make mouse-over text on my images, which finally proves that anyone, after fourteen years of using HTML, can learn to write "title =". I am the Queen of the Internet.

And so since my blog has been nothing more than a glorified journal, and since it's not been, on the whole, anything particularly insightful or delightful, I was pleasantly surprised when I was nevertheless given this,



by Violet over at Creative Devolution, whose blog is pretty much an example of everything an awesome blog should be - bright 16-bit colors, humor, do-rags, insanity domestic life, and interior decorating. I started reading her blog, she started reading mine, rainbows formed in the sky, et cetera. I frequently read her posts multiple times, they're that good. Go on and check her out.

Are you back? All right then! Well, what excited me far more than the actual Liebster was the logo that Violet drew for my blog:



Eeeee! I'm so happy!! Also, finally someone realizes that my entire blog is underwater! Yow yow! Hooray for thematic continuity!

Right. So the Liebster Blog is a blogging award giving by bloggers to bloggers for blogs that are especially bloggy, and by that I mean that "liebster" translates to "dearest" or "favorite" from German (and not "lobster," sadly, as Brett over at The Transformed Non-Conformist, rightfully pointed out), ergo one receives such an award for being a likable blog. Other restrictions apply. Not intended for blogs with ridiculously large followings (over 200 followers), must be passed on to five fellow bloggers, this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Huzzah!

But look. I've been out of the blogging loop for a couple of years now, many of the blogs I used to know and love have given up the ghost (at least temporarily), and I lettered in the game of Calvinball, so why do something the same way twice?

(Also, I like to break chain letters. No, I don't think I'll have bad luck if I don't forward this to at least twenty people.)

Therefore I've instead decided to instigate a new batch of awards, since we're playing in a world where I can control the laws of physics. That's right, this is the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter. Awards for everyone! I'll be giving them out every day this week.

For my first award, since I was so heartbroken to find it was "Liebster" and not "Lobster," I bestow this, the coveted Giant Growing Lobster Award, on mining the nooks.



The GGL Award is given to the blog with the greatest potential to grow into something amazing and unstoppable. To accept this award, the recipient must draw an original rendition of a giant attacking lobster. Easy, no?

I had the opportunity to meet Galen, the illustrator over at mining the nooks, in person. Even though I'm not much of a horror aficionado, I love her style. Her paintbrush seems to be permanently set to "blood splatter." She also posts links to other amazing artists. Pretty inspirational all around.

Tomorrow, another made up award!

End-of-the-Week Potpourri

Here are some loose bits and bobs that have been rattling around in my head during this week of randomness. See if these random thoughts stir up any random thoughts of your own. We celebrate randomity.

Recently I saw an icicle that had formed on a 45 degree angle. It was perfectly straight, just not pointing in a downward direction. How is that possible? A Rocky Mountain vortex? I have my theories.

Whenever I'm writing to a woman, I never know what title to put. How do I know if they're married? If they're not, is it Ms. or Miss? What's the neutral unknown?!? When I'm trying to address a simple letter I usually go online and internet stalk a woman just to find out their marital status. This seems strange and unnecessary. I mean, what does everyone else do?

Men are easy; just slap on a "Mr." Done. Darn you men. Also with your one-suit-for-every-occasion advantage. I'm waiting for the day when women have something equivolent to suits. Sometimes I want to enlist, be a park ranger, get elected as a judge, or work in hazmat just so I don't have to think about what to wear every morning.

Why on earth do cars still have a headlight setting for parking lights? What the heck are parking lights supposed to do? There's never a time when a car needs only parking lights and nothing else. The setting apparently exists to make me look like an idiot when I accidentally miss the last click. Also, I don't think my brain has ever once thought "That's a car!" when I first see another car driving with just parking lights. It's usually more like, "That's a guardrail traffic sign pedestrian biker motorcycle?...car!"

I discovered the worst-named cookie ever.



I'm sure it's tasty, but...no, wait, I'm not sure. It's too suspicious. It's a front. Like a brothel with a sign out front, "Come In and Get Saved!" I don't go to round black and white cookies for my nutritional needs.

But if you should find yourself with a WhoNuuoou in your hand, what can you do with it? (Besides stair rolling races?) Answer: Dunk it in this.



What am I ending? Life? A bad relationship? Whatever it is, this will make it right, I guess.

Man, misspelled food is always bad news. I'll give some examples. Cheez-Its. Sno Balls. Froot Loops. It's like a two-way admittance of defeat. "Hey," the box says. "I can't be bothered to spell myself correctly, and you can't be bothered to eat actual food, so why don't you just buy me and we'll go watch an entire season of Married With Children together?"

Leading me to a follow-up theory: Real food doesn't have words on it.

Except...that would rule out Dove Bars, with the words "Dove" stamped right on them, and they are very definitely real food. Hum, I'll have to think about this....