19/10/2024

Today, as the new cohort of freshers swarm the streets of Oxford, wearing their subfusc for the very first time, I pause and take stock of my life. 

I didn’t truly believe I would get an offer from Oxford – I think most people don’t. Offer received, I very nearly missed my grades. All of my first year here, I felt like I was here by the skin of my teeth: I felt like any moment, someone would catch on to the fact that I didn’t belong here. I was constantly asking tutors for reassurance that I was on track, and then, when I got that reassurance, I didn’t believe them. I felt certain that everyone who surrounded me was incredibly cool and interesting, and that they could see right through me. What if I was only being included to be made fun of?

In short, I had a terrible, terrible case of impostor syndrome.

I carried these fears with me throughout the entirety of first year. Even as my friendships became stronger, I still had days where I felt that my friends were only taking pity on me: when I compared myself to them, I couldn’t understand why they’d have any interest in being friends with me. I completed essay after essay and received generally positive feedback, yet still never felt confident in my essay writing skills. Though I joined numerous societies and got involved with my college’s JCR, I still wondered whether there was a place for me in Oxford.

My biggest hope is that no one feels the way I did. I hope the new cohort of freshers are the most confident and self-assured people on earth, because that is the best way to experience Oxford. Confidence shines through, and so does self-doubt. 

But to the many (I’m sure) freshers, and to those in older years who still question whether they fit in: yes, you do.

It wasn’t until I had finished my last prelim exam that I truly felt like an Oxford student. I had just finished my paper on the Haitian Revolution, and was heading down to Port Meadow in my subfusc, a bouquet of flowers in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other. I had just finished an entire year of university. Two hours later, lying in bed waiting for a shower to be free so I could wash all the paint from my face and hair, everything hit me. I felt so appreciative of the incredible people I’d met in Oxford. I thought back on every tutorial, and every essay, and how I had finally found a love of history through my studies here (nerdy, I know). I looked out of the window of my accommodation into the quad and thought about how breathtaking the view was, with a church framed behind the walls of the college and the paving stones glowing almost gold in the June sunshine. 

And then, everyone left. Oxford was over for an excruciatingly long fourteen weeks. I forgot who I had been whilst I was here, I forgot how to be a student, I forgot how nice random interactions in the kitchen can be, I forgot how convenient it is to live within five minutes of some of my closest friends. 

And fourteen weeks later, I was on the Oxford Tube, heading back to college. Mostly excited, but I could feel the nerves growing inside. What if everything went back to how it had been in Michaelmas of last year? What if all the progress I made had been erased over the long vac? 

Within a minute of stepping off the Oxford Tube, I happened to walk past someone I’d shared classes with in Trinity. She smiled at me in recognition as I lugged my massive suitcase past Tesco. And that was enough. I was slightly embarrassed – I looked like a right mess and was overheating in my college puffer, face red from pulling my heavy suitcase through sunny streets – but there was that feeling of being home that I had felt occasionally last year. There was that love of Oxford that I’ve spent hours trying to put into words. 

Eventually, my friends started slowly returning to college, and life went back to whatever kind of normal can exist in college. The paradise of mid-Trinity returned, even though the sun soon faded. Everyone moved into different (nicer) accommodation, but their rooms still looked eerily the same, even with different layouts. The posters and the bedsheets didn’t change. It became easier and easier to forget that I’d gone fourteen weeks without seeing these people who I am so used to seeing every day. 

I marked a year from when I first moved in, a year since my first tutorial, a year since the Fresher’s Formal, a year since my college proposal. It feels odd to mark a year, when Oxford has become so entrenched in my idea of myself as a person. It feels like living at home is just the interim between terms – I am not my true self until I’m back in Oxford. 

This isn’t something I thought would ever happen. It’s been sort of nice, to lose and then reinvent myself entirely. And as I see swarms of black and white uniforms, gowns flapping about in the wind, I compare who I was the times I wore that gown. The shy, terrified fresher who hadn’t really thought Oxford would ever happen, and later, the exhausted student with hand cramps who just wanted a nap after twelve hours total of exams. I think about who I’ll be the next time I wear it in two years: confident? Well revised? If nothing else, a finalist, about to finish her education, about to move on to the next step of her life. 

The life cycle of an Oxford student is very short. We get three years, four if we do STEM or a language, six if we do medicine. We go from anxious freshers to prelims students in a short time, and then become JCR representatives and committee members, essentially running student life in Oxford. And then we’re finalists. And so I stare out onto the quad in college at the freshers, lining up to take photos before matriculation, my first year behind me, ideas of dissertations and finals and maybe even a masters already crowding my future, and I think about how lucky I am to be here, even for a short time. In the past week, I have been reminded of how magical Oxford seems when you’re first here, and that magic has seeped back into my own view of Oxford.