Dear successful applicants,

Congratulations on achieving your grades. Making your offer is 90% of the battle and you’ve done it! If you didn’t get your grades, well, this letter is not addressed to you.

Your As and A*s have made you the pride of your school, your family, heck, maybe even your town. Today there’ll be local news teams at your school, clamouring to speak to all the successful Oxbridgers who are tasked with inspiring the next generation. If that doesn’t make you feel tremendously smug, then the obligatory celebratory family dinner really ought to. And you’ve earned it after all those hours spent studying for your GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels.

Over the next few days you’ll probably get pangs of worry. ‘Oxford is going to be really hard’, you’ll think to yourself, ‘I’m not going to make any friends, I’m going to be found out as a fraud!’ It’s quite the comedown after the success of your exam results. Suddenly you realise that A-level History is not actually that difficult. Suddenly you realise that the secondary reading you’ve been assigned for your first essay is more than the entire contents of your school library. If this doesn’t cause you to panic then, well, I salute you again.

The next few weeks will be both fantastically free and oppressively condemned. You know that, by the final days of September, you’ll be locked into a three-year sentence that only ends where the real world begins. You’ve got to make your time at home count; no vacation will be the same again. You’ll rush to see all your friends before you leave, go on an anxious family holiday, get drunk and laugh and pretend that you’re REALLY EXCITED to be heading to Oxford, all the while cowering in terror at the sight of the word.

And then, in the first week of October, you’ll head to Oxford. You came for interviews, in the winter when most of the students had left, except for reclusive and harassed looking third years. Back then it seemed idyllic- you pottered around the town, you worked a little bit in your top-notch interviewee room, and you left with pride at being ‘an Oxbridge candidate’. In October that façade will crumble. You’ll realise that you’ve been set an essay in fresher’s week, or worse, if you’re a maths student, that you have an exam to sit. You’ll realise from countless faculty and general library inductions that you’re expect to ‘work independently for eight hours a day’, and that you can’t be sure whether tutes and lectures will be at 9am the morning after your favourite club night, or bizarrely placed on Saturday afternoons.

And you’ll be sold tickets to three or four different events during the week, which you’ll feel an obligation to go to, even if you’re going to spend the next few years never setting foot again in Carbon, Lola Lo or Rappongi. And when you wake up the next morning, the feeling of dread will grip you again, and you’ll scurry to be the first fresher in the library.

The dirty little secret of Oxford, however, is that it’s not that hard. You’ve been sold a lie. Your teachers at school are in on it. The national papers are in on it. Your tutors at Oxford are in on it, heck, they’re the ones who started it.

Getting into Oxford is the difficult part. It’s difficult not because A-levels are hard (you’ll realise very swiftly how easy they are), but because it’s a lottery. Some great students will miss out; some shitting students will get in. It takes hard work, yes, but it also takes a lot of luck. You might’ve had to get three As but, chances are if you’ve been accepted to Oxford, that wasn’t the most taxing proposition. The real fear was that, last December, you were going to be overlooked in favour of Mr Self Confident Eton-Thompson, or Miss State School Quota. All the rumours- good and bad- are true, and the result is an admission system that rewards the lucky, rather than the brilliant.

But lucky you are, and now you’re at Oxford, facing its infamously difficult curriculum. Your tutor has dedicated their entire life to academia and sits you down and tell you that THIS IS IT- this is the best place for the most brilliant people. Just like them. It’s a self-aggrandising boast, albeit a fun one, and you should take it with a pinch of salt. Oxford is a place for lucky people who worked hard enough to get a few As at A-level. If you managed that, then you’ll be able to cope with your course here. 

Your real enemy at Oxford isn’t the work. It isn’t the nights out that write you off for the next day. It isn’t the horribly time consuming extra-curriculars like the Union, the Blues or Cherwell. It’s the fact that you’ll be constantly scared of failure and constantly supposing that you’re on the brink of it. You’ll sit and worry that your marks aren’t good enough, your essays aren’t incisive enough, your bibliography isn’t long enough, your lab work isn’t precise enough, your vocabulary isn’t big enough, your translation isn’t accurate enough…

But it will be. So long as you’re confident, you’ll be fine. You’ll learn to get by working a few hours a day. You’ll become used to staying up late at night to finish an essay. And you’ll become immune to the constructive criticism of your tutor who, after all, is just there to help you. And, suddenly and mysteriously, it will all cease to be that difficult, and everything you spent the last month worrying about will just float away…

Of course, that’s not to make you all big headed. If you don’t worry about your work at all and choose to go out all the time and then come back late and make loads of noise outside my window, well, I will kill you. I want you to enjoy your degree, so long as you enjoy it quietly and nowhere near me.

Congratulations,

Disgusted St Aldate’s

A major study of newspapers by Oxford researchers has found coverage of immigration to be overwhelmingly negative

The study found the word ‘illegal’ was often linked to ‘immigrant’, while ‘asylum seeker’ was usually paired with ‘failed’.

