At the time of writing this I have been back in Oxford for two weeks and six days. A year ago today I was coming to the end of my first month in Leipzig. 

It’s strange, this sense of nostalgia. I felt miserable for a lot of my time away and frequently spent days staring at the four walls of my bedroom, feeling like I was suffocating. I often had to remind myself that I was very fortunate to have this opportunity to be a modern day Rapunzel in a former East German Plattenbau (which literally means ‘concrete-slab-building’), and that many people don’t even get the chance to leave their hometown, let alone the country. As someone who battled with her mum Every. Single. Morning. to not leave the house for school, it was difficult to suddenly transform into an unanxious somebody who ventured out of her Plattenbau with an aloof flourish. When I talked with friends and family, I was often helpfully informed that “I must be having the best year ever!” This sentiment swirled around and around in my head, taunting me like the sirens of the Krankenwagen1 that seemed to be perpetually driving past my building. Enough is enough! I concluded many times over. 

Eventually I decided to be a bit kinder to myself and remembered two strategies I learnt during my time with therapy and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). The first strategy is to recognise the good things in life and your achievements by writing a short list at the end of each day. These good things are completely personal – what seems easy peasy to some people may have been your biggest challenge of the day to overcome.  When I first started doing this, I was in such a negative frame of mind that I often struggled to come up with just three things. Now I regularly have days where I fill a page! The second strategy is not to wait until you feel like doing something because often that time never comes. Instead, you have to get started when you still don’t want to. Obviously this can be very difficult, but I’ve found that by telling myself to just do five minutes and then stop if I’m still feeling terrible, I’m usually able to get started and end up carrying on beyond those five minutes. 

With the knowledge that getting started can be the most difficult thing, I began writing lists of activities that I wanted to complete before my time in Leipzig was over. These activities ranged from ‘get a pastry for breakfast’ to ‘find a hill in Leipzig’ (it is truly a very hillless place) to ‘solo trip to Prague’. Any time I thought of something that seemed a bit scary but I would regret not doing, it went on the list. Anything that would make Leipzig feel like home went on too. I felt so proud whenever I completed something that it didn’t really matter how it was as an experience, because the achievement was actually getting out and doing it. By the end of my time abroad I had belly-flopped numerous times in synchronised swim classes, scrambled up a hill to find a castle muttering to myself that this would be how I die, binge-watched live performances of Raye in a hostel bunkbed in Berlin, and eaten lots and lots of pastries for breakfast. 

I concluded my year genuinely sad it was coming to an end, but this sadness showed me that I had done what I had wanted to do – I had turned Leipzig into somewhere I had truly gotten to know. Now I’m back in the familiar place that is Oxford and it suddenly doesn’t feel like home anymore. Lots of my friends aren’t here and those that are here are living further away and doing exciting things like unpaid all-day lab work. It’s easier to stay in my room all day here because being holed away doing work is almost the expected thing. I’m not wracked by the same guilt about there being a city out there that I need to explore in its entirety. 

Nevertheless, I don’t want to lose the attitude I had while away. I don’t want to be complacent in the acceptance that I only have one year, and be held back by the fact that the friends I used to do things with are no longer here, or have different schedules. There are still things in Oxford that I want to do; things I will regret not doing. Putting myself forward for this column was the first challenge I set myself. I’ve wanted to write for a newspaper since first year but didn’t have the confidence to even apply. This term, well, I still didn’t have the confidence, but I knew it was my last chance. Although my ultimate wish was to write, even submitting the application was a massive achievement – I felt proud of myself as soon as I hit send. 

Now I’m creating a new to-do list – Oxford style. So far it consists of ‘solo swim at Hinksey’, ‘the Paperboat Cafe’, ‘go to a very Oxford talk’ and ‘get something from the Italian cafe’ (I’ve been eyeing those cannoli for over TWO YEARS now). I’m looking forward to sharing these solo adventures with you and making Oxford feel like home again. My daily lists of good things currently consist of ‘did reading for essay’ and ‘resisted getting a takeaway’. Things are about to get a whole lot more exciting…

  1. Ambulance ↩︎