Living away from home for the first time can seem daunting at first. You shouldn’t be too worried – it really is pretty cushy, and certainly a long way from ‘the real world’, where you have to sort out bills and clean your own toilet. And yet, despite the allure of college living: I had a mouse in my second year room. No, I didn’t buy him from a pet shop and keep him illegally in a tank under my desk and hide him when people came in, feeding him sultanas and reading him the first drafts of my essays. Oh no. He decided to stay of his own accord.

During a particularly cold period in Hilary term, he was in my room almost daily. Every time I was alerted to his presence by a rustle and tried to locate him, he would dart back into a hole in the wall or down a pipe. On one occasion, I triumphantly cornered him and placed a shoebox over his miniscule body. I should have crushed him there and then but I wasn’t wearing shoes, and didn’t want fractured mouse rib embedded in my soft soles.

Gradually, I began to warm to him. When I saw his little face and whiskers I just couldn’t think of hurting him. He was a poor defenceless little rodent! I was much bigger than him, and it was horrible outside, who could blame him for seeking some warmth and company?

My noble extension of clemency was rapidly regretted. He bothered me for weeks thereafter, which taught me a lesson. This was evolution in reverse – survival of the weakest. I needed to learn to stand up to the weak. Hornets are black and orange to ward off predators. Perhaps nowadays the human race is so far divorced from the realities of nature that a more effective defence against Homo sapiens’s superior strength and brain size is to look really cute.

The other regular visitor to my room was of course my scout. This is yet another one of those Oxford words you will initially feel self-conscious about using at first. Your home friends will hate you now. Oxford has changed you, mate. A good scout can be an adviser, confidante, gatekeeper, even an advocate if you are ever in trouble with the powers that be. If you are enriching uranium in your sink or subletting your wardrobe, you are probably putting them in an unreasonably difficult position. However illicit toastie makers, sticking up your posters with blu-tac, one-night stands, or that one time something unspeakable happened in your bin – the likelihood of these events being reported will depend on your relationship with your scout. Buy them chocolate at the end of term. Be nice to them.

So, what about the other people you will be living in college with? Living in close proximity to people you don’t (initially) know very well brings with it some responsibility, particularly if you are sharing a bathroom or kitchen. Even if there is no shared space it is important to retain at least some awareness of your neighbours’ existence. One boy on my fresher staircase habitually urinated in the landing when intoxicated, hurled empty beer cans from his first floor window in the mid-afternoon, and listened to songs such as ‘Elton John – Are You Ready For Love?’ and ‘The Darkness – I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ at full volume at all hours. This isn’t really on. Do unto others and all that.

It inevitably takes a while to make your close friends in college. Don’t worry too much if you don’t immediately click with the people you spend freshers’ week with. The Oxford system is very good at ensuring you make good friends in a fairly quick space of time. You will instantly get to know people doing your subject and those on your corridor or staircase. Over a short space of time thereafter you will get to know pretty much everyone in your year.

Once you have a close friendship group in your year it is easy to expand to older years and other colleges. People in your year at your own college will probably (but not necessarily) be your closest friends while you are at Oxford – it will take you a while to find these, but once you have them you will start to enjoy Oxford and all it has to offer a lot more. Living in college is an amazing opportunity. You get to live a few metres away from all your mates for at least one year. Academic work in Oxford is difficult and time consuming for every subject, but ultimately prelims (first year exams) don’t matter. Have some fun while it lasts.

Your three or four years at university are said to be the best of your life. Setting the tone for your university career, freshers week has a lot to live up to. You are eighteen years old with a chance to meet lots of new people, experience life away from home and do it One Direction style and ‘go crazy crazy crazy ‘til you see the sun.’ But with a stack of pre-course reading to do and the inevitable nervousness of having to make new friends from scratch, it’s actually the second years that have more fun. Cherwell’s Lifestyle looks at the reasons why re-freshers week trumps the original.

Meeting new people

Freshers week is an exciting blur of organised fun and meeting far too many people for successful name-face matching. The problem with the whistle-stop you-must-try-to-meet-everyone-on-day-one approach is vitally flawed in that you never get beyond the undeniably dull fresher small talk. What’s your name? Where are you from? What subject are you doing? are questions that will haunt you for the entirety of your freshers week experience. Despite providing an easy conversation starter with an equally nervous stranger, this set of interrogatory questions sound more like a hideously un-sexy version of Cilla Black’s Blind Date. Going back to college as a second year offers much brighter prospects in the form of the re-freshers week. You have already established a solid group of friends who you have either spent the summer with, or didn’t manage to see – in which case you have the whole of refreshers to catch up on your summer antics. No longer being pigeon-holed by the “Fresher” title allows you to return with a whole new air of maturity. You will all comment on how young the new freshers look. “We definitely never looked that young…”

Reputations

As mad and alcohol oriented as any university freshers week is, the collegiate system results in a rather justified fear of getting a college reputation. If your college parents haven’t already warned you – they should. Do not bring back strangers from Park End in your first week. Do not streak across the lawn because someone dares you to. Do not exchange clothes with a stranger from the waist down in the middle Jammals (I learned this the hard way). If you do, be prepared for all the Sunday brunch gossip that ensues. As a re-fresher, you can get away with reckless behaviour. Not only can you live safe in the knowledge that you cannot possibly undo all the hard work you put in in first year to earn that flawless reputation but you also have a long list of mates ready to put you in the recovery position if needs be. Central to any Oxford experience; as a second year, you know what makes a good BOP costume. Life as a fresher is spent worrying about being creative and politically correct so as not to get your face branded all over the student (if not national) papers. As a re-fresher, you are liberated of all the stress; you have perfected the art of the home-made, last-minute, low-budget fancy dress costume.

