Un irlandese a Oxford: è stata un’educazione nell’essere un estraneo. Mi sono sentito alienato fin dall’inizio
https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2025/01/27/an-irishman-at-oxford-my-peers-were-from-british-private-schools-comfortable-in-this-world/
di leglath
19 commenti
> Many of my peers were from British private schools, so were already comfortable in this world. One of them even corrected my American professor’s table manners, scoffing at her for not using her cutlery in the right order. I identified with the professor, who had also just arrived to the university, feeling reassured that at least others were also unfamiliar with these codes.
Also the professor deeming Moby-Dick “the second best novel in the English language”:
> He replied that every summer break, he would lock himself at home and read 100 books. By his complexion, I knew he was telling the truth. He continued that, this summer, he had, on a whim, decided to read Sally Rooney’s novels to see what all the hype was about. Not only did he think her novels were overrated, he told me they should not have been published.
Mobile Dick is just a big dumb book about a whale.
Irish student goes to a foreign country and feels like an outsider. Ground breaking stuff right here.
In other news water is wet
Isn’t this just the usual experience everyone who isn’t a member of the Bullingdon Club has?
I heard pretty much the same story recounted by well known English mathematician and broadcaster, Hanna Fry when she was as talking about her career online — lots of references to being working class etc and feeling an like an outsider, but she’s now a professor at Cambridge.
I think it’s actually far worse for English people from outside those backgrounds as they pigeon hole their own as working class, middle class and upper class very much more readily than people from outside of England. If you’re Irish, American, Australian etc etc you can just be the outsider on the inside and they can’t pigeon hole you at all. If you’re English it’s almost impossible to shake the class labelling.
British academia in those universities has its elitist and classist elements, but it’s mostly just the old entitled toffs whose parents pay enormous fees, get a degree in classics and then go on to be Tory backbenchers. The real academics who actually do stuff seem generally not to be like that at all.
You can replace “irishman” and “oxford” with any other combination of nationality and location.
What manner of landfill is this?
A few things going on here.
0. He’s an outsider. He’d be an outsider in Utrecht or Paris or Barcelona
1. The kind of “insiders” you get at Oxford look down on and exclude everyone else.
2. They may also look down on Irish people in particular. That is weird on first encounter.
Then of course, it’s important to note that the VAST majority of British people are perfectly friendly to the Irish. And vice versa.
A waste of column inches
We get on with the Oxford Joyces.
UK State School Students Feel outsides also
I studied and taught there for 10 years and loved it. It’s a place with diverse experiences and it’s a shame he had such problems. I wouldn’t let it put off potential Irish students from going there though.
When I went to Britain to go to college I had to go and see the Head of First Year for some reason. His secretary told me to wait outside and then she knocked on his door and said “That Irish boy is here to see you”.
It sounded weird to me. I’d never been referred to as an “Irish boy” or really as an “Irish” anything. She had a kind of clipped English accent too.
Anyway, going to college in a new country is a great way to learn about the world, and in my experience British universities are absolutely full of foreigners.
Fair fucks to your man for getting an article out of it though.
I laughed a bit at this article, British class system is such a weird setup, the private school system (weirdly called public schools) produce so many posh copies of each other.
The reason for my laughter is I just finished a book called Babel (or the necessity of the violence), written by Chinese-American writer who studied at Oxford, the book is a low fantasy novel that talks about racism, classism, the British empire and linguistics. It was actually quite clever and I am going to be talking about for it a bit with my friends when they read it. (Especially the token Irish character).
However it is the same topics covered in this article, foreigners are outsiders, they have to form their groups (even in Ireland), but in places like Oxford that are a product of the British class system it is even worse. The class system is extra layer of exclusion especially as the public schools act as feeders to Oxford.
I find the whole effortlessly superior shtick of upper class English twits totally hilarious.
They have absolutely about zero self awareness or conception of what absolute twats they are.
A very academic English relation went to Oxford Uni for an interview and could not get out of the place fast enough.
you should try being a foreigner in ireland, after 25 years here I still get spoken to as if i was reatrded
“I had the misfortune of attending on Guy Fawkes night. A Northern Irish unionist took the stage to pontificate on the differences between a papist and a Catholic, and which one deserved to be burned, to raucous applause. I was deeply uncomfortable, scanning the room to see if anyone else felt like me, but everyone simply laughed.”
…..sounds unpleasant but you might have told him to fuck off yrself!! You can’t always be waiting on others to call out a twat.
He experiences anti Irish sentiment, when reading British literature from 400 years ago… Big shock there.
I’ve a friend in Cambridge who’s having a whale of a time, has made tons of friends
Relevant Savage Eye: https://youtu.be/1vLu-YxTtkI?si=PzPH5yhkjnMNdt-X