I got all nines at GCSE and 3 A*s at A level. I’m not trying to brag – trying to show off about the number of nines you got at Oxford is a bit like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Instead, I am simply saying that, coming from a tiny rural secondary school, I went from being a big fish in a backwater stream to another member of the mob. 

My first Michaelmas was a term of contradictions. I matriculated wearing docs that were a size too big and carrying grand designs about a first, a PhD, and a stellar career where I redefined the field of my fancy. I got lucky – in the academic sense, it seems my wildest prayers had been answered. My first pieces of work were very well-received and I had a tutor who liked to prophesy about my ‘potential to do very well in finals’, never mind that I was barely three weeks into my degree. It seemed the first step of my ambitious plan was on its way to being realised. 

Only – I wasn’t happy. The numbers scribbled in red pen at the top of my problem sheets were creeping higher, but this failed to give rise to even the faintest flicker of satisfaction. Rather, I remember distinctly that I cried four times on the first day. I was too shy, I was too weird, I couldn’t make friends. It seemed that I had been wired to understand epistemology but no one had bothered to give me the manual on moving away from home. My academic performance did nothing to soothe the spiral I found myself entering and soon I stopped attending lectures, and then tutorials, altogether. 

Waxing about my academic prowess might seem counterproductive for writing on the topic of ‘accepting failure’ but I had failed. It took me until I was nineteen to realise this. Failure to me had always meant a mark dropped on a tricky integration problem or an essay that wasn’t quite up to scratch. I had never even considered that ‘having a good time’ was an examinable subject, and I had just received my first F. I was stunted socially and had no idea how to live in a city or meet new people or do any of the things that came so naturally to everyone else. I was suddenly struck with how pointless it all had been. I remember the month before A levels started, when I would skip break to sit in the library and toil over second-order differential equations because I was convinced that an A* in Further Maths would make me happy. I now think of all those hours I could have spent with my friends (who I now rarely get to see) as time I will never get back. 

By Hilary, I realised the position I was in was untenable. I couldn’t show my ticket to the usher at the cinema without hyperventilating. I wouldn’t leave my room for two days at a time. I rusticated and left Oxford, unsure if I would ever come back. 

When I was perhaps nine or ten, a relative had told me that I’d go to Oxford one day. But now, for the first time since I was four, I was left adrift. No schoolwork, no deadlines, no reading. I had six months to kill and a menial job serving coffee and pasties to tourists and no one below the age of 55. I could no longer centre my identity around ‘being clever’, and I was scared that there was nothing else to me. 

When you find yourself without what was once central to your identity, you are forced to find other things to fill the void. It’s like when you go through a particularly crushing breakup and decide that you absolutely must learn to rock climb or cook or knit. My success had been my safety net for as long as I could remember and it had dumped me without so much as a backward glance. So I sought comfort somewhere else. I went for long walks and listened to podcasts. I went to a festival, and then another. I disentangled myself from this limiting ideology that I, as an Oxford student, must be bookish and ambitious and introverted to a fault. To the perfectionist version of me, this was horrifying – from her perspective, I was wasting precious time. But it was simultaneously the first time in my life I got to relish an afternoon nap or a slow morning without the threat of some failure hanging over me, and I quickly discovered that I preferred this slower, gentler, more delicious mode of existence.   

This is the most important lesson I have ever been taught. I had to learn it the hard way. You can be a perfectionist, if you want: you can get a first and sit hunched over in front of your laptop until 2am getting that last reading done. But I’ve found that it was never worth it. I would be the same person now if I had gotten 3 As. Doing so well in my first term didn’t stop me from hating every second of the process. So if the Oxford degree doesn’t deny perfection, then I think you should. 

We are now at the opening of my second Hilary as a fresher and I am enjoying my time exponentially more. Academia simply isn’t central to my life anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my degree, and I still intend to get the results I know I can achieve. But I won’t be working myself to the bone, because I know it won’t make me happier. This term I’m running, I’m rowing, I’m writing, I have a radio show, I’m promising myself I’ll learn to DJ so I can save my friends from another night of Dizzee Rascal at Bridge. I’m so lucky that I’ve met so many wonderful people. I might still spend a lot of time in the library, but if I’m given the choice between another hour in the Glink or a Quackers Wednesday, you know where to find me.