A New Year’s Resolution: Learn Something on Your 2012 Summer Vacation

Oxford, England, December 12, 2011—Where better to learn something than England’s legendary Oxford University, where The Oxford Experience—a residential program designed for anyone who would enjoy a one-week course at Oxford—will take place from  July 1 to August 11, 2012.  The program is open to everyone and anyone; there are no requirements, no exams and no papers.  And participants get to live and study at Christ Church, one of the most prestigious and beautiful of Oxford colleges, which was founded by Cardinal Wolsey almost five centuries ago. (Note: the dorms are newer.)

Participants—who range from 25 to 85--come from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe, and Asia, with a heavy sprinkling of Canadians and Americans. The offered courses cover some 60 subjects: Virginia Woolf and her Circle; Castles in Britain; Anglo-American Relations and the Making of Modern Britain; The Celts in Britain; Tudor London; The Beatles, Popular Music and Sixties Britain; The Georgian Home; Oxfordshire Towns; The Brontës; Wagner’s Ring; A History of the BBC; English Country Houses; From the Blues to a Symphony; Page Fright—And How to Overcome It; and Warfare in the Modern World.

Summertime Oxford “students” will get a thrill passing through Christ Church’s main gate beneath Christopher Wren’s Tom Tower into the great quadrangle known as Tom Quad (both named for Cardinal Wolsey).  Participants not only have access to the college gardens, chapel, picture gallery and riverside walks in Christ Church Meadow, but they actually stay in student accommodations (some with private bath) and dine in the magnificent Hall made famous by the Harry Potter films.  Three meals daily are included in the cost: a full English breakfast, a buffet lunch and a served three-course dinner.  Each week starts with lunch on Sunday and finishes with breakfast on the following Saturday. 

Most courses include excursions to stately homes, cathedrals, museums and such, and on some afternoons there are tours of Christ Church and Oxford University.  In the evening there may be a pub walk, a lecture, a whisky tasting, a quirky performance by traditional Morris dancers, or Evensong in the college chapel, which is also the Oxford Cathedral.  And, of course, there arer plays and concerts available in this “city of dreaming spires.”  On the final night everyone gathers for drinks in the flowering Cathedral Garden and a sumptuous farewell dinner in the Hall.

The price of a one-week course—including tuition, accommodations, all meals (except those on excursions) and evening activities—is $1,135, or approximately $1,775 in U.S. dollars or $1,810 in Canadian.  Excursions and private bathrooms are extra.  The deadline for summer 2012 registration is May 1, 2012.  For more information, visit www.conted.ox.ac.uk/oxfordexperience  or write to The Oxford Experience, OUDCE, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA, U.K.

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