Before an Oxford term may begin, one must embark on a cruel and terrible journey – one that provokes internal conflict, doubt, and great pain. It is of course the bleak, cold fact known only as ‘collections’. Just as Andy Dufresne must crawl through a rather unpleasant tunnel to reach freedom at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, we too must make our own venture into such a tunnel, and that’s only to reach the rest of term itself!
I tried to find out the historic provenance of this strange evil, but had no such luck; we can only guess what kind of mirthless mind saw a vacation as an opportunity to revise. Yet, at least in my case, this ambition has failed. My last vacation, like the last, was characterised by tragically low productivity, whilst feeling rather guilty and regretful about it.
And so, like any last minute essay crisis degenerate, I pushed revision off , told myself I would do it tomorrow, whilst worry ate away. The fact that this practically persisted until two days before my collections was regrettable, but inevitable. Indeed, the moment you come back to Oxford, you are forced into feeling guilty for your indolence and essentially punched in the face to remind you of how much more you should be doing.
In a way, collections are a good thing. They’re a good thing in the same sense that high taxation is, or reading dry old great novels, or making sure to eat vegetables. They’re probably necessary to get us to do something. Yet I am too weak a man to deal with a day of reckoning at the start of each term. Leave me in peace, collections – I’ll do the work tomorrow. Probably.
