A typical day in the life of an Oxford student is intense, from waking up hungover and going to a 9am tute, writing essays in incredible libraries, to the constant trips to Prêt and the milking of its subscription!
As a French and German student at Lincoln, I aim to get up at 8am – breakfast in Hall motivates me to stop snoozing my alarm. It’s nice to enjoy the tea pot and gossiping with the limited selection of friends who have actually made it to breakfast. Sometimes, I regret not becoming a rower when I see the rowing team in their gear, but then I remember that they have been up since 5am. My morning routine involves walking straight from Hall to Prêt for my first coffee of the day. Some days, I have a 9am tute. A German tutor once violently humbled me by comparing my writing in German to a Picasso painting: “pure chaos, but something beautiful may eventually emerge”. From experience, it seems that when I turn up to tutes well-rested, I am roasted by the tutors, and when I wake up hungover, I am praised for my great ideas.
A lot of my lectures are online but those held in person make me feel more inspired – and it was fun to discover one time that the girl sitting next to me was also called Phoebe! After tutes or lectures, I make a long to-do list and get some work done before my next Prêt trip. A change of scenery helps my concentration, so at some point I usually relocate to the Lincoln library, where I admire the ornate ceilings, and find familiar faces buried in books. A few times a week I will attempt to get a seat in the Rad Cam. I like seeing other people working but sometimes wonder whether the whispering next to me is a couple or what is blasting out of someone’s headphones.
After library time, I have lunch in Deepers, our college bar. As I approach the long queue, I admire the Imp, Lincoln’s rather unusual college mascot, safely tucked away behind bars. Normally I go for the tuna baguette and hope there’s actual mayo this time rather than something resembling a cat food consistency. I also enjoy a delicious smoothie, which provides me with my fruit for the day. After lunch, I return to my essay and aim to get it done and dusted by 5.30pm. An essay that seemed wonderful before lunch can quite often appear less satisfactory with fresh eyes and a full stomach. I read it aloud to edit and then proofread until I become snow blind to my own errors. Many of my peers submit their essays in the early hours of the morning but I’ve never wanted to pull the infamous Oxford all-nighter essay crisis. I have found that time management truly makes the notorious Oxford workload manageable.
In my downtime I go to dinner in Hall, where I enjoy spotting who is in a scholar’s gown and notice how almost every Oxford student seems to devour their slab of butter and bread roll before the soup even arrives. After dinner, my college friends and I enjoy going to Deepers for a pint. On Thursdays, I go to the Union Debates and sometimes end up at Plush. Every so often I get an early night to fight the constant Victorian-sounding cough I’ve had since arriving in Oxford in October (it’s not Covid). Before bed, I write melodramatic diary entries and poetry about my disappointing love interests. I put my ear plugs in to block out the sound of drunken chants (“OLLIE!”) on Brasenose Lane. How many Ollies are there in Oxford? I briefly regret not having gone out after all, and then I wonder whether 18 is too old to still be sleeping with Dolly and Blanket Bear, one in each hand?
I fall asleep quickly, exhausted by reading, essay writing, black tie, translations, tutes, and Prêt queues. I ponder what the German word for garden gnome is.
Image Credit: Ron Lach via Pexels.
