No matter what your background, where you’re from, or what type of school you went to, starting your Oxford degree will be a new challenge. As well as all the usual difficulties facing a fresher living independently for the first time, you are faced with the task of crossing the gap between school work and the academic rigour of Oxford. When I was sent my reading lists and lecture list, I remember feeling overwhelmed, to the point where I was questioning my decision to come to Oxford. However, I was surprised at how quickly I adapted and fell into a pattern with my work.
Attending my first meeting with my tutors, in the same room where my interviews had taken place all those months ago, I was convinced that I’d got in by mistake, or that I’d somehow tricked them into letting me in. Of course, I knew I had the right grades to be there, but, coming from a background where few people go to uni, I was sure that my new course-mates were far more prepared / cultured / intelligent than I was. Speaking to these course-mates later on in term, I discovered that they too suffered from this ‘imposter syndrome’ at times. Unsurprisingly, given the (disproportionate) prestige heaped upon Oxford by the press, no-one seems to feel ‘good enough’ – but you should rest assured that the tutors don’t make admissions choices lightly, and so you definitely did not slip through by accident.
Quietly acknowledging that you’re good enough to be here is the first step towards bridging the gap. Of course, it goes without saying that the work will be more difficult than school work. There will be lots of new concepts and terminology to grasp, no matter what your subject. Furthermore, you will need to adapt to the tutorial system, which is daunting because it requires you to perform on the spot (potentially with lots of holes in your knowledge – or worse, a hangover – to disguise). Yet, what I found most difficult to adapt to was undoubtedly the workload.
I would be lying if I said the workload here is easy, and so you might find yourself questioning whether you are up to it. Like many people at Oxford, I had gone through GCSEs and A levels doing relatively little independent work, in many subjects doing the minimum to achieve the grades I wanted. This attitude does not work at Oxford. I soon had to adapt and learn to be a proactive learner. When feeling overwhelmed, you need to organise, even if, like me, you’re a floordrobe, last-minute kind of person. In the most basic sense, to organise you need to figure out exactly what you need to do, and divide up your time accordingly.
Figuring out what you actually need to do can be a lot more difficult than it sounds. This is especially the case for humanities students, who, contrary to popular belief, are not nocturnal creatures exempt from the stresses of Oxford. Whilst with maths and science subjects, lectures and labs will usually be compulsory, humanities students have to choose which lectures to attend, and spend much of their time studying independently. At first, I had serious FOMO if I missed a lecture, and attended just about all of them all of them. This is an easy mistake to make since I found that many of the lectures are genuinely interesting. However, this ended up eating too much into the time when I was supposed to be studying and working on essays, so I had to learn to be more selective. I would advise you to attend the majority of lectures in the first week, especially those which your tutors recommend. After the first couple of weeks, you will have a feel for which lectures you enjoy, which are most relevant to the topics your tutor is covering, and which lecturers’ styles you find the most interesting. Now, you can trim your lecture timetable down to make it more manageable. I would not recommend skipping too many though – lectures often sparked interest in new things not on the reading list and allowed me to go off on tangents, making my essays more individual as a consequence.
Between classes, lectures, and tutorials, you will also be expected to do a hefty amount of reading too. As I’ve said, n the first few weeks of Michaelmas, I found the reading overwhelming – especially since it’s so different to A levels, where all the information you need to know is set out neatly in textbooks or specifications. One of the best things about Oxford is also one of the most challenging – that you can pick what you read and therefore tailor your studies to your interests. Of course, there is usually required reading, and I would really not recommend skimming over that (I had a few hairy tutorials early on where my knowledge of the required reading was very below par). However, your tutor will usually expect you to choose other things off the list to read. If, like me, you often leave things until the last minute, it can be useful to ask your course-mates what they enjoyed reading and go for that!
As you approach your first term in Oxford, I think it helps a lot to shake things up and try different routines. For example, I had never been a morning person, nor did I like working outside of the comfort of my bed, but I found that sometimes the best time to write an essay is at 7am, when your head is clear (and so are all the desks in the college library!). It’s also useful to explore the numerous libraries which you now have access to – not only is it refreshing to work in different spaces, but you’re less likely to get distracted by familiar faces in a library other than your college one. Some days, when I wanted to mull over a question or find inspiration for a new approach, I’d head to the Taylorian or the Rad Cam, which have beautiful architecture and atmospheres perfect for daydreaming. But if I wanted to speed write an essay or power my way through a book, the Gladstone Link is great – it’s so compact and plain that there are no distractions.
The gap between school and Oxford is undoubtedly a daunting prospect at first, but before you know it, you slot into your place in Oxford and A Levels become just a wistful memory.