As much as I subscribe to the sluggish behaviour excusable at Christmas; eating my weight in mince pies and being serenaded by Michael Buble’s satin-smooth voice from the comfort of my living room, I am missing the buzz of students on High Street following a lecture.
Looking back over my first eight weeks of Oxford life, the only big hiccup was Freshers’ week, which didn’t rise to the myth of being the “week of my life”. I have since gladly scratched its events out of my mental scrapbook, it being 0th week anyway. Starting out, I had the anxieties of any normal fresher: What if I can’t cope with the workload? How long can I get away with a dilettantish interest in wine and classical music before being caught out? But once this transitional stage had been passed, and the term finally kicked in, I was quickly sucked in by this world of formal hall and boozy bops. I no longer find the incestuous notion of college families strange – unlike my friends and actual family, who are still mystified.
From the moment we had dropped our suitcases and tearily waved Mum and Dad goodbye, we were whisked away by a whirlpool of endless induction talks, library tours and alcohol-infused ice breakers, where faces and conversation all merged into one. I found myself neck-deep in a stream of emails inviting me to societies I couldn’t remember signing up for at the Freshers’ Fair, having been lured by all the free stationary and other miscellaneous swag. Yet once there, intoxicated by the air of giddy first-term excitement, I was persuaded that I had yearning to try clay-pigeon shooting, convinced that I’d be socially disadvantaged if I didn’t sign up for any college sport.
Although the themed nights out during Freshers’ were fun to begin with, by Friday the constant shoving on the dance floor was getting as tedious as the cyclic cheese playlist. The best part of nights out was the trip to Hassan’s afterwards; my first Hassan’s, in its sacred, golden box, was consumed in the presence of a swarm of second and third-year regulars – it felt like an initiation ceremony.
When balancing the consecutive nights of drinking with the tute sheet or reading list, it was easy to feel that Oxford was a bad choice. Wanting to please, and fearing that a half-arsed essay and gnomic assertions in my first tutorial would be ripped to shreds like a vulture at a carcass, I was determined to knuckle down and work hard – undoubtedly helped by the lingering fear of being breathalysed in my first tute, which I had been told by a third year (whilst queuing for the loos in Park End) was standard procedure. I even braved the maze of the Bodleian for a book- only to find out, after plugging a billion permutations into SOLO that I was trying to locate an article from an e-journal. Going into the Rad Cam the next day to look for another book, I found myself in the Gladstone link – the rolling stacks caving in on me was a pretty apt metaphor for how I’d been feeling that week.
Yet by mid-term, having finally reached the light at the end of the Gladstone link tunnel, and becoming familiar with Oxford customs, I no longer felt like a tiny “Borrower” lost in the scary world of “human beans”. I remember how at the start, the mention of “crew dates” had been enough to send shivers up my spine, triggering visions of sconces without boundaries and being forced to drink wine and curry concoctions. My experience of an actual crew date, however, was a tempered version of this image, and was a fun way of meeting people outside of the college bubble.
I had also somehow dodged the notorious, triannual ‘fifth week blues’ virus, basking in the bliss of my reading week (which I have been told since are very rare handouts- thanks tutor!). Instead, I used the opportunity to invite a couple of friends up to visit. On seeing the grandiose colleges, both oohed and awed, before eventually asking, “So where’s the actual university?”
Attending the RAG ball was one of the term’s highlights, which, contrary to my expectation of ostentatiousness, provided seven hours of unadulterated fun, and the chance to regress to infancy – crawling like fancily dressed, overgrown toddlers in RAG’s giant hamster balls.
Charting the ebb and flow of first term, I’ve realised that it’s a kaleidoscope of emotions. Some weeks, when you’re having a major essay crisis and suffering from FOMO after seeing your pals’ pics online, you wish you’d gone to Bristol instead. What I learnt from my first term is that the concept of free time ceases to exist, so you may as well stop worrying: that takes up time too. Sleep will get replaced with copious amounts of coffee, but it’s fine – just remember how long the Christmas holidays are. Oh, and to pack less – if there’s no time to sleep there will definitely not be time to read Tolstoy “for pleasure”.
