For the past 20 minutes, I have been staring at an empty word document. This was categorically not the plan. When I started writing my first column way back at the beginning of Michaelmas, I had a vision of myself sitting demurely in the Radcliffe Camera, gently tapping away on my keyboard with an effortless writerly instinct. Alas, the word document simply stared back at me, and I started mildly weeping from forgetting to blink. Never mind, I told myself, by the time I write my final column at the end of Trinity, I’ll have this sussed.
But now it’s been roughly 22 minutes, and I’m still struggling with what I can only describe as an underwhelming lack of creative inspiration. This is my last ‘Second Draft’ this year, and the irksome truth is that goodbyes can often be a little awkward. I’m determined to get this one just right. A few columns ago, I promised to be, and I quote, ‘frightfully serious next time’. Perhaps the time has come.
I’m reassuring myself that my lack of creative inspiration might come from the fact that I’ve just written a dissertation. I loved my topic and the research, but it nonetheless felt like a small beast, and has left me veritably drained. This wasn’t helped by the fact that, during the week I had to write my third chapter, we had a heatwave in Oxford (heatwaves are wonderful until you have to write a dissertation in a library that dates back to the 15th century and has very little ventilation). I think my brain melted irreversibly.
There’s also now the added pressure to write something good as, having had my column since November, I can no longer rely on the comforting anonymity of thinking that nobody will actually read this. My friends and family now ask me when the next edition is being published, which is unbelievably kind of them, but makes the writing process quite a sweaty thing. And the feedback can sometimes be severe; my grandfather, having read my musings on how much I dislike table football (I jested that I wanted to cut the feet off the little plastic players to save my ears), completely missed the joke and declared his concern that I was becoming ‘quite destructive’. Generally, however, the responses have been quite lovely. My friend recently described my writing as ‘annoyingly witty’, which I have decided to take as a compliment – I think?
And then there’s the imposter syndrome. One thing about Oxford is that no matter how good you are at something, you’ll inevitably meet a dozen other people who are much better at said thing than you. I like to think it’s keeping me humble, but there are days that I quite sincerely fear people will discover I can’t really write, I haven’t read as much as I should have done, and I can’t even talk the talk anymore. And that my brain has irreversibly melted.
All in all, I think what I’m actually trying to say is summed up much better by Dorothy Parker, who says, ‘I hate writing, I love having written’. She’s quite right (she’s also hilarious and well worth a research). But even if I can’t write very well until I leave my brain in the fridge overnight, I do still have some pressing thoughts on my year in Oxford. In true ‘Second Draft’ spirit – and to combat the aforementioned obstacles to lithesome storytelling – I will turn to a list…
What I won’t miss:
– Constantly thinking about my degree.
– A single bed the size of a church pew. I’m not exaggerating.
– A shower with all the vigour of a dripping tap and none of its reliability.
– Not having many third spaces. I think I’ve written about this before, but Oxford seems to have very few places for hosting friends or social gatherings. We don’t even have a table in our kitchen. (As my mother noted when I moved in, ‘They want you to be working very hard and sleeping in your single bed, darling’). When I think back to my undergraduate degree, I miss the way that my friends could pop in for a quick cup of tea, or cook dinner together and study companionably. It wasn’t even that glamorous; our kitchen cupboards had a habit of falling off at inconvenient moments, and, in absence of a lawnmower, we once spent an entire afternoon cutting the lawn with scissors. But it was fun. I remember making everyone Harvey Wallbangers one summer, in an array of different glasses that probably once belonged to the pub down the road. Now when I smell Galliano, I’m taken back to that June evening and the contentment of gathering my friends together. It’s something I’ve missed this year – the first thing I want to do when I go home is host a dinner party. *
– My caffeine dependence. It’s become a problem, and I would like to spend the summer working on my ability to be a functioning human without a flat white in my system.
*If you don’t know what a Harvey Wallbanger is, it’s just a Screwdriver with Galliano floated on top.
** If you don’t know what a Screwdriver is, it’s just a flamboyant way of ordering a vodka orange.
*** And if you can’t find Galliano, look for the tallest, thinnest, most ridiculously yellow bottle at the bar.
What I will miss:
– Constantly thinking about my degree. Weirdly, as time went on, there was something mildly comforting in having a small project to think about persistently. I think this sort of feeling will be recognised by anyone who understands the hypnosis of a final goal. The day after I submitted my dissertation, I went to the library out of habit, unsure what else to do with myself. Perhaps I’ve been distracting myself from the existential dread of the ‘What Next?’ question…
– Running in Oxford (this city is so deliciously flat).
