The seeds of success
I’m sure many of you will identify with me when I say that in terms of extra-curricular activity my CV is somewhat deficient. Or should I say nonexistent.
The OxStu is an interesting entity in this respect; while the people who write for it and edit the paper shoot towards career success, the people who read the student newspapers are never quite sure why they are reading in the first place or whether they can justify the partaking of that most edifying experience as a displacement activity from some looming essay crisis.
As for me, I am never sure where my copy of the OxStu comes from or how it has ended up in my hands but it always ends up in the same place • in a massive paper stack under my desk, a towering monument to my lack of achievement each week growing bigger and becoming increasingly more daunting.
In terms of recycling you could say I was a council’s wet dream, if only I could be bothered to move what must be by now the best part of a small forest’s worth of paper into that lovely green box which local government so kindly provides for that exact purpose. As you may have noticed the whole extra curricular thing has made me somewhat bitter.
I loathe the Oxford Union and student politics in general, frequently refer to thespians as ‘QI ponces’ and sporty types as ‘jocks’ and generally regard anyone involved in anything as an overambitious overachiever prepared to go to any length to get that dream CV.
Of course, I have come to realise that jealousy is at the root of (most) of these opinions; maybe some readers who, like me, have completed over half of their degree in glacial inactivity will identify with that niggling realisation maybe belonging to the cult of those who opt out is not something to be so proud of after all. There is nothing more boring than underachievers like me ranting on about people who are actually making something of their young adulthood.
So when I admitted to myself that perhaps getting involved didn’t equate to selling out I looked into a few societies to try and find something which might in some way enrich me and generally make me a better person. But despite all the cultural richness of Oxford and all the stimulating stuff going on around me, none of it seems to be for me.
In freshers’ week it looked like there was something for everyone: for people (like me) who have an inability to sing, dance, act or play sport there is all that thought-provoking intellectual stuff going on. But I have been bored by speakers and put off by societies based around nepotistic principles.
Even if these societies were truly meritocratic in their politics I don’t think I’d be fit for any kind of prominent position owing to my unreliability, somewhat crippling lazy streak and a general lack of merit. But on a recent day trip to the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside I stumbled across a garden centre and since then everything has been different for me. At first I was attracted by the fact that it advertised itself as a ‘seed nursery and reptile house’.
‘Great’, I thought, ‘let’s go and watch a gecko eat some locusts’; but after entering I quickly realised that although botany has less of the kudos of having a rare tropical lizard collection, the rewards can be equally as great. After spending the best part of fifty quid on seeds, pot plants and my pride and joy, a Japanese maple, my life has taken a whole new direction.
Now I carefully tend seedlings and shoots, occasionally fertilising my compost, occasionally re-potting and who knows, maybe in the future getting the confidence up to have a good prune. It really is the ideal student pastime, precisely because it doesn’t involve a massive time-commitment and if you like to take things at a nice and relaxed pace I can’t recommend it highly enough.
If there is anything lacking at the moment with my hobby then it’s company and so the next step is to persuade the University to give up a small patch of land and form a gardening society and enquiries are being made at present; in an institution which gives its name to hand knitting society this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Of course, once the society has been set up I will have the acclaim of having been a founding member of an Oxford society and I will be able to share the blissful antidote to a hectic life with other like-minded gardeners. Hopefully, finding these gardeners is not too much of an uphill struggle.
19th May 2005