Conforming to Stereotype
If you're reading this face down in a puddle of something indistinguishable, lying in bed next to someone equally indistinguishable (and a traffic cone), well done. You're off to a flying start. If not, just relax. Put the paper down and go get three gin and tonics. I can help you.
Acting like a fresher is made infinitely more straightforward if this is actually your first year at Oxford, but that simple fact doesn't seem to deter many embittered second and third years from hanging around Park End, sneaking into the Freshers' Fair, or not working. Those wishing to achieve the levels of naivety and blood alcohol synonymous with the University's finest, however, must obey a few ground rules.
First, get chummy with your year. Practice saying, "What's your name? Where are you from? What are you studying?" until it can be run together in one breath. This will save you the equivalent of two days this Freshers' Week. Shake hands with all the First Year lawyers - this is the last you will ever see of them.
Establish your role in the eArts vs. Science' divide early on. If you're a scientist, make sure you belittle the arts degree as much as possible. Claim they do no work to justify the fact that you always seem to be at breakfast. If you're an artist, go and have a lie down. File electures' somewhere between eThe Tooth Fairy' and eThe Bogeyman'. Nah, screw that. You don't know how to file.
Become aware that you do not go to a University - you go to a College. Most other colleges hate you because you have too much money, because you have too little money, or because you are guilty by association of stealing the Master's Ceremonial Mallard back in 1746.
Try rowing once but - for the love of God - only once. You scientists just won't have the energy to care about efeathering' or ecoxes', even if it didn't sound so unpleasant. As for you artists, if you wanted to wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning and develop team spirit, you wouldn't have chosen Theology and Philosophy in the first place.
Think about sleeping with people in your year, and then realize that you're going to have to live with them until June. Do not take this as a green light to shag the mangy second years with the six-bedroom public health risk in Cowley.
Go to the Freshers Fair and look at the plethora of societies on offer. Take a photograph of yourself, so you can remember what you looked like when you thought you were going to have free time.
Oh, and for goodness sake, do not shout out "Aye Aye Captain!" at Matriculation.
You should have finished those gin and tonics by now. You'll be fine. After all, you wouldn't have been accepted to Oxford in the first place unless your tutors thought you were capable of developing some kind of substance abuse or crippling emotional problem. Go and get eem tiger - and remember: "Beer and wine, feeling fine; wine and beer, why are you still drinking wine, you poof? It's absinthe night at the Union!"
Cartoon: Ed Scott
4th Oct 2001