We smile sheepishly as someone wishes us luck. Despite the subfusc, we are not about to make the trek to Exam Schools on this particular morning. The clue is perhaps in our choice of practical and, crucially, comfortable footwear, our rucksacks, and our conspicuous lack of carnations. In fact, we are preparing to embark on a kind of urban DofE, one that almost requires endurance levels worthy of a finalist.
It all started in Wagamama, halfway through Hilary Term. Grabbing a napkin, we wrote a bucket list of 50 things we wanted to do in Oxford before we leave. Aware that Emily was going on her year abroad we were determined that we should make the most of our time left at Oxford together. We quickly realised that we wanted to see all of the colleges, and so the seeds of madness were sown. After all, if we wanted to see all of them, why not do that in one day… in full subfusc… with a mascot bunny also in subfusc?
The first thing to decide was the criteria by which to select the colleges – we were a little alarmed to learn that there were 44! We settled on visiting all the undergraduate colleges, starting at St Hilda’s and ending at St Hugh’s. This left us with 30 colleges… Surely this was easily walkable in a day? With the methodical determination usually reserved for finding an obscure book in the Bodleian, we chose an order, highlighted our map like in the good old days of bronze DofE and were ready to start.
Having spent half an hour in St Hilda’s, we very quickly realised that our plan of spending ten minutes looking around each college may have been a little ambitious. As Brasenostrils, we are used to getting from one side of the college to the other in no time at all. We were not going to be finished by 4pm for afternoon tea as originally planned. Part of the delay was due to the need to convince the porters at St Hilda’s of our perfectly harmless intentions. For some reason, they were worried we might look out of place and felt the need to give us visitor passes. As we got our evidence sheet signed and stamped by the porters, one of them told us merrily, “You must be mad… No wait, you can’t be mad, you study at Oxford!” And then he drew a smiley face.
Despite our college loyalty, every college impressed us. Our highlights were:
Tolkien Table, Merton College
Keble chapel
The garden in New College
Lincoln front quad
The graveyard in Teddy Hall
And slightly less traditional highlights included:
The bridge in Pembroke
The Wesley Room in Lincoln
The animal carvings in Worcester Chapel
The bell tower in St Catz
The greenhouse in Corpus Christi
The colleges with the best wisteria were: Worcester, Teddy Hall, Univ, New College and LMH. But to our surprise, the best thing about the day was the conversations we had. The porters’ initial reactions ranged from sceptical to bemused to full-blown giggling. In Corpus Christi, having only got as far as mentioning that we were from Brasenose, we were treated to a “Pity that”. Porters appear to be the masters of repartee. Having watched us pose with a cuddly bunny in their front quads, many decided that we were the source of entertainment for the day and were happy to talk to us.
This ranged from a conversation about family history and Victorian literacy rates with a Christ Church ‘custodian’ to the social life of the Hertford cat. At Teddy Hall, we were provided with the amusing anecdote of a wild student who had returned five years later a reformed character in a smart suit, accompanied by his wife and baby. Upon seeing rowdy students outside the lodge, he turned to his wife and exclaimed, “Students these days just don’t know how to behave!” In Worcester the porter, also an electric guitarist, gleefully told us, “I’m the only person in my band without a doctorate – how tragic is that?” In St Catz, we were given an interesting insight into the lives of the porters, “We have 870 students here – it’s a nightmare when the post arrives.” We also had many conversations with students and with people who were not linked to the university. It was striking that wearing subfusc made us more approachable and gave people a reason to talk to us.
After hunting for St Hugh’s like a drunken student on a mission to find Hassan’s after staggering out of Park End, nearly nine hours after we started, we felt proud of our achievement. We spoke to people we would never normally have spoken to, left everything behind without leaving the city, and appreciated the vastness of the university. We would like to thank all the porters we met; it was lovely to see how proud they are of their colleges. In Somerville the porter leapt out of the lodge to encourage us to explore every corner when he feared we were just seeing the front quad. In Wadham, the porters gave us a prospectus. In Lincoln, they let us see the Wesley Room. They all hunted out their best stamps or gave us their autographs with a flourish.
To end with the heartfelt words of a volunteer in Christ Church Cathedral, “No matter what happens, just remember you’re at Oxford, so you’re already superstars!”
