Alex – Earth Sciences

What is your favourite thing about Teddy Hall?

My favourite thing about Teddy Hall is its incredibly welcoming atmosphere and close-knit community. Its size makes it especially sociable, and you quickly start recognising familiar faces around college, which creates a really supportive environment.

What do you like about the College’s site and location in Oxford?

One of the best things about Teddy Hall is how central it is. Being so close to Examination Schools is very useful for last-minute revision, and many other colleges are only a short walk away.

The Earth Sciences department is only around ten minutes away, which makes day-to-day life really convenient. You can quickly head back to College for lunch between lectures. I also love Teddy Hall’s outdoor spaces: the churchyard is a surprisingly peaceful place to study in Trinity, especially with a coffee from the Chough Café, and the Front Quad is beautiful.

Why did you choose to study your course?

I originally chose to study Earth Sciences because of my interest in palaeontology. I was particularly fascinated by faunal turnover during the K-Pg mass extinction, and the course offers lots of opportunities to explore evolution and quantitative palaeontology. More broadly, Earth Sciences also appealed to me because it draws on so many different scientific fields and links them together to understand Earth processes.

What do you enjoy most about studying your subject?

As our Earth Sciences cohort is relatively small (there are only thirty-three of us in our year), we have a strong sense of camaraderie, which makes studying feel more collaborative. I also enjoy the interconnected nature of the course, which allows every part to feel relevant to your interests—volcanology can tie into palaeontology through mass extinctions, which links to radioactive isotopes through dating, and so on.

How have your tutors supported you during your time at Teddy Hall?

The tutors at Teddy Hall are incredibly supportive. Alongside college tutorials and meetings, there are opportunities to get to know them outside teaching, such as mapping and research project talks, team quizzes. These have helped to build a supportive network between students from every year and tutors. Tutors at Teddy Hall are also often involved in field trips. This means the support provided at the time can feel much more personal.

What’s the best thing about living in Hall accommodation?

As everyone lives close to one another on the Queen’s Lane site as a Fresher, a sense of community develops very quickly. All the rooms in College are also relatively similarly sized and have the same facilities, so it doesn’t feel like your room ballot position determines things too much each year.

What do you enjoy most about the food at Teddy Hall?

You can almost view eating in the Hall as a break from study or revision. As you know all your friends will be there, it means that it’s a great chance to catch up. Blues breakfast is always a term highlight as well!

What do you like most about the Hall’s library?

The College library is in an amazing building — in the 1970s, the church of St Peter-in-the-East, which was mentioned in the Domesday Book, was renovated to serve as the College library. Aside from its history, it provides a (relatively) relaxed space to study, especially when compared to some of the Bodleian libraries, which have a slightly more intense silence!

How has Teddy Hall supported or shaped your extra-curricular interests?

As part I’m part of the Turl Street Orchestra, the Teddy Hall Music Room has provided a really valuable practice space, whilst the Steinway in Wolfson Hall is a wonderful instrument to practise and perform on.