Loughborough

We headed off to Loughborough University for our first ever visit to a university as parents. Jessica is interested in reading International Relations at a university in the UK. Although she doesn’t have to apply until next year we thought we’d take advantage of the fact that we were in England to start the looking process. Loughborough is a very highly-rated university and with a big international relations department. It’s in a relatively small town but the campus is quite big. We met with the head of the department and had a great meeting. We learned quite a lot about the international relations course structure in their university as well as what it’s like in many of the other universities. The entire trip was worth it even if only to determine that this is probably not the university that Jessica wants to go for. The relatively isolated small-town location didn’t help. But the fact that their international relations department is very European-oriented rather than global or truly foreign made it much less interesting to Jessica. She'll be looking at international relations and politics and possibly African studies... elsewhere in the UK.

We left there with no idea where we were headed. Eventually we decided, in the car and on the road, to head for Oxford. We got to Oxford, got a hotel room through the tourist office, and headed in to town to walk around. Of course the girls went shopping in the various women’s departments of the many shops. I tagged along…

We eventually had a very early but yet another over-priced and rather mediocre meal in an Italian restaurant.