If you talk to anyone outside of Oxford – any home friends you’ve managed to hang onto, tenuously interested relatives, or your hairdresser – and mention the names of the terms, it’s a sure-fire way to look like a twat. You’ve just spent five minutes protesting that while you do go to Oxford, you’re not like the typical Oxford student, or anything embarrassingly obnoxious like that. And then the carefully-constructed image of normality is shattered as you loudly launch into a story from ‘last Trinity’ or ‘my first Michaelmas’.
I’m not one to talk. While I did have to google how to spell the name of the first Oxford term, I still proudly emblazoned it across my first Instagram ‘university dump’. While others’ captions read ‘semester one!’ or ‘autumn term!’, mine advertised something sentimental about some bloke named Michael. By the time we’d made it to Easter, Michael had been long forgotten, and I’d branched out (albeit less fondly) to my new friend, Hilary. I’d catch myself talking to home friends about university and absent-mindedly slipping into this ridiculous Oxford lingo, only to be met with raised eyebrows and kindly-suppressed sniggers.
Oxford students seem to lean one of two ways. If you’re like me, when not writing articles about it, you are mortally embarrassed at the association of going there. A casual chat about 20-year-old activities turns into an ‘oooh’ or an ‘oh?’ or an ‘ah, right’. I once had an awkward conversation with a customer at my old work, going to great lengths to avoid sharing the information of where I was going to university. ‘I’m off to somewhere called St Hilda’s college. Where is it? Slightly north of London…’ My avoidance might seem excessive until considering my boss’s response to finding out. I’d never heard the term ‘university of life’ before then, but I became very familiar with it over the following month and a bit. I’d be cornered in the washing up cupboard and lectured on the shortcomings of a university education until I’d taken the top layer of varnish off the plates.
The other type of student can be characterised, oddly enough, by my father. My dad did not go to university, and has a handful of GCSEs and half an A level to his name. Despite this, I marvel at the similarities between him and the Montys and Ptolomies of Eton when projecting ‘OXFORD’ across a room. I came home from my first term to watch my sister in her school play, and spent the interval wincing as my dad tried to indirectly alert as many people as possible to the place of my education. ‘Thought that girl looked like one of your TUTORS from OXFORD love! Do they study this play at OXFORD? You’ll have to show your OXFORD friends some photos.’ He tried it with HILDA’S before realising it was a college that nobody had heard of.
However, regardless of the type of student you are, the obnoxious quirks do slip silently through. I can usually catch myself before complaining about my ‘collections’, or muttering about the heat of my ‘sub fusc’, but the term names evade my censoring still. It’s too second nature now. ‘Semesters’ feel alien, uncomfortable. Now in my final year, I am confronted with a choice. Either I abandon Michael, Hilary and Trinny(?) at the final hurdle, or I embrace them as embarrassing collateral – the same way you might resign yourself to the merciless posting of the club photographer the morning after the event. There’s a familiarity to them, at least, and I figure we may as well be reluctant friends.
This familiarity leads me to consider the terms as individuals – Oxford individuals. Procrastination at its finest leads me to contemplate which student stereotypes might map best onto these academic signposts – for better or worse. Up first, Michaelmas. Michael is the overconfident fresher. Full of the foolish joys of youth and presumption, deadlines feel meaningless, tutors are usually in a relatively good mood, and Oxford at this time of year, much like most men in Bridge, looks better in the dark. Egos remain intact, naïve to the cutting academic feedback to come. Everybody is best friends. Hangovers are familiar only in the sense that they sound a bit like a city in Germany. As Michaelmas ages into second year, optimism blooms from long summer months spent without essay deadlines, and delight blossoms at being no longer the youngest students, and thus the least able to handle their drink. Even third and fourth year Michaelmas remains cheerful, excited for cosy library study and holding onto Christmas lingering just around the corner.
Hilary’s idea of an exciting day-out is a tentative venture to Najar’s or a reluctant potter to Christchurch Meadows. She’s not been to Bridge since first year and frankly doesn’t miss the smell of sweat, the shoving, and the presumptuous men breathing down her neck. She’ll tell you this as well, peering down her nose at your sorry disposition on a hungover Friday morning. Dry January is her natural state, her bod money is spent on J2O at the college bar, and the highlight of her week has been watching Traitors in bed (she is undeniably real for this). Hilary works in her room because of the constant supply of tea. If she’s feeling adventurous, she might do a stint in the college library, but certainly not if it’s raining.
Hilary’s best friend is Trinity. The unlikely pair couldn’t be more opposite, but that’s why their dynamic works. Trinity is the Bridge Thursdays fiend, the Cheese-Floor defender (for those who remember), the person who actually goes out on May Day despite having a presentation due the next day. If you need to know where the cheapest pint is in Oxford, Trinity’s your girl (and Spoons is regrettably your pub). She’s also a bit like Batman, in that she’s a totally different person by day. Locked in the library, the productivity legend seems to get a week’s worth of work done in about three hours, and somehow seems to have started on revision at least a month before you’d even contemplated it. If Trinity had a coat of arms, it’d have a library book balanced on a VK as its crest.
The three potter through Oxford life, surviving it in their own ways, and finding joy in its different parts. If I’ve learnt anything in my two-and-a-half years here, it’s that there are different positives provided by each turn of the academic season. There’s a hope to be found in Michaelmas, a solidarity about Hilary, and a light-heartedness to be encouraged in Trinity. While my home friends, relatives, and hairdresser might raise a well-warranted eyebrow, there’s a caricaturish charm to the Oxford terms that I’ve come to love. Familiarity can turn to fondness, and inspire positivity – something we could all do with a bit of at this time of year.