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Hilary + Trinity 2002
I might as well finish writing my Oxford memoirs. Cutting for extreme length
Hilary
By the beginning of my penultimate term, I'd finally learnt a lesson I should have learnt long before - trying to make sure you've got enough time for academic work by not taking on too many other commitments just makes me work far less efficiently, rather than improving the quality of my work. So I applied to be co-chair of one of the OUSU Committees; on the grounds that I'd be good at this and that it wouldn't really take up too much of my time. I was very hurt when not only was I not appointed, but noone had the decency to tell me that before I learnt about it by reading an agenda. This was a mistake, there was no malice involved, but I still felt upset by it. Something good did come of it in the end; I had a whinge at someone I sort of knew in OUSU, and she asked me to go and help a group of people rewriting OUSU's electoral regs. You wouldn't believe the detail we went into over a series of sessions, each around two hours long. That was extremely rewarding, and really made me appreciate my law degree - it made me so much more aware of the meaning of particular words and how altering a word here or there changes the meaning of the clause you're creating. As I recall I also applied to be an OUSU Deputy Returning Officer that term - but that was another of these applications I made and never heard anything back about. I wasn't too bothered by that, because around the time when I ought to have noticed that I hadn't heard anything, I was in a particuarly bad state work wise.
I was really enjoying family law - the reading was manageable and I understood what was going on in the area and I had the confidence to not create essay crises for myself. In earlier days I'd said well 'I don't understand this very well, so I have to work as hard as I possibly can on it, 'cos no one can blame me if I worked' and translated this into 'I must stay up all night writing my essay, because if I don't, how can I have worked hard enough?' This is thoroughly broken thinking and I wish I'd realised this earlier.
What was less good were the collections I did at the beginning of Hilary - I got mid 2.2s on both of them - one of those I'd still put down to harsh marking. The reasoning behind my collections not being good was that I'd spent 9th Week of MT in College doing the collections I should have done at the beginning of MT but didn't do then, because of the state I was in over Joe - collections would have served no purpose whatsoever. Kathryn, Justin and I (IIRC) did them together. That meant that I didn't start relaxing/coming down from the stresses of that term for an extra week. Believe me, you need to relax for a couple of weeks after surviving an Oxford term. I also had an extremely hectic Christmas helping my Mum start her new business, together with usual family Christmas things, so I didn't have anywhere near as much time as I would have liked to revise.
After having our last ever tutes in 8th Week, and a couple of days off to relax, we all embarked on revision. Most of us had arranged to stay in Oxford (the libraries are there, and it's easier to work) for a good portion of the break. I don't really remember all that much about the actual process of revision, other than sitting in my room surrounded by files and books and feeling bored. We met up for lunch in hall and for a general whinge about how slowly things were going in and how bored we all were. Procrastination became an art form. Talking about revision timetables - writing one is a great idea, for any of you about to do exams - but write flexibility and write time off into it, and don't be surprised if you have to alter it as you go along. Going pen shopping - well that is important, most of us didn't do much handwriting during the course because we all had computers/used the college ones, so the prospect of having to write for three hours a day for nine days (approx) was not appealing. Finding comfortable pens to write with was therefore not *just* an excuse to avoid work. The same was true of blouse shopping - we had to do our exams dressed in sub fusc and you can't wear the same clothes every day for more than a week in the middle of summer.
I went home for a couple of weeks - we weren't allowed to stay in College accommodation for around two weeks, since there weren't any College staff there. Besides, a break before starting Trinity is just what you need.
Trinity
I guess when I went back about a week or so before term started, I was as much excited as I was scared. It was nice to go back to an environment where I knew I worked much better, and it was nice to know that it was nearly over, as scared and as bored as I was. Besides, I'd finally managed to arrange to meet someone that I'd been in email contact with for about nine months and I was both excited and curious about that. Soon lots of people were back, and life continued much as it had for the first bit of the vac - with everyone working away and then gathering for lunch, and in the bar/TV room in the evenings - take note all of you - you cannot work 24 hours a day, where we could moan about how horrible it was, and how much we hated it, and didn't want to be there.