The researchers, from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, looked at 58,000 articles in every national newspaper in Britain.

They looked at the words most commonly used in the discussion of immigration, with ‘illegal’ the buzz word in both broadsheets and the tabloid press.

Many campaigners have voiced concern over the prejudicial language used across the press.

“The bias in much reporting on immigration isn’t just bad journalism, its undermining Britain’s prospects for economic recovery,” said Atul Hatwal of the Migration Matters Trust, speaking to the Huffington Post.

Immigration is key in cutting Britain’s deficit, he said: “But in a media climate where most of what’s reported is negative, the real debate we need, about how to best harness migration to support economic recovery, is barely heard.”

Similarly, Judith Dennis, of the Refugee Council, said she preferred the term ‘refused’ ahead of ‘failed’ in the case of an asylum seeker.

She also pointed out the problems surrounding the use of the work ‘illegal’, noting that people entering Britain from troubled areas such as Syria often could not gain a visa in advance meaning they arrive in the UK without legal documents. This presents a very different scenario from the general impression given by the phrase ‘illegal immigrant’.

“I think some of it is genuine misunderstanding,” she said. “People do not realise when they are using the term, they might not have thought what the impact of that might be on someone who is described as illegal. It simplifies people’s stories.”

Taking a closer look at the results, the researchers produced a list of top words in tabloids for immigrants, including ‘coming’, ‘stop’, ‘influx’, ‘wave’, ‘housing’ and ‘sham’.

Many of these also featured in the mid-market range, including the Daily Mail and the Express, while the broadsheets’ list included ‘Muslim’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘children’.

The researchers said the language of numbers (for example thousands, millions), and security (suspected terrorists) were common.

Tristan Mora, a student at Exeter College who comes from Michigan, argued that although the research focused on Britain, it reflects an imbalance of coverage found in much of the western world. “Immigration and the immigrant population in the US are negatively represented, with a similar usage of words like ‘illegal’ and ‘failed,’ and I find it ludicrous and insulting.

“While there would be problems with an overflowing ‘illegal’ immigrant population, I have seen no such apocalyptic influx and if anything immigrants should be welcomed with open arms to countries where they seek to improve their standard of living.”

Dr. Scott Blinder, Acting Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said: “Immigration is a very prominent issue in British national newspapers, and these media outlets play a major role in the nation’s political dialogue, so it is very important to have a comprehensive picture of this discussion.

“Our data show that illegality, the failure of asylum claims and the size of migrant inflows and populations are clear focal points for newspapers of all types.

“It is extremely difficult to untangle whether media drives public opinion about a subject, or whether it is politics or public opinion that drives media coverage, or some of each.

“But understanding the language newspapers use to describe migrants helps shine a light on how they are playing their role in the complicated relationship between media, politics and public opinion.”

In a packed room in Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford, Hadley Freeman is doing what she does so well: roundly condemning the Daily Mail. The tone of her voice is deceptively light and playful as she mercilessly dissects the Mail’s image of the ideal woman. “If the Daily Mail had its way, all women would preferably be twenty-four, married with five children, silent, and dressed from head to toe in Boden. If you deviate from that you are a sad-sack lesbian who is doomed to a life of misery.”

Her talk is going well. Freeman is here to promote her new book, Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies, a collection of essays which Guardian reviewer Miranda Sawyer described as a “worthy, funny addition to our new tits-n-wit-lit genre”. The book confronts the many issues a modern woman must contend with today: the toxic misogyny of the media, disappointing portrayals of women in film and books, and why we all think being in a relationship is the only true validation of happiness. 

Coming to Oxford must be a nostalgic experience for Freeman; reading English Literature at St Anne’s, she became editor of Cherwell in her final year. She then went on to work at the fashion desk at The Guardian for eight years, before becoming a full-time columnist and features writer. She has also contributed regularly to US and UK Vogue and so must have first-hand experience of the media’s unhealthy portrayal of women. She tells me she wishes it was term-time: “I always like to see the students around town.”

I’m speaking to Freeman before her talk begins. In the short time we spend chatting, it strikes me how likable she is: her answers to my questions are warm and witty, but she is also sharp and no-nonsense. Nevertheless, Freeman is surprisingly modest about her own achievements, so much so that I wonder if she should reread the chapter in her book about how to avoid what she calls ‘Self-Deprecating Tourettes’. While Freeman doesn’t do herself down unjustly, she is reluctant to admit that her book can be identified with the recently sprung genre of amusing feminist literature that has been spearheaded by the likes of Caitlin Moran (How To Be A Woman) and Tina Fey (Bossy Pants). Such women realised that comedy sometimes has the potential to convey an important point more successfully than the dry academic style that characterised earlier feminist literature such as Betty Friedan’s seminal The Feminine Mystique and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. Moran and similar have evolved a style that is as subversive today as Friedan and Millett’s works were to second-wave feminism; the bold, abrasive attitude that characterises such ‘funny feminism’ has become massively popular among young women of this generation.

