Pieter Garicano, Cherwell Editor-in-Chief:
Sometimes, things are as bad as they seem. A gale descends on the global economy. The energy and cost-of-living crisis will only get worse; the winter appears harsher than expected. After the escalations of the past week, nuclear exchanges are a real possibility. In the face of this, what can we begin to do?
Usually, Oxford is its very own form of escapism. Elsewhere, September means a return to reality. For us the opposite is true. The vacation ends, and we return to our bubble. Life here revolves around degree classifications, park end and tutorial essays. COVID gravely disrupted Oxford but did not shatter the illusion. Life here had changed. But it definitely, still, wasn’t like outside.
This Michaelmas is different. It is hard to escape the crisis gripping our surroundings. The cost-of-living crisis means student life is hard, with colleges raising rents above what many can afford. Some have already been forced to drop out. The energy crisis means that those living out this year will face a trade-off between habitability and other basic necessities. The world we graduate in will be poorer and less certain than the one we matriculated out of. For those following the Ukraine crisis, the increasing likelihood that Russia deploys nuclear weapons can become an obsession.
Willful ignorance is an easy response. Enjoying the bliss while it lasts can help cope. The bliss can even be extended; for those graduating this year, staying in higher education is more and more attractive. Extremely contracyclical, academia is stable as the rest of the world changes. Yet, this option can be hard to justify. Wilful ignorance is ignorance of the suffering in the communities around us, be it Iranian students worried about loved ones at home or faculty members struggling to make rent.
Neither should we sink into depressed apathy. Many problems don’t solve themselves, and others are entirely out of our control. Obsessing over armageddon as a student isn’t exactly helpful. Perhaps, there is a third way, one which is clear-eyed about the difficulties facing the world, without collapsing into paralysis. More mindful of those who are struggling, but focused on doing what we can. Reject both hedonism and cynicism, and make the best of the bubble bursting.
Leah Mitchell, Cherwell Editor-in-Chief:
Beginnings and endings have been on my mind a lot lately. Putting together the Cherwell freshers’ guide as I began the new academic year and my own Cherwell editorship, yet in the knowledge that I was embarking on the final year of my undergraduate degree, provoked in me a bittersweet mix of emotions. In some ways the start of every Michaelmas Term feels to me a little like being a fresher again; I arrive in Oxford after just long enough of an absence to see it once more with renewed, hopeful eyes, and envision the year ahead with a freshly galvanised optimism – this WILL be the year I nail a healthy work-life balance! There is after all nothing more beautifully innocent than meticulously planning a schedule. In addition, my moving back to Oxford this term coincided with Rosh Hashanah, or Jewish New Year. Early autumn has long seemed to me more appropriate for the commencement of a new year than the middle of winter in any case – perhaps in large part owing to my many years in the education system, but I feel it also has something to do with the crisp promise that permeates the air from September through to October. As the leaves change, it seems natural that something inside us does too.
Every new chapter necessitates the closing of an old one. This is always a little sad, in the way that nostalgia is – the classicist in me feels compelled to note the etymological relationship to the Greek for “grief”. Additionally, what is ahead often seems daunting and unknown; but, crucially, it is also an open stretch of unspoilt possibility and promise.
Oxford is what you make of it, as is really everything; this Michaelmas, let us all embrace the spirit of freshers again, swapping all-too-easy jaded cynicism for bright-eyed eagerness and wonder. Let us try to approach the world and each other with a little more curiosity and openness. Perhaps what some might term naivety is really at its core a beautiful expansiveness. This term, I want to reach into it with both arms.