We did our last ever collections - and I was really pleased when I got 68 - a high 2.1 for my family paper (though I was still worried about the others). Then we found that revision classes eat into one's day substantially - particularly when tutors don't turn up for them. It was quite hard to work for those first couple of weeks of term, because of the sheer number of classes we had. Revision classes/lectures are wonderful things, but need to be approached with care - they're often aimed at getting people to leap from 2.1 to 1st level, which isn't much help when everyone sitting there is going 'eh what are the basics' - but I didn't get too worked up about it. I knew that there was lots that I didn't know, but that that simply didn't matter for the purpose of passing finals - what I had to do was take what I could from the classes and use it as best I could. Understanding it wasn't important. In passing, I'd better note that while revising I made little/no use of my lecture notes at all - so plenty of time that could have been better spent than in lectures (though some lectures did help going through the course). I still remember managing to sun burn the top of my arm sitting in Wadham gardens for a tort revision class at the end of April.
This pattern continued for the next few weeks with more revision classes, lots of work, and lots of boredom - together with the feeling that we were entitled to some treats - like going to one of the expensive coffee shops on the High Street for post lunch coffee one day. I was feeling very stressed and very lonely, but I was OK.
It was my 21st birthday on the Wednesday before my finals started on the Saturday - my mother, sister and grandparents came down and we went for a meal at lunch time. My Dad came down for a drink with me the day before. Grr - birthdays shouldn't be so close to exams!
A kind of calmness descended on us all a few days before they started as we realised that there was no way to know everything, and that there wasn't time to learn everything we wanted. They were going to happen, and we'd come out alive at the other end. What was really horrible round about then was that people were starting to finish finals - people finishing while you're doing exams is fair enough, but for them to finish before you've even started is pretty depressing. Being in Merton means that you get to hear all the celebrations from Merton Street twice a day for about a month.
I remember a couple of emails from lawyers two years above us - so sweet that they'd remembered us; particularly the one I got from Ant - my College Dad. It essentially said that finals were two weeks of hell, that the examiners play mind fuck games, and that it's worth it in the end (and yes, I think we were all questioning the last of those points by that stage). I don't think I'd have survived if it hadn't been for those word of wisdom.
So we sat the first paper on Saturday of Fifth Week, 9.30-11.30am, EC Social, Consumer and Environmental law. I wasn't as scared before that exam as I was before Mods - my aim was just to get though it so that I could move on and think about the next one. I walked out thinking that it had gone just about alright, and that it was one less subject to worry about. It was quite cold and wet when I walked back through the Lodge - where I saw Jim - lawyer who'd done finals the previous year, who was kind and reassuring. Then I imagine came an hour of faffing before lunch, and then revision that afternoon.
Sunday too was consumed with revision - but it was revision in the last minute sense - there wasn't enough time to learn much new stuff - it was just going over notes I'd already made/essay plans I'd written. That was a long day. I suspect it was that night that I decided to go to bed early and get up early. I actually slept pretty well during finals - a good eight, if not nine hours a night, not that that made me less tired, but it made me able to function to the best of my ability.
Oh yes, the other thing that I think happened that day was that I signed up for an account with Oxford Romance. That was one of the things I used for stress relief during finals - to have people message me and want to talk to me helped with the loneliness I felt - to some extent.
Monday morning, I'd have got up at 6 or 6.30am, got dressed - sub fusc is great; there's no need to think about what to wear, you just get up and dress in the right stuff. Then I did some work, checked my email - I didn't write many emails at that time, but I did rely on a daily dose of emails to read for my own sanity, and had plenty of breakfast. During those long weeks of revision, spent in my room, I'd had a kettle and nibbles near me all the time, so I tended to stop for mid morning and mid afternoon coffee and biscuits. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that during finals - we weren't allowed to take food or drink into Schools (anyone doing finals in Oxford - don't panic, if you've a medical need for them you can have them - follow the procedure and get permission from the proctors), so I did what I could to help myself and had plenty of breakfast.
The contract paper was the first example of mind fuckery I came across. Instead of problems being half a page long, they were a whole page long. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it's enough to cause panic in an exam hall, where in order to know which of the questions you're capable of answering, you half to read all the way through all of them. That morning also brought something that would kind of reassure me about things. About ten minutes after we started one of the examiners read out a list of names to see if those people were in the room. Someone not being in the room may mean that they're sitting papers in College and the authorities haven't informed each other (what's new? I hear you cry), but most often it's because people have withdrawn, and as horrible as it is for those people, for everyone else, it's a kind of confidence boost 'Ooh look, I'm still here, I'm surviving this.'
