Somewhere between secondary school and sixth form, I started watching a silly little sitcom about a community college called Greendale. You may have heard of it: Community. I loved the show for a few years, but that love had dwindled by the time I started university. That is, until my college husband walked out into our corridor one day wearing a Greendale Community College hoodie. I ended up rewatching Community, and fell back in love with the show.
In Community, one character – Abed – has a fascination with TV and film. He frequently makes self-aware comments about being in a sitcom, often to the discomfort of the other characters. There are tons of meta references, particularly when it comes to the show’s seasons. At least for the first few seasons, each one represents a year.
I liked the idea of separating chapters of your life into episodes, separating long periods into seasons. I’ve always felt that way about Oxford terms. It often feels like each term is a different season in a TV show, and that the next term will bring new twists and potentially new characters, new love interests. My terms tend to end on cliffhangers; I wait all vac to see where life will take me next.
Every term has a vastly different feel to it. It is well known that Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity can all be very different, but even across the years, each term continues to vary . Michaelmas of second year felt a world away from Michaelmas of first year. I usually end up enjoying whatever the term brings: it’s always an adjustment in the first few weeks, but by the time term ends, it’s become routine.
I think second year Hilary has been my favourite term so far. It was the first time I had returned unhappily to Oxford; it took all of 0th week for me to start enjoying Oxford again. I dreaded coming back: a bad Michaelmas had ruined my love for Oxford. Yet within my first two weeks back, things took a miraculous turn for the better. As I look back on this term, all I can see are good memories.
I have to give a little bit of credit to my tute group (who I am well aware may read this). I began term a little terrified to take a paper with only four other people, and was very sceptical of a tutor who was only seven years older than me. I was slightly ridiculed by my fellow historians at college for taking an archaeology paper (heavens forbid!) and completely terrified that I would be assaulted with information about radiocarbon dating. But as weeks passed by with tutes, lectures (very small ones), and presentations on material culture, as we bonded over making fun of our tutor and his insistence on “gender as an expression”, as I learnt far more than I ever wanted to about rowing, as I spent ridiculous amounts of money on coffees before an 11am tute: I found myself enjoying Hilary almost against my will.
This term began with my worst ever mark on collections. It has ended with me being more confident than ever about my degree, with a thesis in mind that I’m excited about. It began with things that made my life feel mundane, and it has ended with exciting new opportunities. It began with a warning from my tutor that my grades were slipping, and it has ended with a glowing tutor report.
I felt terrified to start the latter half of my degree this term. In Michaelmas, I’d felt like I was clinging on to the sense of Oxford being new. Oxford isn’t new for me anymore, but I’ve made my peace with that. Oxford is now a place where I know which cafes I like, which libraries I work best in, which days of the week it makes sense to do my Tesco shop on.
I’d finally made my routine: essays handed in on Wednesday morning (which meant an all-nighter on Tuesday), Sundays and Mondays being reserved for the bulk of my reading, Thursdays being a day of recovery. It makes me a little sad to have that order thrown off once again.
I feel sad leaving Hilary in the past. No matter what I do, Trinity won’t quite be the same. It could be better – a big part of me thinks it will be – but it also could be worse. Part of me is stuck in my old ways of mourning the past. As some of my friends can attest, I’ve been an emotional wreck all week. I cried over a video of an armadillo playing football just this morning. I am terribly sad to leave. But in Michaelmas I couldn’t wait to go home. Being sad to leave Oxford is a gift, in its way. It means I’ve treasured the past eight weeks. It means I’ve done something other than hole up in my room watching Gilmore Girls (although I’ve done a lot of that, too). It seems cringe and clichéd, but I truly am happy to be sad as I say goodbye to Hilary. It was the best of terms, it was the worst of terms. But now it’s done.