So the day finally came - I packed up my suitcase (yes, I only had one, because of the plane allowance), woke up at 4 am, went to the airport and took off, on my way to Oxford. It took me about 6 hours from the Prague airport to the Porter’s Lodge of St Hilda’s College.
From the very first moment everyone was really friendly and talkative, so the initial worries about not being able to talk to anyone and about finding it hard to make friends were gone very soon. Not very many people had arrived on the Sunday like me, but after we had unpacked and settled in our rooms, we went to eat ice cream in a local gorgeous coffee shop, then we had an informal Freshers’ dinner with some of the second years, and the whole day went by very quickly.
On Monday the rest of the people arrived, a whole lot of new faces on the college grounds and in the corridors. The University had prepared an orientation programme for international students, so that is what I attended from the early morning until early afternoon - it was an event packed with information about life in Oxford in general. The rest of the time that day we were going around meeting various people - it’s a shame that it is literally impossible to remember everyone’s names!
The highlight of the day was probably a musical performance in our on-site music building, where the most talented music bands of the University were singing - including Out of the Blue (whom you might know from the latest Britain’s Got Talent show!!) who were simply amazing! A big clubbing night was taking place on Monday (and on most of the other nights of the week), but I did not go to any of them as I was feeling quite overwhelmed and tired by everything.
For those of you, however, who really like clubbing, don’t listen to the people who mock Oxford by saying that our Freshers’ week consists of playing chess and drinking tea - that simply is not true (although if you would enjoy that, you can surely find others here who would, too ;-))!
After having registered with the university, the college, the doctors and having listened to various talks on Tuesday, we had a more or less free day, which then therefore included a lot of shopping a lot of chatting and meeting new people. In the evening I went for a walk around Oxford with some of my international friends, and then we stayed in one of the rooms in College and were talking and simply had fun!
Wednesday was our very first formal dinner - we had to wear academic gowns to meet with our tutors, and then we spent the whole evening in the dining hall, talking to them about various things. Although I was worried that the dinner would be awkward, it was a really nice way of getting to know our tutors, whom we will be seeing very often now. Also, the food served was absolutely delicious!
One of the great events of the Freshers’ week was the Freshers’ Fair that we had on Thursday - there were about 400 different university-wide societies/commercial companies all very keen to get our e-mail addresses and give us a lot of free stuff in exchange. I signed up for a huge amount of societies, because it was so hard to refuse once their representatives started talking to me! We also had a college Fresher’s Fair on Saturday, where, in turn, all the college societies were represented and where we got very beautiful free mugs with our college’s name on them!
On Thursday we also met our tutors for the first time and we already got assigned relatively huge amounts of reading and problem sheet solving, so it seemed like the Freshers’ week was over. However, most people still found time to go clubbing on that night and to go to a college family dinner on Friday.
To explain a little bit about this, in Oxford, normally two second year students from a college get “married” and get assigned two or so Freshers, who then become their college children. Our college parents are then our first point of contact for any issues we might have. To get to know them a little better, we each had our Friday dinner in our college parents’ house, which was really great fun!
The Freshers’ week (or the 0th week as we sometimes call it) officially ended with the Saturday evening’s bop. You probably do not know what such a bop is - but in short it is a themed dress up party that happens every two/three weeks in Oxford colleges. Our bop theme was “dress up as your subject”.
Many people wore really beautiful fancy costumes that took them a very long time to make and that really did impress everyone. I, for PPE, had a t-shirt with a question mark (for Philosophy, as it includes asking a lot of questions), an exclamation mark (for Politics, as politicians like to dictate to others) and a dollarmark (for Economics, for obvious reasons). The bop was a very fun event and it was a perfect way of ending the busiest week of our lives, the Freshers’ week!
Zuzana studied A Levels at Bellerbys College and achieved three A* grades (Economics, History & Maths) and two A grades (French and Government & Politics).
Bonjour, Zuzana. Merci de votre blog. J'espère que vous n'allez pas oublier votre français - parmis vos nouveaux amis, il y aura certainement des francophones.
Travaillez-bien. Amusez-vous bien.
Posted by: Suzanne Hinton | October 17, 2011 at 10:18 AM
Hello Zuzana, nice to meet you!
I am Gordon from Hong Kong, currently an AS student. I have long wished to get a place in PPE, Oxford. I was just exhilarated when I heard that a student from Bellebys took PPE!
Could you tell me something about what life is like at PPE, and how to prepare for TSA and Interview? What do Oxford tutors generally expect? Are there tactics for choosing colleges?
Thank you very much!
Posted by: Gordon Wong | October 20, 2011 at 09:15 PM
Hello Zuzana,
Thank you for such an accurate and great description of the first week in Oxford)
I am a current bellerbys A level student.
This week I would like visit Oxford. Is it possible to have lunch with you(do you have any free time)?
Thank you very much in advance.
Looking forward to your answer.
Posted by: Katherine | October 24, 2011 at 10:03 PM