When my “yahs” replaced my “yows” I knew I was in trouble. Last year, I wrote a poem about my Black Country accent. I started it before Oxford was even on my horizon, a distant fever-dream, only real for people smarter than me. A year later, I scribbled the end of it while hunched in my uncomfortable office chair, trying to imitate the language of my mother because I couldn’t rely on my own accent for the words anymore. After it was published, I realised something. I was trying to immortalise my background, make it permanent in words, just in case this Oxford thing sweeps me astray. It was a silent fear, but it was poignant, and it stuck.
I came to Oxford as a working-class, state student, thoroughly unprepared for everything. I didn’t know what pesto was, let alone the order you are meant to use the cutlery at a formal. I would stick out like a sore thumb – the girl on bursaries, intimidated by the Rad Cam (it didn’t help that my bod card wouldn’t even let me in the place). But to my disbelief, I wasn’t singled out for saying “yow” instead of “you”.
All of the sudden, the streets I’d known all my life became unfamiliar and unwelcoming. Going from concrete to cobbles changed me at every level. At work, a girl who clearly detested me just three months earlier leaned in and smiled knowingly, saying “you’ve really changed, Es.” At first I laughed and asked why. She said “I don’t know, you’re just…different.” It was amazing.
My accent shifted. I bought linen trousers off Vinted. I started to shop at Urban, although my frugalness doesn’t let me venture beyond the sale section. I put away my false eyelashes, my cheap makeup, my cheap perfumes. I started to understand the differences between wines. And then, after the most life-changing few months of my life, I came back home.
Oxford launches you into a completely other world. You go from being the second-smartest girl in your English class to an unremarkable student in a sea of intelligence. Amongst such smart people, your previous intelligence becomes mediocre. To everyone at home, I’m a bit of a miracle. To everyone in Oxford, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. Despite this, I wasn’t quite ready to be launched back to Earth so violently.
Last week, I invited my best mate from high school to visit me. He protested; “I wouldn’t fit in.” I asked, “How do you think I feel babe?”. He said “Yeah, but you blend in now. You talk posh.” I went bright-red and scowled. For someone who clings onto their stash puffer like someone’s itching to snatch it, being told I am what I so wanted to be absolutely breaks my heart. I’m liked, I’m accepted, I’m an Oxford girlie, but how much of my old self was abandoned?
I’m strung between two different ways of life. I can never truly go back home and exist as my parents did. But I’ll never properly be a part of the ‘Oxford class’ either. No matter how hard I scrub, I can never fully rinse away my accent and all the baggage that comes with it. I’ll hold on desperately to each part until I give in or I fall. I’m planning on neither.