After that paper we headed straight for lunch, which took a while - none of us wanted to go back to our books for more revision, though we knew we had to, so we lingered.
When I did get back to my room to open my tort books, I finally broke down in tears. I'd had random thoughts while sitting my contract paper 'Wow, what am I doing in Oxford, sitting an Oxford finals paper? Still looks like I'm managing to write something....'. That afternoon those feelings overtook me - I'd survived so far, but only just. Was what I was writing good enough? How much worse was it going to get? I knew that tort was one of my weakest papers, and I knew I'd been thrown by the format of the contract paper - how on earth would I survive it? Still, after crying for a while - and feeling unimaginably lonely - I realised that as bad as it was, I was OK, and that even if I ended up in tears each night, I'd survive. As you've probably noticed I'm obstinate, and extremely determined - no amount of mind fuckery by the examiners was going to get to me (in a way more serious than enducing tears), I was bigger and stronger than that.
Tort seemed to go as badly as I thought it would, and then I had Wednesday off, which was kind of nice, but by that stage all I wanted was for them to end, and I'd only done three papers out of the nine. On Thursday came jurisprudence, which I don't remember much about - all I recall is staring at the ceilings and using the fact that the ceilings were blue to illustrate on of the points I made in one of my essays. Then came the land paper on the Friday, which I thought went alright, followed by the trusts paper on the Saturday, which I was fairly pleased with. I then recall sitting on Fellows Gardens with the then second years for a little while, before realising that I was beginning to burn, so had to go in search of a change of clothes and stuff.
After the trust paper that Saturday, the end was in sight, which made me feel relatively better. I don't recall that Sunday - I suppose it involved admin revision, then we did the admin paper on the Monday morning. I had been extremely worried about admin - it was the subject we'd studied in the Trinity of our first year, and which I'd never really understood. But again, I somehow managed to answer four questions, and then I was really almost there. The papers I felt the most confident about came at the end.
I'd have preferred my family paper to have been in the morning, since I was used to morning exams, and didn't manage very effective revision that morning, or indeed, even a decent lie in - since my body was so used to getting me up at 6. I felt that that paper had gone well afterwards, and then came the worst time of all - attempting to motivate myself to work that evening for my Labour law paper the following morning. It sounds daft unless you've done it, but putting in that last bit of effort to get through that last paper is hell. It's so close to being over, but it's not, and by this stage one is extremely tired/mentally exhausted anyway.
Oh well, I somehow got through that night, and then got up and went and did that paper. Concentrating during that paper was not easy - again, because it was so nearly over, but I managed. When it was finally over, I remember reaching for HE and wrapping my arm around hour, smiling with unsurpassed relief/almost but not elation saying 'we've done it, we've finished.' We walked out the back of Schools and saw the second years and some others there to meet us. I got given a lovely bunch of flowers by the lawyers, and got sprayed with champagne before being encouraged to drink the rest of the bottle! The next ten/fifteen minutes are a bit of a haze. I got covered in gold stars by A, and more champagne by puzzlering, making the stars stick to my hair. We certainly went back into College pretty fast, because it's easier to avoid being caught doing things you're not supposed to do (like spray people with champagne) if you're in College than if you're on the street. I got lots of hugs, and drank a fair amount of the champagne. David had finished at the same time, and shortly afterwards, David, Anna, Heenal, Kieron, Kate, Veronika, Chris and I went for lunch somewhere on Gloucester Green. I remember getting lovely breaded camembert (sp), but not much else about that meal, other than not really feeling like major drinking - I had some wine, but in moderation.
Drinking had long since lost its fascination - I didn't really want to get drunk. Maybe I'd outgrown it. In some ways finishing finals is an anti climax, because you're so tired when you finish, you feel as much relief as excactic(sp) happiness. It's kind of 'right, finished finals, what next?'. Which is kind of a let down - ever since going to uni, I'd imagined finishing would be a really wonderful experience, making me extremely happy, and as good as the reality was, it was nothing like my dreams.
