Saying Goodbye to the Spires

A spouse, a first, or a blue… they say that you leave Oxford with one of these three things. But I think it’s about time a fourth was added into the mix: a neurodivergence diagnosis. If you’re an Oxford student you’ll understand my argument for this, if you’re not suffice to say that there is a large concentration of neurodiversity in the university. Stereotypically, this makes a lot of sense. But I am not writing this to simply focus upon this trend within the student body. Rather, this is my final post discussing my undergraduate journey. I have packed up my room, my results are out and many of my friends graduate in a matter of days. Which of the list did I achieve? Certainly not the three traditional options.

As I sat drafting this, I was experiencing extreme fomo. The majority of my friends were at balls while I sat soaking up the evening sun in Jesus’ second quad, knowing that in many ways I’d already had my final hurrah at Oxford. It felt like an ending as I wished a group of friends a good night, but it also felt like the most stereotypically Oxford night imaginable. There was a Prosecco cork on the bench beside me, a group of freshers celebrating the end of their exams in the typically brightly coloured manner. A group in white and another in black tie had already been past, to be replaced by alumni attending a gaudy. It was the Oxford aesthetic in a nutshell. That’s what I love about the university, somehow you could step into any era of its history and it would be exactly the same. It’s this history that draws tourists to the city every year, that had them filming over the gate as we attempted to hit the clock with a cork in First Quad following exams. It’s strange to now in many ways be on the outside of that.

The term was all in all a strange one, feeling as though it was split into two very distinct halves: before Finals and after Finals. Everything before Finals was a mad scramble of academia. Arriving back in the city after my 20 hour journey, my head became buried in my books almost immediately. Although I know that there were plenty of things going on in those first seven weeks, what I remember is days of medieval literature and that feeling that there was too much information to cover in too short a space of time. Catching up with friends became study dates and I reached my first burnout by the end of 0th week. In many ways it was the easiest my university life had ever been, certainly to simplest. I made the decision to remove myself from all of the big commitments in my life and even spent a week in the Cotswolds immediately prior to my exams so as to truly remove all of my distractions. That week in a cottage on my own was probably the most peaceful of my time in the south and certainly allowed me to catch up on sleep and live a healthy existence for a few days… Something I sorely needed seeing as I arrived on less that four hours sleep having been at an opera afterparty in Spoons the night before (classy I know, but in our defence its the only thing that was open after our midnight get out). Ok, so maybe I didn’t have a completely distraction free run up to Finals, but I swear the opera was it!

During exam week itself I learnt a valuable lesson about myself: I may love studying but I am certainly not an academic. Learning quotes had me falling asleep; the stress of the situation causing an almost allergic reaction. The lethargy was something that I carried through the first half of the week and would have carried through the second if my reputation hadn’t saved me from my own study slump. Therefore, Wednesday night saw me sitting in the gardens of The Queens College reviewing a performance of Into the Woods. As for Thursday? Well, Thursday night saw me sitting in the stalls of The Playhouse reviewing Two Gentlemen of Verona. On the surface this must seem like a truly crazy way to spend the evenings of my exam week; however, I felt more awake and on the ball from my Friday exam than for the other two. Proof of what I spent two years telling my tutors: theatre isn’t the problem, it’s the solution.

And so exam week ended and most who know me would assume that I went straight to bed and didn’t move for two days… Not quite! Instead, Friday night saw my sobriety end with a bang… or rather a ball. The Union Ball turned out to be perfectly placed so as to become a celebration of my having survived Oxford. It was a brilliant night and the beginning of a few chaotic days of celebration and catching up with people… after which I did indeed crash. Sixth to eighth week passed in a strange blur, in which I was free and yet so many people around me were still studying. Our trashing came on the Tuesday of sixth, my birthday a few days later, theatre and cinema trips followed… it was a peaceful time but also felt like treading water. The best parts were the spontaneous ones, like going to drinks with the principal and finding myself in a cinema a few hours later with friends and Too Good To Go donuts.

True chaos began the second my best friend finished his exams – that day being a classically crazy Oxford day. Running from a friend’s performance exam, to a trashing, to my Schools dinner, to a party, I eventually found myself in Bridge! I think that’s what I’ll miss most about my university life – the sheer insanity of it. That I can be wearing a floor length dress having dinner with all of my tutors only to be in a club two hours later, still wearing the bodice of the dress in question. I think that night was probably the final truly Oxford night I had, everything feeling like a holiday from there on out. It was days of swimming and barbecues and bars, the sun finally coming out so as to make it a magically ending to a magically chapter in my life.

When I started uni my uncle told me to enjoy it as it was ‘all downhill from Oxford’. Looking back on the whole adventure, there are certainly a lot of things that I’d change, but ultimately I had the best time and do not regret a single second of it. Oxford is what you make it, yes, but also the place seeps into your bones if you let it and makes you. All I can hope is that the next adventure will be just as thrilling.