Hello and welcome to St. Anne's,
my name is Elena and I'm studying for a DPhil in History here,
I'm the women's officer in the MCR.
St Anne's is a mixed college of undergraduate and graduate students,
we have about 300 graduate students from over 60 countries.
This is the college's dining hall.
We have informal meals here breakfast, lunch and dinner,
every single day except on the weekends
we just have brunch, but that's a pretty nice meal,
it's pretty cheap, you get a lot of food, and
you'll see that we have lots of light in this room,
not much, kind of, wall space,
so no portraits which is quite unusual in an Oxford college.
We have Christmas dinner here, we have a special
Founders Day dinner and which is quite unique to St Anne's,
where we celebrate the women founders of the college,
and they come back, the ones that are still around,
to speak about their experience at the college,
and it's a really nice day.
Ok so, this is the original college building,
and it houses the old library.
We actually have two libraries,
and the reason we have that is because this was founded as the
Society for Oxford Home Students,
and it was founded so that women could
come to Oxford more cheaply,
before they could actually gain degrees,
um, but,
they could go and be in private lodging and it would be a bit cheaper,
and then they can come here during the day to study,
and that's why our mascot is a beaver because
the idea is that they all go away and they, kind of,
beaver away together during the day and then they
go home to their own little, kind of,
haven at the end of the day.
So part of reason we have two libraries is because women were not allowed
in the Oxford libraries for a very long time,
so we benefit now because we have a lot of books,
but that's the legacy.
So this is the original library at St Anne's,
and combined with the other one we have
110,000 books, and you can make requests all the time,
so I've done that a few times
and got some specialist books that I couldn't access elsewhere,
so it's a really nice ever-growing library.
And in the new one we have some seminar spaces
as well that you can rent out, and you can book rooms for group study,
and we have grad student 'shut up and write' co-working sessions in there.
This is the new library building.
And when you come here as a graduate student
you are assigned a personal tutor
who isn't normally in your subject,
and they're the person that you can go to for any welfare concerns,
or any problems about your course that you
wouldn't be able to speak to your supervisor about.
And we have discussion groups every so often
and it will normally be a graduate student who talks about their research
and gets to talk to the rest of the graduate community about that,
over lunch, it's really nice.
So this is Eleanor Plumer House,
and it's the MCR, and it's actually like a little house, which is quite nice,
hello,
and people live here.
So I think we have about 15 bedrooms for graduate students upstairs,
and then the big graduate accommodation site is in Summertown,
which is slightly north of Oxford,
and then we have the main MCR common room,
not many people here at the moment,
but this is nice because it's kind of the noisy busy room,
and yeah, it's just a nice place to come in the evenings,
we have a lot of, um,
social events, I'll show you a calendar in a moment,
um,
but we have something pretty much twice, three times a week.
So we also have the MCR study room,
which is quiet during the day and then evening you can
book it out, and we have film nights, things like that.
And you'll see that we have lots of comfy bean bags...
And so this is the kitchen,
so anyone can come and cook, and it's fully equipped.
And our pride and joy, an espresso machine,
that everyone appreciates.
And then this is the college coffee shop.
So this is a place where people can come and study,
and we have a really wide range of sandwiches, pizzas...
theres lots of...
nice treats as well.
Oh it might be locked...
Yep ok.
So through here is the college bar, not open at the moment
but we have a really nice pool table in there,
we often have live music events
so we have quite a few people in college who
like to share their music and that's always really fun,
and a nice subsidised bar.
So we have a full welfare support system here,
we have a nurse who is on-site,
and we also have three Junior Dean's,
and MCR peer supporters,
so it's nice to have that, kind of, range of people that you can go to.
I'm not actually sure exactly where -
I know that the nursery is around here.
I think St Anne's was the first college to provide a nursery,
but I'm not entirely certain.
St Anne's does provide a little bit of extra financial support
for graduate students, so we have a
termly travel grant for your research,
and they've also just introduced research grants
to help you with things like thesis binding,
printing costs, I got some help for
some costs for a database that I need to access some historical newspapers,
that kind of thing.
I'm the MCR women's officer here,
and it's a really exciting week this week because
International Women's Day is coming up,
and in conjunction with JCR women's officer we're organising an
event and to celebrate 100 years of female graduates
because women could graduate 100 years ago,
and some of the first female graduates are from this college,
so we organise those kind of events, um,
and...
As graduate students we can often travel a lot,
be away for a few weeks or months at a time,
but when someone does go away and come back,
and we sit down at the dining hall for lunch,
feels like they're, kind of, they've never been away,
it's like they're coming home,
we have a real sense of community so
that's what I really like the most.