After lunch that group kind of disintigrated - Veronika, Anna, Chris and I all went to the little pub next to Blackwells that's seen in Inspector Morse films - The White Horse?? We were kind of planning a trip to Scotland for later in the summer. The trip went ahead, but I didn't go in the end, and I'm quite glad I didn't - I love the outdoors, but not climbing mountains thank you very much. But not before stopping off at Waterstones. I really wanted a fiction book, to make up for depriving myself of fiction for so long (I read very little new fiction while I was at Oxford). Jean M. Auel's 'Shelters of Stone' had just come out, and I treated myself to a hard back copy. After we'd spent long enough in the pub we wandered to Manor Place - I was quite glad we did, because my alcohol tolerance was at an all time low, due to tiredness and lack of drinking - even though I was drinking slowly I was beginning to feel the effects, so being given coffee was really great right then, and kind of set me up for the rest of the evening.
By this stage it was almost the end of the afternoon and I needed to go back to Schools to meet Justin and Jo (fellow lawyers) from their last final. We ended up back in Justin's room pretty fast, because it was raining rather unpleasantly by that stage, where I got fed more champagne, and I managed to speak to Justin for the first time in ages. We must have ate somehow - I remember going back to my room before we went out again, speaking to my Mum and Helen, who'd tried to phone me and getting changed, before going back to join Justin et al. I've a feeling we went to McDonalds, before going on to Park End (club playing cheese).
That was the first and only time I've ever been to Park End, and I can't say it was something I really missed. It was kind of nice - we talked and drank, sang and danced a bit. There was a kind of chair shortage. Unfortunately, by around 1am ish, I lost everyone - it happens in clubs, what was worse was that I saw someone I really, really didn't want to see. I eventually decided that I'd had enough and went home. Being far less sensible than I normally am, I hadn't taken a coat, and I got very wet on the way home. When I got back in, I was so cold/wet that I had a shower and hot chocolate to warm up, before I got into bed with my new book and read until 5am, just because I could.
I've very little idea of what I did the day after my finals finished - probably a bit of bouncing up and down 'I can't believe I've finished' style, until we get to that evening, when I went off to be a teller at the Union debate - dinner was nice, the debate not bad and pressie drinks an interesting if bemusing experience - I was meeting people I'd heard of, and in some cases had heard quite a lot about for the first time and it was good fun, but there came the point when I was fed up with people greeting me with 'Oh so you're Karen McAtamney' - there's only so much of that I can take at any one time, and I was very vulnerable at that time.
I don't remember much about the Friday either - except for that evening when I went along to help at the Union's election count. I met even more people I knew by reputation only that night, and quite enjoyed myself - well I wasn't too keen on all the singing or on the egos eg. does it really matter who counts what, so long as it gets done quickly & accurately? It wasn't till that night that I understood how STV works - which is frankly quite disturbing, given that it's a major electoral system. I don't like the idea of people voting using a system the majority of the electorate doesn't understand. I must have slept in a bit on the Saturday morning, given that the count didn't end till 2 or 3am. I do remember winning the sweepstake for most accurately predicting the length of the count and feeling unaccountably guilty for doing so. I suspect I spent much of the time where I can't remember what I was doing, doing things like spending time with friends, washing, shopping, playing croquet, lying in the lawns etc.
The Sunday was the Halsbury Garden party and my last ever JCR meeting and I seem to remember thinking it quite tame, by the standards of previous years....I'd been quite scared that the end of that meeting would start me off crying. I'd always known that leaving Oxford would be very difficult for me, and would cause lots of tears, it was merely a question of when. I don't remember much about the following few days - I know I went rowing in a eight for the first and only time - and I was hopless at it, but I'm glad I tried it. We went shopping for presents for our tutors and had Schools dinner - a formal meal for each subject group with their tutors post finals.
I spent part of the Friday packing and I did a bit of shopping as well before coming back to the last of the drinking society's garden parties, whereupon I drank three cocktails (made with shots of alcohol and wine rather than fruit juice, so *extremely* potent) before realising I'd missed strawberries and wine with the Warden (all leavers had been invited, which I didn't particularly care about in the end) and then I realised that I'd really had too much to drink and went back to my room to recover.