Free-time

Freshers week is far more structured than you would ever have imagined. Whilst the freshers spend their days attending-or feeling guilty that they didn’t attend-all the scheduled welcome/fire safety/introductory talks, the second years are sleeping in until 2pm, lunching at The Grand Café (when the student loan comes through) and having a long session down the pub.

Sharking

However controversial, there is no denying that sharking is a massive part of re-freshers week. No matter how much you try to withstand temptation to shark, the excitement of the new ‘fresh meat’ coming into college is all too overwhelming. So whether you are abusing your position as Freshers Week President or acting the role of over-friendly college parent/grandparent (Sounds creepy but it happens- I can testify) you are guaranteed to get a bit more nookie than you did in freshers week. Even if the fresher in question is bold enough to seduce you, the second year, you will inevitably be termed a shark, for the mere principle of the age gap. 

Drinking

Be it subject or sport initiations or the first crew date of term, it is the second year’s responsibility to prepare the freshers for the uni lifestyle that awaits them. For the sake of tradition other than anything else, “down it fresher” can be heard echoing through the city of spires for the duration of freshers week, if not most of Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity. If you are a fresher, do not be intimidated. You can of course refuse to see off your drink, but over the year I found that the best tekkers was to always have a soft drink to hand, so that you are guaranteed the respect minus the intoxication. By the time you get to second year, you can wave goodbye to the binge drinking culture and welcome in the new academic year with a civilised glass of port amongst friends. “Down it second year” just doesn’t have the same ring to it…  

Freshers-flu-free

Two weeks into Michaelmas and half the population of freshers are overcome with sickness. The freshers flu epidemic is a phenomenon caused by a combination of a lack of sleep, excessive liver-bashing and a hell of a lot of germ sharing. You’re lucky if you can hear every third word of a lecture come 8^th week, over the coughing Mexican-wave. Noone has ever heard of re-freshers flu. That’s because it doesn’t exist. With a year of experience behind them, second years come back to college with a stronger immune system and a cupboard full of berocca and lemsip.

This is it. This is your whole year on Facebook. Or most of it. Discounting those who don’t have Facebook, obviously. Quickly scour through your pictures, think twice about giving a blow by blow account of the saga that is your packing experience. Freshers’ group etiquette is difficult to judge but there some very basic pitfalls to avoid. Oh, and the really helpful second years… they’re judging you.

Stupid questions will come back to haunt you.

For most it’s the excitement of a notification followed by a groan of disappointment. Yeah, people have questions; no one knows what to expect. But no, college doesn’t do your laundry for you. Yes, bring a bike. And saying you might bring a Segway instead isn’t funny or going to make you many cyber friends in advance. Frankly, you look like a bit of a prat. The contents of your freshers’s group never die. You will probably be reminded somewhere down the line, when renowned as the college’s biggest rugby player, that you once asked if you needed to bring an ironing board and an apron. The stupid questions carry on once you start too, and probably well on into second year. There is the tired, nay exhausted, frape, but asking a couple of hundred-odd people if you can borrow a pin gets old really very quickly. 

Eagerness is embarrassing.

The problem with Freshers’ groups is that they breed keenness and, if there’s one thing you don’t want to appear if you’re going for that air of disaffected cool, it’s keen. Apathetic and disinterested are much better for your social standing. This is by no means restricted to incoming freshers. For every interviewee who posts a picture of their college from the last time they’ve been up (still looking fundamentally the same as it has done for the last 500 years, although perhaps augmented with a squirrel/snow/large group of Japanese tourists), there’s that second year who just has the be the first one to answer any questions. Sometimes this turns into an arms race, with two people frantically trying to be the quickest to reply or the most helpful. They say it’s good intentions, but chances are it’s just to make sure they’re the most recognisable one on the RnB floor of Park End…

You think you’re a LAD? This will impress no one.

We’ve all been there: this is your very first opportunity to stake your claim as your college’s premier LAD/ LADETTE, and it’s time to get in there first. Stories of your banter will be whispered in hushed tones as you stagger around the quad, nursing a hangover and a bruise from that particularly brutal match or race. It’ll be ok though, because while you stagger you’ll have at least one, maybe three, other freshers doting on your every move, just waiting to hear stories of your intrepid derring-do, the time that you scored that try or the time you got so drunk you were thrown out of three clubs and STILL pulled. Trust me when I say this, the time to demonstrate your laddish tendencies is not the freshers group.

Don’t brag, you’re not that great.

You’ve managed to get yourself an Oxford offer. You either got lucky or are genuinely intelligent. Well done. It might come as a surprise to you then that every single incoming fresher is in the same position as you. You are not exceptional. Gently informing your peers that you managed to achieve 100 UMS marks in your Chemistry January exams will just piss people off. Sugar coating it with humility by insisting that you are “so surprised” or that you don’t know how you “managed it” is even worse. You will not come across as a shining beacon of intelligence but as very insecure.