I’ll tell you something, just reading the words ‘soon-to-be finalist’ is enough to stop my mindless scrolling through Facebook dead in its tracks, partly because I read it as ‘soon-to-be unemployed’ almost by default!
Looking back, my second year couldn’t have been lazier if I tried. There’s something thrilling about being 5 VKs in at Park End and seeing your future slip away into a cloud of mist and strobe lighting. Still, second year was a joy! It was perfectly balanced, if by balanced you mean a beer in each hand. I suppose that is the privilege of an exam free year, and I shall just have to hope that the wood panelling muffles my tears of desperation as this lifestyle becomes just a faint memory and finals draw ever closer.
My final year certainly won’t be like second year, where days (and nights) slipped by in comfy routine of binge-drinking and sleeping off hangovers until midday, and where only a handful of essays (much to the chagrin of my tutors) got even a 2.1. Time to be ‘practical’, time to be ‘efficient’: both concepts I have heard of, but have yet to become fully acquainted with at Oxford. Most worryingly, I won’t be able to live off student finance after my finals, which is beginning to make me think: maybe postgrad isn’t such a bad idea after all…
Most finalists take a workaholic strategy and you have to hand it to them, it pays dividends. Staring up from my 2.2s on OxCort, I reminded myself that this university is home to so much talent: geniuses, future world leaders, the best minds in the country. Under such circumstances, it seems implausible that I actually did reasonably okay in first year. But 18 hours of exams now stand between me and escape and finals are a very different beast. If anybody needs me, you’ll find me popping a chain drinking cups of coffee to maintain my sanity as I begin to read over the seemingly infinite pile of notes I’ve managed to keep hold of.
However, it’s easy to forget these exams are still nine months away. There are still a plenty of good club nights to go to at Bully and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be making the odd appearance in Cellar between now and then. It would be nice to have a life, for the first term at least.
One way or another I will get through to the end of my final year, but my prediction is that the journey will be far less relaxed than I have become used to. This being said, I can’t wait for another year to begin and to bring with it a new set of challenges and opportunities. And fingers crossed I’ll even come out of the whole thing with a decent degree.
