(upbeat music)
- From the moment you get to Oxford,
you sort of feel that this is a special place,
a unique place,
because the whole vibe of students
coming from libraries,
going straight to night clubs,
and going back to the library afterwards,
and just sort of, I mean, surrounding the surreal atmosphere
that's in the city is kind of like,
draws you in from the first minute, really.
(smooth music)
Hi, my name is Paul.
I'm a final year student here at Oxford
studying philosophy, politics, and economics,
and I'm originally from Germany.
Because Oxford has this weird structure
of having eight weeks of term
and then just a very long vacation,
everything happens in those eight weeks,
so I wouldn't say I have a typical day that I,
or a routine that I follow,
but I tend to be in the library by 9:00 AM,
so I woke up at 7:30, 8:00
to get a coffee before 8:00,
and then spend basically the whole day
until like 2:00 PM in the library.
Then I get my lunch,
usually in one of the small cafes around the libraries,
and then the option is basically
back in the library or extracurriculars,
so you meet up in different coffee shops,
talk to people about their projects,
how things are working out on certain projects
that you're doing together
and have a bit of social time as well.
And then back to the library
til usually about 10:00-ish, quarter to 10.
(smooth music)
I wanted to bring you guys to this spot
because it's where I spend most of my time at Oxford,
and definitely the best bit of my time in Oxford.
It's the Radcliffe Camera behind us,
which is officially a history faculty library,
but it's part of the bigger network of the Bodleian Library,
which is Oxford's central library,
and it's definitely the space
I spent the most time reading books,
freaking out about essays
that I had to hand in the next morning,
and meeting friends,
so definitely this was the spot I enjoyed most in my time.
I might be a bit of a sort of super academic whatever,
really boring person,
but what I really enjoyed most was having a stack of books
and a lot of time
and knowing I would have to write something about this,
make up my own mind about this.
It's kind of daunting because you see all these big names
and you're a bit intimidated by the whole situation,
but knowing that you can do it
and that you can actually say something interesting
about this was the greatest experience.
My third year I started taking a paper
on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
And discovered that the tutor was actually a name
that I'd read 100 times on my reading lists
for Plato and other papers,
and he happened to be one of the biggest persons
in ancient philosophy, Dominic Scott,
and it was at first intimidating to write papers
and know he's going to read them properly,
and he did read them very rigorously
and made comments about my grammar, a lot of them,
and it was very scary at first,
but I really started to love that paper
and love that course
because I really felt like I was taken serious
by someone who's extremely well-known on the field
and who's extremely capable,
who's now really interested in what I'm saying,
and yeah, it's a scary experience,
but it's also great to know that you've really done
something worthwhile once you get out of your tutorial.
The tutorial situation,
that you have one professor and one student in a room
discussing one topic for a whole hour,
is something that's completely unique,
I think, to Oxford and Cambridge, maybe.
Having studied PPE here for three years,
I think what it's really about is one the one hand
that you sort of the theoretical, rigorous knowledge
that you learn throughout the course,
but also the sort of practical,
the histories of conflicts,
or the histories of current affairs.
(smooth music)
Alongside that I've also been doing a journal
called The Journal of Interrupted Studies,
which I started with my good friend and housemate,
Mark Barclay,
which basically tries to publish articles by academics
at risk,
refugee academics who had to leave their home,
their countries because of war,
because of climate change,
and for various reasons,
and who want to continue publishing their work,
because that's what they do for a living,
but can't finish articles,
and what we do is we try and publish them,
and thereby create a platform
for these academics to,
A: highlight the potential they have,
the academic integrity,
the knowledge that's actually coming to Europe as well
throughout the migration crisis,
but also to highlight on the other side
that a lot of these academics cannot continue their work
because of legal restrictions,
or because universities are quite slow in integrating them,
and that project has been very important for me personally
because it's more than just a sort of academic interest,
it's actually meeting people who suffered
and who are now finding a new perspective to the world.
Mark and I developed the journal
in all the small little coffee shops around Oxford,
and the The Missing Bean was definitely the place
we kept on coming back to
and the place we actually started the journal de facto.
Having the Oxford name
on the cover of the journal definitely helped us a lot
with the project,
because it meant that people who found out about the project
took it to be much more credible
than they would've probably taken
a standard undergraduate journal,
and that definitely helped.
It also meant for Mark and I
that we wouldn't have started the journal, I guess,
without the support of Oxford University in the first place.
(smooth music)
I came to Oxford just thinking that it'd be super academic
and there wouldn't be much social life going on,
but actually discovered that it's basically,
I mean,
a huge part of the Oxford life.
Every college has its own JCR and college bar attached,
which means you get subsidized drinks,
which is great because Oxford is insanely expensive,
and the other thing is the JCR's a spot to just hang out
and meet people from the undergrad community,
undergraduate community,
so it's just great because you get to chat to people
and like talk about life at uni,
and there are no senior tutors around,
so it's kind of very intimate.
But everything social sort of starts within the college,
which means that social life is completely different here
then it is back home where you know people from maybe school
or neighborhoods,
so that makes Oxford's social life completely different,
but at the same time,
if you're in a very small college like me,
you tend to be out too much quicker,
so you leave the nest much more,
and again, it depends on which college you're at.
After you finish your last exam,
once you're done with your degree basically,
you walk out of examination schools
and your whole, like black tie outfit,
a white tie, actually,
and you're trashed,
which means people throw everything
they can find at you basically,
from a shaving foam to confetti to,
I mean obscene things like food and anything,
so you're just completely trashed
and you're disgusting state,
but then you jump into the river and it'll kind of like,
disappears and your back sort of, droop,
normal life out of the uni experience
and then just,
you have two weeks to three weeks remaining at Oxford,
in which loads of crazy things happen,
you go hunting,
driving around on boats on the river,
you go to sports, concerts,
you go clubbing,
and you go to balls,
white-tie balls,
but yeah, that's going to happen today for me,
and that's how I'm gonna end my time at Oxford.
White-tie means you have to wear a tail coat,
which looks like a penguin at first,
but then gotta wear a waist coat as well,
and where the name comes from
a white tie,
so this one's one that I have to tie up,
which will take me a good half an hour
for it to look properly.
These flowers are called carnations.
It's a tradition at Oxford
that you wear them to your exams,
so you wear the white one
on your first day of exams
and the red one on the last day of exams,
but I just think they look quite cool
on a white tie outfit,
so I'm just gonna put one here
and see how it works a night at the ball.
I've never been to a white tie ball before,
so I'm not really sure what to expect,
but I just thought I can meet people
for the last time and say goodbye to a lot of people,
but also sort of leave Oxford on a high note.
I'm feeling like, yeah this was a great time,
and this is how I wanna conclude it.
(smooth music)
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