Love Letters: Halfway There! 

“Halfway hall” was a term I first heard around this time last year. I felt nothing but pity for the second years: how sad, to be halfway through your degree, to know you have such little time here left. 

Now, experiencing my own halfway hall, my feelings haven’t changed. My nomination for Most Likely to become Jan Royall (Somerville’s principal) has done little to assuage the terror I feel at being halfway through my degree. I’ve only just got started! 

I’ve been reflecting on my time here. My own halfway hall coincides neatly with five years of The Oxford Blue. Half a decade. The Blue has become really special to me. I can’t imagine coming to Oxford and not joining it. How different life would’ve been. I’ve been thinking about Love Letters. This column started on the 20th February 2024: that’s almost a year ago! 

Love Letters was many things. The guise I created it under was looking for love in the little things – sparked by my friend giving me a rose on Valentine’s Day. But it was also about training myself to be an optimist. It is named after an ex-boyfriend who was too scared to give me a love letter at the end of Michaelmas in first year. I decided I wouldn’t keep my love in anymore. If I felt something, I would express it. 

And I think that’s what I’ve done. I’ve expressed many things (often too many things) over the past year. I’ve taken the whimsy in my life and enshrined it onto the page. I’ve shared my biggest fears, some heartbreaks, and all the love I have in my heart. 

Love Letters has become a sort of diary for me over the past year. I have presented my deepest confessions for the entire internet to see. I’ve been more vulnerable through this medium than I ever would be in real life. It’s been scary, but it’s also been incredibly cathartic. I barely go a week without someone mentioning this column to me. It’s funny how something I created at the suggestion of a former Senior Editor has become one of the most important aspects of my life.

So, dear diary, dear readers, dear whoever: I am fucking terrified. 

I don’t want my degree to end. The past year and a half has flown by, as everyone assured me it would, and I hate that everyone was right. This degree has brought meaning to my life, this university has brought love. I was flailing in the wind before; here I am a person for the first time. 

First year was potentially the biggest rollercoaster of my life. I still marvel at how quickly I started trusting my friends: after watching Saltburn, I sat for a while and reflected on how they could all be completely lying about who they are. I found romantic love for the first time in first year and I was completely blown away by it. I still long for those long evenings in Trinity, feeling myself fall head over heels for someone. Every term cast Oxford in a new light. 

But Oxford and I are an old couple now. We know each other too well. There are no new twists and turns in its winding streets for me to discover, no surprises. It is a comfortable coupling, but somewhat boring. Perhaps I am the one who has become boring. I had so many aspirations in first year. I was going to visit every college bar. I was going to try every pub in Oxford. I was going to visit all of the Bodleian libraries. I was going to visit every museum. 

What happened? Where did the time go? I cannot be the only second year who feels this way – like I’ve wasted a year and a half of my life, time that I should have been making the most of. What have I been doing? What can I say I did whilst at university? What stories do I have to tell my children?

And then, I am reminded that halfway hall means halfway there. I am a glass-half-full kinda girl usually, but maybe I’ve been looking at this wrong. I should see the glass as half-empty. Sure, I’ve spent a year and a half here. So what? I have a year and a half left. And perhaps the second-year scaries might finally motivate me to grab Oxford by the horns and make the most of my time here. Take joy in every walk to Exam Schools, noticing all of the architecture that first made me fall in love with the city of dreaming spires. Savour every formal, knowing I will never have the chance to eat food like that again. Enjoy every essay, because God knows I’ll miss them once I’ve graduated. 

To the first years who might read this: don’t repeat my mistakes. Don’t take this time for granted. But to my fellow second years: I hope you’ll join me in making the next year and a half the most significant year and a half of our lives. Live in the moment. Take every opportunity. I look back on the past, and I look to the future (being Jan Royall, apparently), and now, halfway between my past and my future, I take a deep breath, and try to enjoy the formal without crying (I will, inevitably, fail). Happy halfway hall!