Apathy in the UK
I bet by now you're really sick of reading articles about Oxford. However fun your freshers' week was, however many chemical experiments you carried out on your brain, you probably know what university you go to. You're probably also sick of hearing how great it is here, because, let's face it, everyone's so anxious to lose the old images that they make the place sound like Disneyland, only with free vodka and podium dancers. I don't want to tell you how fantastic it is. I don't want to tell you how you can get involved in drama, music, sport, dancing, language, JCR politics, Union backbiting, or even the Albanian Nose-flute Music Appreciation Society. What I would like to do is sell you the ideology of slackness. Of not doing anything. Staying in bed all day. Why not?
One of the things I find most overwhelming about Oxford life is its frenetic pace. Cramming a term into eight weeks is never going to be easy, and when pretty much everyone is, by necessity, an obsessive over-achiever, you're just asking for trouble. There's too much to do here. At freshers' fair you're bombarded by hundreds of university societies and activities, and this is even before people try to get you to do rugby, rowing, cuppers' drama, choir, orchestra, etc etc, at a college level. Realistically, if you're going to do all your work, have a social life, and even sleep from time to time, you can only do one or two major activities. So why is there a sense of guilt if every day is not spent networking, notching up CV points, reading obscure Chinese philosophers, or learning to juggle on a unicycle? I suppose it's because everyone here is used to being top in school, and it's a bit of a shock to the system when you come here and realize you're actually not the only person who knows what post-structuralism means. There's a bit of a cult of perfection in Oxford. Everyone wants to be thinner, cooler, more popular, more clever, to get higher marks, run faster, know more people, play more instruments, speak more languages, know more about more things, visit more places. It can be good in some ways, that we get such a thriving dramatic, musical, journalistic culture, but in many ways the urge to be perfect is deeply unhealthy.
Some people can apparently handle it. They are the lunatics who rise at four to go rowing in the freezing cold, then run to lectures in their ostentatious splash top, who single-handedly organize the college ball and anti-fees rallies, who still find time in between writing twenty page essays to run for JCR president, edit the OxStu, play varsity tiddlywinks, and be best friends with everyone in college, even the randoms that no one else has ever seen. Such people are also the ones who can always find some clean socks (even ones that match). Not only do they always have milk and bread, they even cook with things like turmeric and coriander. I envy them. For me, every day I manage to get out of bed at all is something of an achievement. Part of me wants to do all these things. Part of me fears that if I don't do student journalism, or run some society, or hold some position, I'll never get a job afterwards. It's absurd, this way of thinking. We're just students. Students lie on the sofa all day and watch cartoons. They eat Supernoodles and are politically apathetic. They listen to trance at six am. They are a burden to society. Enjoy the slackness! Never again will you be able to spend all day in bed, and then stay up till seven am dancing to S Club 7. By 6th week everyone will be knackered and collapse with virulent Asian flu strains as a result of too much activity. Anyway, they'll probably all be dead by the age of thirty in freak accidents involving hang gliders or morris dancing, while you are safe in bed watching Eastenders. So just stay there. Eat economy cheese. Watch videos. Go to Park End, especially when you haven't done your essay for the next day. Go shopping during lectures. Don't ever go into the Rad Cam - its scary in there (or is that just me?) Never row - too many people are already afflicted by this. Pull some randoms in DTM's, then pass out in a flowerbed. You're just a student. This is just a university. Just don't bother.
18th Oct 2001