What Oxford taught me about posh people
I expected Oxford undergraduates to be the best from all over the world, intensely passionate about their subjects. What I found were kids more passionate about drinking and clubbing and gossiping than studying. There seemed to be some weird hierarchy about who sits where in the dining hall that was completely bizarre. &#x27;Default&#x27; social activities organized by the various committees all involved brain-dead clubbing and irresponsible drinking - at Oxford! Or sometimes &#x27;posh&#x27; versions of those, where you wear black tie and aimlessly wander around some area holding a glass of sparking wine until you are bored out of your skull, a.k.a. a ball. The more ambitious kids were more busy padding their CV to land a good job than doing what interests them. It was not like the world of Turing or Feynman at all.<p>The academic part of life was good. The tutorial system is great, lectures were OK, practicals were good. The selection of courses was great. But doing CS, there were few opportunities to socialize with people in your degree - you see them in the lectures, then you go back to your college.  And that isn&#x27;t great - perhaps it&#x27;s good for people that are doing humanities and need to &#x27;network&#x27;, but for anyone doing anything interesting, you are not going to find too much in common with an undergrad studying English literature and more interested in drinking and pointless gossip&#x2F;small talk.<p>And even many in the CS degree did not seem to have that &#x27;hacker&#x27; mentality - that was mostly seen in international students.<p>What I found shocking is that so many students were doing poorly academically. The coursework and the exams were not super challenging, especially given that you chose so many of the courses, so you were mostly studying the actual things you wanted to study. Given that Oxford was supposed to have the very best students, passionate about their subjects, it was really odd how little so many cared.<p>Again, very strangely, few undergrad students from England seemed to go on to do Master&#x27;s or PhDs, but many international students did. The graduate-level environment seemed much better, too.