Hilary
By the beginning of my penultimate term, I'd finally learnt a lesson I should have learnt long before - trying to make sure you've got enough time for academic work by not taking on too many other commitments just makes me work far less efficiently, rather than improving the quality of my work. So I applied to be co-chair of one of the OUSU Committees; on the grounds that I'd be good at this and that it wouldn't really take up too much of my time. I was very hurt when not only was I not appointed, but noone had the decency to tell me that before I learnt about it by reading an agenda. This was a mistake, there was no malice involved, but I still felt upset by it. Something good did come of it in the end; I had a whinge at someone I sort of knew in OUSU, and she asked me to go and help a group of people rewriting OUSU's electoral regs. You wouldn't believe the detail we went into over a series of sessions, each around two hours long. That was extremely rewarding, and really made me appreciate my law degree - it made me so much more aware of the meaning of particular words and how altering a word here or there changes the meaning of the clause you're creating. As I recall I also applied to be an OUSU Deputy Returning Officer that term - but that was another of these applications I made and never heard anything back about. I wasn't too bothered by that, because around the time when I ought to have noticed that I hadn't heard anything, I was in a particuarly bad state work wise.
I was really enjoying family law - the reading was manageable and I understood what was going on in the area and I had the confidence to not create essay crises for myself. In earlier days I'd said well 'I don't understand this very well, so I have to work as hard as I possibly can on it, 'cos no one can blame me if I worked' and translated this into 'I must stay up all night writing my essay, because if I don't, how can I have worked hard enough?' This is thoroughly broken thinking and I wish I'd realised this earlier.
What was less good were the collections I did at the beginning of Hilary - I got mid 2.2s on both of them - one of those I'd still put down to harsh marking. The reasoning behind my collections not being good was that I'd spent 9th Week of MT in College doing the collections I should have done at the beginning of MT but didn't do then, because of the state I was in over Joe - collections would have served no purpose whatsoever. Kathryn, Justin and I (IIRC) did them together. That meant that I didn't start relaxing/coming down from the stresses of that term for an extra week. Believe me, you need to relax for a couple of weeks after surviving an Oxford term. I also had an extremely hectic Christmas helping my Mum start her new business, together with usual family Christmas things, so I didn't have anywhere near as much time as I would have liked to revise.
After having our last ever tutes in 8th Week, and a couple of days off to relax, we all embarked on revision. Most of us had arranged to stay in Oxford (the libraries are there, and it's easier to work) for a good portion of the break. I don't really remember all that much about the actual process of revision, other than sitting in my room surrounded by files and books and feeling bored. We met up for lunch in hall and for a general whinge about how slowly things were going in and how bored we all were. Procrastination became an art form. Talking about revision timetables - writing one is a great idea, for any of you about to do exams - but write flexibility and write time off into it, and don't be surprised if you have to alter it as you go along. Going pen shopping - well that is important, most of us didn't do much handwriting during the course because we all had computers/used the college ones, so the prospect of having to write for three hours a day for nine days (approx) was not appealing. Finding comfortable pens to write with was therefore not *just* an excuse to avoid work. The same was true of blouse shopping - we had to do our exams dressed in sub fusc and you can't wear the same clothes every day for more than a week in the middle of summer.
I went home for a couple of weeks - we weren't allowed to stay in College accommodation for around two weeks, since there weren't any College staff there. Besides, a break before starting Trinity is just what you need.
Trinity
I guess when I went back about a week or so before term started, I was as much excited as I was scared. It was nice to go back to an environment where I knew I worked much better, and it was nice to know that it was nearly over, as scared and as bored as I was. Besides, I'd finally managed to arrange to meet someone that I'd been in email contact with for about nine months and I was both excited and curious about that. Soon lots of people were back, and life continued much as it had for the first bit of the vac - with everyone working away and then gathering for lunch, and in the bar/TV room in the evenings - take note all of you - you cannot work 24 hours a day, where we could moan about how horrible it was, and how much we hated it, and didn't want to be there.
