Let me transport you to Michaelmas 2024. My virus-riddled fresher self goes to her first ever tutorial at Oxford University, ego almost as high as her temperature. The way she saw it, life was great (debilitating fresher’s flu aside; seriously, what was in the air last year?). She had gotten into her top-choice university, was very happy with the results of her A Levels, and now living her Hogwarts dreams. Oh, were they shattered.
As an English and French student I have to write lots of essays, and this initially proved no issue to me as I am nothing if not an insufferable yapper. I thought, what could be better than this? Finally I was free from the shackles of A Level set texts (Dracula, please burn in hell again) and could write about any book or poem that I wanted. Then, one rainy Tuesday morning, I went to my first ever tutorial. I had just written my first essay on literary theory; for any English students out there, I’m sure you can remember the shock of coming to Oxford and having Barthes and Foucault shoved in your face with zero introduction. To any English freshers: yes, it gets better, but no, you won’t ever understand what T. S. Eliot meant by “the metaphysical poets”. Hell, I’m studying them right now and still have no clue what the guy meant.
My tutor was amazing, but quintessentially Humanities-at-Oxford: he set an essay with instructions so vague I almost looked with nostalgia upon the GCSE English days of point-evidence-explain. This first assignment was to write on the definition of a literary classic. It was a genuinely interesting question, designed to open up many different avenues of inquiry. It was close to being the worst piece of writing I had ever handed in, rivalled only by my year 4 short story about a crime-fighting polar bear. Or so I believed, after seeing the comments.
Having had very little explanation as to how I should approach such a fascinating yet broad question, I launched into what I now know is a terrible approach to an English essay: I threw in as much secondary criticism as I could find, hoping desperately that Derrida and Calvino could drown out my voice, or lack thereof. In the moment, I thought I was doing the right thing. Who wouldn’t want to read an essay that is just an amalgamation of aesthetically pleasing quotes from Oscar Wilde, in which the sentences are as long as humanly possible? (Just before starting to write this column, I found that essay and read it again. I won’t mince words: it is inconceivably bad, and requires a space telescope to find the argument). But let’s put aside hindsight and remember that it was my first essay, which I thought was actually rather good. You can imagine my proud, just-matriculated-and-thought-I-was-Hermione-Granger self swagger into that first tutorial expecting a standing ovation, a bunch of roses, and a monument being erected in my glory. Instead, I got every English student’s biggest fear: a comment calling my work “platitudinous”.
Platitudinous!
I know what you’re thinking, because I think it now too: girl, it’s not that serious. But it was for me, the student whose essay on Hamlet was once the pride and joy of her secondary school’s English department. Vanished were those days of fame and fortune: I had gone from star pupil to trite imbecile. The comments didn’t stop there; my writing was also superficial, sometimes incomprehensible, and rather amounted to a pile of generalisations. I even got the dreaded solitary question mark at the end of one of my sentences. Such comments are not an occasion for tears for me now – you could say I have been hardened by my time here. But back then, in my eyes, I saw this to mean “you are incompetent, mediocre, and may as well just hand back your Bod card and get out”.
It’s rough, getting a bad essay back. But it’s something that most of us will go through at least once in our time here. After getting those brutal comments, I realised that I kind of sucked, at least in relation to the work I was expected to produce. However, instead of wallowing in my grief, I picked myself up, dusted myself off and asked for guidance on how to properly construct an essay on literary theory. During the vacation I read widely, messaged my tutor a million times like a desperate ex, and eventually learned from my mistakes. When I wrote my next essay on literary theory in Trinity, I was a changed woman. No longer dragged down by mediocre platitudes, I had found my voice. And, as the people who know me will surely attest, I have not shut up since.
My advice to freshers, or anyone else, is this: when you get an essay back and the feedback is so harsh it makes Dolores Umbridge look like an angel, do not despair. Go back to your room, have a cry with your flatmates, but don’t give up. It really is just one essay. You will write so many during your years at Oxford that you probably won’t even remember what you were yapping about. I certainly don’t.