Ice cream and games night with my Somerville students

Today I hosted my first ice cream and games night with my students in Somerville. The term starts tomorrow, so the timing was good (for example, there are no problem sheets due tomorrow). I wanted to do this last term, but I needed my stuff to arrive and for me to unpack first. By then, we were at the end of the term and the only possible day would have conflicted with a Somerville party. That obviously wasn't going to happen.

The inspiration for this is twofold: (1) The basic idea comes from the good old 'pie and ice cream' nights the RAs use to host in Lloyd; (2) I want to get to know my students better in a different environment---especially the students that I haven't had in tutorial sessions---and it's also good for them to get to know me in a different environment (seeing what music I listen to, what games I play, discussing non-academic stuff, etc.); (3) I remember the stories of Richard Feynman getting to know students, that's something I would like to bring to Oxford, and living in residence at Somerville gives me a mechanism to actually be able to do this.

Oxford prides itself on having a history of close interactions between students and faculty/tutors. I see some of this, and it's certainly much more common to see students and faculty hanging out than it is in the States but much of it seems to have lapsed a bit from how I have heard it was in the days of yore. (Maybe it wasn't really that way, but some of the whispers from yesteryear that have made it into books and movies suggest that it sometimes has been.) Thus, I am hoping that we can have some more social gatherings like this among the Somerville math crowd during my tenure here. Faculty and students are definitely much closer here than they are at the other places I've been---it's basically along the lines of what I have seen at several of the liberal arts schools in the States.

In addition to the ice cream (from the really awesome local place across the street), we had juice and some other junk food. We also played some Monopoly (the Dodger's edition, so I could wax poetic about my favorite team just a little bit as well) and took advantage of the fact that I now have four Wii controllers by playing some Wii Sports. Several of my students made Miis; a few of them were good resemblances and a couple of them were absolutely hilarious. (I can copy these directly onto my computer with a USB stick, right? I want to post them if it isn't too annoying to do so.) I encouraged them to make Wiis of "Somerville personalities" (though I didn't mention any names).

Overall, I think the night was a great success and I very much look forward to having more of them.