We did our last ever collections - and I was really pleased when I got 68 - a high 2.1 for my family paper (though I was still worried about the others). Then we found that revision classes eat into one's day substantially - particularly when tutors don't turn up for them. It was quite hard to work for those first couple of weeks of term, because of the sheer number of classes we had. Revision classes/lectures are wonderful things, but need to be approached with care - they're often aimed at getting people to leap from 2.1 to 1st level, which isn't much help when everyone sitting there is going 'eh what are the basics' - but I didn't get too worked up about it. I knew that there was lots that I didn't know, but that that simply didn't matter for the purpose of passing finals - what I had to do was take what I could from the classes and use it as best I could. Understanding it wasn't important. In passing, I'd better note that while revising I made little/no use of my lecture notes at all - so plenty of time that could have been better spent than in lectures (though some lectures did help going through the course). I still remember managing to sun burn the top of my arm sitting in Wadham gardens for a tort revision class at the end of April.
This pattern continued for the next few weeks with more revision classes, lots of work, and lots of boredom - together with the feeling that we were entitled to some treats - like going to one of the expensive coffee shops on the High Street for post lunch coffee one day. I was feeling very stressed and very lonely, but I was OK.
It was my 21st birthday on the Wednesday before my finals started on the Saturday - my mother, sister and grandparents came down and we went for a meal at lunch time. My Dad came down for a drink with me the day before. Grr - birthdays shouldn't be so close to exams!
A kind of calmness descended on us all a few days before they started as we realised that there was no way to know everything, and that there wasn't time to learn everything we wanted. They were going to happen, and we'd come out alive at the other end. What was really horrible round about then was that people were starting to finish finals - people finishing while you're doing exams is fair enough, but for them to finish before you've even started is pretty depressing. Being in Merton means that you get to hear all the celebrations from Merton Street twice a day for about a month.
I remember a couple of emails from lawyers two years above us - so sweet that they'd remembered us; particularly the one I got from Ant - my College Dad. It essentially said that finals were two weeks of hell, that the examiners play mind fuck games, and that it's worth it in the end (and yes, I think we were all questioning the last of those points by that stage). I don't think I'd have survived if it hadn't been for those word of wisdom.
So we sat the first paper on Saturday of Fifth Week, 9.30-11.30am, EC Social, Consumer and Environmental law. I wasn't as scared before that exam as I was before Mods - my aim was just to get though it so that I could move on and think about the next one. I walked out thinking that it had gone just about alright, and that it was one less subject to worry about. It was quite cold and wet when I walked back through the Lodge - where I saw Jim - lawyer who'd done finals the previous year, who was kind and reassuring. Then I imagine came an hour of faffing before lunch, and then revision that afternoon.
Sunday too was consumed with revision - but it was revision in the last minute sense - there wasn't enough time to learn much new stuff - it was just going over notes I'd already made/essay plans I'd written. That was a long day. I suspect it was that night that I decided to go to bed early and get up early. I actually slept pretty well during finals - a good eight, if not nine hours a night, not that that made me less tired, but it made me able to function to the best of my ability.
Oh yes, the other thing that I think happened that day was that I signed up for an account with Oxford Romance. That was one of the things I used for stress relief during finals - to have people message me and want to talk to me helped with the loneliness I felt - to some extent.
Monday morning, I'd have got up at 6 or 6.30am, got dressed - sub fusc is great; there's no need to think about what to wear, you just get up and dress in the right stuff. Then I did some work, checked my email - I didn't write many emails at that time, but I did rely on a daily dose of emails to read for my own sanity, and had plenty of breakfast. During those long weeks of revision, spent in my room, I'd had a kettle and nibbles near me all the time, so I tended to stop for mid morning and mid afternoon coffee and biscuits. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that during finals - we weren't allowed to take food or drink into Schools (anyone doing finals in Oxford - don't panic, if you've a medical need for them you can have them - follow the procedure and get permission from the proctors), so I did what I could to help myself and had plenty of breakfast.
The contract paper was the first example of mind fuckery I came across. Instead of problems being half a page long, they were a whole page long. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it's enough to cause panic in an exam hall, where in order to know which of the questions you're capable of answering, you half to read all the way through all of them. That morning also brought something that would kind of reassure me about things. About ten minutes after we started one of the examiners read out a list of names to see if those people were in the room. Someone not being in the room may mean that they're sitting papers in College and the authorities haven't informed each other (what's new? I hear you cry), but most often it's because people have withdrawn, and as horrible as it is for those people, for everyone else, it's a kind of confidence boost 'Ooh look, I'm still here, I'm surviving this.'