– My friends. If you are one of my friends, please stop reading right now, because this feels all a bit gooey and I worry that you’ll think I’m a moony loser. And that would suck, because I’ve met such a wonderful, inspiring, supportive, funny group of people and I love them all very, very much. Before I arrived at Oxford, I treated academia as a largely independent pursuit. Throughout my education, I had always been insufferably self-sufficient. I taught myself my English A-level after deciding that I didn’t like my teacher (in fairness, he spent the first three lessons telling us which colour we should be underlining titles in, and referring to us quite insidiously as ‘fruitcakes’ – a memory that has lodged in my mind with frustrating alacrity). When I applied to Oxford, I didn’t tell anyone. Granted, this was partly damage control, as I knew both that I’d be disappointed with a rejection, and that the admissions statistics were not on my side. Over the last nine months, however, it’s become pretty clear that if you want to do something really tricky, really well, you’re best surrounding yourself with good people. A cup of tea with a friend nearly always makes you feel better about spending the rest of the day in the library. And a book recommendation from a passing conversation might change the whole trajectory of your thinking. Whilst I still believe that satisfaction is often to be found by following the path of most resistance, it’s possible to do so in the pub, surrounded by people who also have ambitious desiderata, whilst sharing ideas (and crisps). Success does not exist in a vacuum. There is much more I could say on this, but I’ll stop now for fear of mushiness.
– The jacket potatoes at Somerville lunch. I mention these firstly to detract from the mush, and also because I know there’s a small group of people who will feel passionately about this bullet point.
– My caffeine dependence. It’s a perfect excuse to meet up with people, and Oxford has many wonderful coffee shops.
So, apart from the hundreds of other important things that I would like to mention and will inevitably think of roughly half an hour after this is published, that pretty much sums it up. We recently had leavers drinks with our college Principal, who asked us what we had all learnt this year. After a slightly nervous silence, which didn’t initially bode well, there were some delightful answers. What struck me was that none of these referred to the work done as part of our degrees, but rather much more holistic observations like finding joy in the city, or learning how to get things wrong.
Which is probably how I should start to tie up this column. Our Principal taught us the word ‘Scaramucci’ – a unit of time equivalent to 11 days. I have been at Oxford for roughly 25 Scaramucci. And though I’ve learnt a lot, I’m still getting things quite wrong. I still don’t know what ‘heuristic’ or ‘ersatz’ means (refer back to my first ever ‘Second Draft’). I still lose my Bod Card for a maddening five minutes on a daily basis. And I still have a terrible sense of direction, despite having lived here since October. I’m generally a good speller, but no matter how many degrees I get, I will always struggle with wonder and wander (I once wrote an essay on Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’, and my whole slant was that whilst he was ‘wandering’ he was also ‘wondering’. Since then, they’ve been inextricably mixed up in my mind; it’s a confusion that has dogged me into postgraduate study). I recently had a conversation about dangerous chemicals with a STEM student, and found myself asking him, ‘do you use protection?’. Awkward silence. And I forgot to check whether my friend had a peanut allergy before schlepping to the shop to buy some ‘cheer up chocolate’ that would send her into anaphylaxis.
The list could go on. I think what I’m trying to say is that this year has been a period of refreshing juxtapositions. You can be both imperfect and successful. You can be both frustrated by your writing and simultaneously relish the challenge. You can be both fiercely independent and discover that achievements are often collaborative. And you can be both ready to leave and reluctant to say goodbye.
I wrote my dissertation on the friendship between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, who were inspirational, incredible women, both individually and as a pair. Brittain’s reflections on her time at Oxford are much more articulate than anything I’ve put together in the last 1800 words, so I’ll leave you with her observation that ‘College, far from turning out a type, seems if anything to emphasize what is individual and make one want to emphasize it one’s self’.
For now, goodbye. For those of you who can tolerate it, you might be glad to know that I plan to be back next year. For those of you who have found my column insufferable, you may breathe a small sigh of relief.
In any case, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for reading, for indulging my digressions, and for tolerating the occasional ill-advised metaphor. If nothing else, I hope I’ve demonstrated that it is entirely possible to make it through an Oxford degree whilst remaining slightly confused.