Essay crisis, bad tutorial, no sleep. Everyone’s had a time when you’d really rather be anywhere than Oxford. The rigorous academic attention and miniature city size mean that Oxford can feel like a bubble which you would really prefer to just burst.
How can you deal with this? Let’s assume that going home is off the table – unmissable class the next day, extortionate train fares, or an overwhelming fatigue. What to do then? Seek solace in friends, walk bleary-eyed round University Parks, or get hammered at the club? All reasonable options. I propose a more modest solution: join your street’s WhatsApp chat. If this isn’t a possibility, get as close to this as you can.
I’ll explain. In the madness of the first lockdown, my residential street in Bristol decided it needed a way of keeping in touch and figuring out how to adapt to being shut indoors. Hence a WhatsApp chat was born. Aside from being one of the few concrete hangovers from the pandemic, it doesn’t seem very intrinsically interesting. And it isn’t. In fact, its brilliance lies in its unending surfeit of useless, prosaic, and oftentimes downright bizarre content.
Now I’m not really one to feel homesick: I’ve been back home once during my nearly two years of study, and that was to see a play. Oxford for me is a city of intensity, vibrance, and joy – I love being here. Even so, when the pressure gets too much, it’s easy to long for some tethering amidst the chaos. This is where the chat comes in.
Opening it on any given day offers everything from thought-provoking questions about recommendations for a good plasterer, to tough issues such as a dad running out of baking paper for making his sourdough bread. Friendly neighbours desperately try to flog their unwanted gunk onto unsuspecting victims. “Bag of cat litter available outside Number 80!”; “Help yourself to these Christmas books!” (posted in summer); “IKEA boxes – bit of a repaint and they’ll be lovely” (said of some furniture that looks like it barely survived WW2).
Then there are moments of real danger: “Has anyone had their milk bottle box opened and a massive slug of milk drunk out of their bottle?” After a lengthy back-and-forth between some of the local sages, it’s eventually decided that, contrary to the views of many, this abhorrent act of theft can in fact be attributed to the foxes. Someone else has their car stolen from in front of their drive – receiving many, many commiserations from neighbours who no doubt felt relieved they were not the unlucky victim.
One unexpected question is what you do if you find a dead fox in the back of your garden. Well for some the answer is clear: compost it of course! “We compost foxes too! … Other foxes beware!” Followed by, six minutes later: “I should make it clear that we have not harmed any foxes. We don’t kill to compost!” Given the scourge of these milk-stealing animals, though, it’s hard to be sure…
Looking at the chat is restorative in a number of ways. The surreal humour or absence of self-awareness on display never fails to bring out a smile. But it is the confrontation with a steady stream of technical and mind-numbingly boring questions that is the real antidote to academic worries. For those of us lucky enough not to have to think about such things for a couple more years, seeing people debating the relative merits of an LG or Bosch dishwasher really drives home the joys of a college-owned (and cleaned) kitchen. Whilst you stress over finishing a problem sheet on time, there are others in the world fretting equally about which delivery van company they ought to hire. Considering how much time some people can think about whether to get rid of a few yoga mats makes taking a slightly longer break from study seem eminently justifiable.
This isn’t in any sense to affirm the righteous dignity of the scholar over others. Quite the opposite: you come to realise that you are just one person amongst billions getting along with those tasks set in front of you. It’s an essay now; soon enough it will be fixing the bathroom light.