After that paper we headed straight for lunch, which took a while - none of us wanted to go back to our books for more revision, though we knew we had to, so we lingered.
When I did get back to my room to open my tort books, I finally broke down in tears. I'd had random thoughts while sitting my contract paper 'Wow, what am I doing in Oxford, sitting an Oxford finals paper? Still looks like I'm managing to write something....'. That afternoon those feelings overtook me - I'd survived so far, but only just. Was what I was writing good enough? How much worse was it going to get? I knew that tort was one of my weakest papers, and I knew I'd been thrown by the format of the contract paper - how on earth would I survive it? Still, after crying for a while - and feeling unimaginably lonely - I realised that as bad as it was, I was OK, and that even if I ended up in tears each night, I'd survive. As you've probably noticed I'm obstinate, and extremely determined - no amount of mind fuckery by the examiners was going to get to me (in a way more serious than enducing tears), I was bigger and stronger than that.
Tort seemed to go as badly as I thought it would, and then I had Wednesday off, which was kind of nice, but by that stage all I wanted was for them to end, and I'd only done three papers out of the nine. On Thursday came jurisprudence, which I don't remember much about - all I recall is staring at the ceilings and using the fact that the ceilings were blue to illustrate on of the points I made in one of my essays. Then came the land paper on the Friday, which I thought went alright, followed by the trusts paper on the Saturday, which I was fairly pleased with. I then recall sitting on Fellows Gardens with the then second years for a little while, before realising that I was beginning to burn, so had to go in search of a change of clothes and stuff.
After the trust paper that Saturday, the end was in sight, which made me feel relatively better. I don't recall that Sunday - I suppose it involved admin revision, then we did the admin paper on the Monday morning. I had been extremely worried about admin - it was the subject we'd studied in the Trinity of our first year, and which I'd never really understood. But again, I somehow managed to answer four questions, and then I was really almost there. The papers I felt the most confident about came at the end.
I'd have preferred my family paper to have been in the morning, since I was used to morning exams, and didn't manage very effective revision that morning, or indeed, even a decent lie in - since my body was so used to getting me up at 6. I felt that that paper had gone well afterwards, and then came the worst time of all - attempting to motivate myself to work that evening for my Labour law paper the following morning. It sounds daft unless you've done it, but putting in that last bit of effort to get through that last paper is hell. It's so close to being over, but it's not, and by this stage one is extremely tired/mentally exhausted anyway.
Oh well, I somehow got through that night, and then got up and went and did that paper. Concentrating during that paper was not easy - again, because it was so nearly over, but I managed. When it was finally over, I remember reaching for HE and wrapping my arm around hour, smiling with unsurpassed relief/almost but not elation saying 'we've done it, we've finished.' We walked out the back of Schools and saw the second years and some others there to meet us. I got given a lovely bunch of flowers by the lawyers, and got sprayed with champagne before being encouraged to drink the rest of the bottle! The next ten/fifteen minutes are a bit of a haze. I got covered in gold stars by A, and more champagne by puzzlering, making the stars stick to my hair. We certainly went back into College pretty fast, because it's easier to avoid being caught doing things you're not supposed to do (like spray people with champagne) if you're in College than if you're on the street. I got lots of hugs, and drank a fair amount of the champagne. David had finished at the same time, and shortly afterwards, David, Anna, Heenal, Kieron, Kate, Veronika, Chris and I went for lunch somewhere on Gloucester Green. I remember getting lovely breaded camembert (sp), but not much else about that meal, other than not really feeling like major drinking - I had some wine, but in moderation.
Drinking had long since lost its fascination - I didn't really want to get drunk. Maybe I'd outgrown it. In some ways finishing finals is an anti climax, because you're so tired when you finish, you feel as much relief as excactic(sp) happiness. It's kind of 'right, finished finals, what next?'. Which is kind of a let down - ever since going to uni, I'd imagined finishing would be a really wonderful experience, making me extremely happy, and as good as the reality was, it was nothing like my dreams.