It seems clear to me that Be Awesome is of this ilk, but Freeman does not view it as a feminist book. She points out that it’s “a bit weird how women just talking about equality and being funny about it are immediately put into some little niche or box. But it’s a box I’m very proud to be in, and a term I’m very happy to use for myself and the women I admire.” It has been suggested by reviewers that Freeman should try her hand at novel writing, but Hadley was disillusioned by fiction when, at twenty-six, she pitched an idea about a novel that ended with the female protagonist quitting her job at the Daily Mail and getting a job at a better paper: “that was a happy ending to me”. Her agent was not of the same mindset. “I remember my agent saying, ‘getting a good job is not a happy ending, Hadley, could there be a boy in the background that she likes?'” She laughs. “I have a nice agent who wouldn’t say that now.”

Freeman has high expectations of what a ‘proper’ feminist book written by her would need to contain. “It would have to include more discussion about the abortion debate, intersectionality and the 1970’s feminist movement in America. I’d definitely do a bit more about the history of feminism which I’m really interested in, whereas this just felt like I was saying things that any vaguely liberal, sensible woman thinks. I didn’t think of it as an actual political movement to complain about the Daily Mail.” But Freeman’s self-effacement cloaks many talents; reading Be Awesome it is clear that, while she might be stating the obvious when she writes about how being single or lonely is not abnormal, Freeman is doing the important job of illuminating how skewed our perceptions are of how we are supposed to appear and behave. I ask her if she thinks women are aware of this – does she see feminism in the twenty-first century progressing?

“I think women today are much more aware of feminism than they were ten years ago, they’re happy to identify with the whole thing, but I do think there’s a whole lot more misogynist crap around.” She sounds exasperated, as she does whenever we come close to the subject of tabloid misogyny and the Daily Mail or The Sun. “I think young women are under a lot more pressure than they were in the nineties, or even in the sixties. There’s more equality, you can’t be fired from your job for being a woman and abortion is still pretty much legal in most western countries, but women are basically portrayed as sexual objects and meat in the media.”

This leads me to ask her about her recent controversial article which justified why it was possible to shave your armpits and be a feminist. In Be Awesome, Freeman rightly condemns the brazilian wax for being for “people who dislike signs of female sexual maturity”. Yet isn’t shaving one’s armpits just a more accepted version of the same societal pressures? She negotiates the contradiction easily: “I do think it’s weird that they have been so normalised, but to accuse someone of not being a feminist because they get a brazilian is so missing the argument. You can have a brazilian and be a feminist, that’s fine, but you have to be aware of why you’re doing it. For me, a brazilian is just about pornography and paedophilia. But that attitude of ‘you have to be a certain way to be a feminist’ is dangerous and really undoes the feminist movement.” 

Freeman cites Nora Ephron, best known for writing romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle as one of ‘the great feminists of all time.’ Her book Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (1975), was one of the first books that got Freeman into feminism when she was in her mid-twenties. “She would write controversial essays on why she wanted to have bigger breasts, all these things I’m sure a lot of people see as anti-feminist, which is nonsense. She supported herself, she made her own money, she believed in equality. For me, that’s feminism. It’s not about whether you shave under your arms or not, it’s not about whether you wax your vagina or not.”

I suggest that the misogyny of the media is one of the most difficult challenges feminism has had to come up against, but Freeman disagrees. “The real challenge is the abortion debate as well as intersectionality: how different minority groups relate to feminism. Black women, Asian women, Spanish women, they feel that they’ve been excluded and have had different experiences.” She is happy to admit that “feminism is still mainly fronted by middle-class white women like myself”.

As she gets up to leave, I ask Freeman if she enjoyed Oxford. She grimaces. “I did it really badly. I’d been in hospital throughout my teenage years (Freeman suffered from anorexia) and I did my A-levels in a year at a crammer school. I was still basically a kid – so I just threw myself into the work. My memories of Oxford are of me in the Sheldonian obsessively trying to memorise Sir Gawain.” I tell her I will have to do this next year, and her flippancy is heartening: “I would say to all students out there, let yourself have a good time, don’t break your backs and don’t worry about firsts. It doesn’t matter. Honestly, I’ve been out of Oxford fourteen years now, and no one has ever asked me what class of degree I’ve got. You can get a 2:2!” And with that, the interview is over and she is hurried off by the events manager to go and prepare for her talk.

I watch Freeman tell her audience that if her book can stop one person from behaving as ridiculously as she did in her twenties, then that would be a justification for writing it. While it is hard to imagine Hadley Freeman ever being that ridiculous, it would seem that the message she is trying to impart is this: youthful folly is an indispensable step on the way to becoming ‘awesome’.