After lunch that group kind of disintigrated - Veronika, Anna, Chris and I all went to the little pub next to Blackwells that's seen in Inspector Morse films - The White Horse?? We were kind of planning a trip to Scotland for later in the summer. The trip went ahead, but I didn't go in the end, and I'm quite glad I didn't - I love the outdoors, but not climbing mountains thank you very much. But not before stopping off at Waterstones. I really wanted a fiction book, to make up for depriving myself of fiction for so long (I read very little new fiction while I was at Oxford). Jean M. Auel's 'Shelters of Stone' had just come out, and I treated myself to a hard back copy. After we'd spent long enough in the pub we wandered to Manor Place - I was quite glad we did, because my alcohol tolerance was at an all time low, due to tiredness and lack of drinking - even though I was drinking slowly I was beginning to feel the effects, so being given coffee was really great right then, and kind of set me up for the rest of the evening.
By this stage it was almost the end of the afternoon and I needed to go back to Schools to meet Justin and Jo (fellow lawyers) from their last final. We ended up back in Justin's room pretty fast, because it was raining rather unpleasantly by that stage, where I got fed more champagne, and I managed to speak to Justin for the first time in ages. We must have ate somehow - I remember going back to my room before we went out again, speaking to my Mum and Helen, who'd tried to phone me and getting changed, before going back to join Justin et al. I've a feeling we went to McDonalds, before going on to Park End (club playing cheese).
That was the first and only time I've ever been to Park End, and I can't say it was something I really missed. It was kind of nice - we talked and drank, sang and danced a bit. There was a kind of chair shortage. Unfortunately, by around 1am ish, I lost everyone - it happens in clubs, what was worse was that I saw someone I really, really didn't want to see. I eventually decided that I'd had enough and went home. Being far less sensible than I normally am, I hadn't taken a coat, and I got very wet on the way home. When I got back in, I was so cold/wet that I had a shower and hot chocolate to warm up, before I got into bed with my new book and read until 5am, just because I could.
I've very little idea of what I did the day after my finals finished - probably a bit of bouncing up and down 'I can't believe I've finished' style, until we get to that evening, when I went off to be a teller at the Union debate - dinner was nice, the debate not bad and pressie drinks an interesting if bemusing experience - I was meeting people I'd heard of, and in some cases had heard quite a lot about for the first time and it was good fun, but there came the point when I was fed up with people greeting me with 'Oh so you're Karen McAtamney' - there's only so much of that I can take at any one time, and I was very vulnerable at that time.
I don't remember much about the Friday either - except for that evening when I went along to help at the Union's election count. I met even more people I knew by reputation only that night, and quite enjoyed myself - well I wasn't too keen on all the singing or on the egos eg. does it really matter who counts what, so long as it gets done quickly & accurately? It wasn't till that night that I understood how STV works - which is frankly quite disturbing, given that it's a major electoral system. I don't like the idea of people voting using a system the majority of the electorate doesn't understand. I must have slept in a bit on the Saturday morning, given that the count didn't end till 2 or 3am. I do remember winning the sweepstake for most accurately predicting the length of the count and feeling unaccountably guilty for doing so. I suspect I spent much of the time where I can't remember what I was doing, doing things like spending time with friends, washing, shopping, playing croquet, lying in the lawns etc.
The Sunday was the Halsbury Garden party and my last ever JCR meeting and I seem to remember thinking it quite tame, by the standards of previous years....I'd been quite scared that the end of that meeting would start me off crying. I'd always known that leaving Oxford would be very difficult for me, and would cause lots of tears, it was merely a question of when. I don't remember much about the following few days - I know I went rowing in a eight for the first and only time - and I was hopless at it, but I'm glad I tried it. We went shopping for presents for our tutors and had Schools dinner - a formal meal for each subject group with their tutors post finals.
I spent part of the Friday packing and I did a bit of shopping as well before coming back to the last of the drinking society's garden parties, whereupon I drank three cocktails (made with shots of alcohol and wine rather than fruit juice, so *extremely* potent) before realising I'd missed strawberries and wine with the Warden (all leavers had been invited, which I didn't particularly care about in the end) and then I realised that I'd really had too much to drink and went back to my room to recover.