Hi, I'm Anwar, and this is St Hugh's College.
I'm a masters student in world literature studying here at Oxford.
St Hugh's was founded as a women's college originally,
for women that couldn't afford an Oxford education,
but we now have a mixed student body of about 380 graduates
so it's quite a lively community here.
So this St Hugh's College library, it's open 24/7
for both postgraduates and undergraduates.
We've got a mix of silent rooms, computer rooms and study rooms that you can book out,
and also based around here are the offices for the college advisors.
So each student when they come to Oxford is
assigned a college advisor for both academic and pastoral reasons,
and they're usually working in the same kind of field that you'll be studying as well.
And this is alongside all the other kind of welfare support systems
that college has as well, like counselling and the nurses and the doctors.
I think this is actually supposed to be St Hugh's as well...
Yeah 'cause he's the patron saint of swans, so...
So this is the St Hugh's College bar, it's open until 11:00 Tuesday to Saturdays,
usually MCR members come down here after formals on a Tuesday
to have a few drinks,
the space also opens up and we've had comedy nights here before,
and some other events as well.
Um, Professor Biscuit. They feature a lot on
social media for St Hugh's yeah, people love them.
So this is the party room.
So we have Friday social here every week with
free drink, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and usually
a group of people go out to Oxford afterwards, or it's just a nice place to
come and to have a drink at the end of the week.
Think at St Hugh's the fact that the graduate community is so big
there's lots of different social events going on through the week so
we've got Friday social here, welfare Wednesday's,
so people kind of come in here and just have, like, tea, biscuits, things like that.
So this is like the lounge room, this is where we will have Sunday brunches
every week and in the evening there's the Sunday film night
which is really good to have in a weekend because the
dining hall doesn't serve food on the weekends,
so it's a nice place to come and socialise for that.
Um, there is a barbecue?
So in the summer we have, like, MCR barbecues,
there's a garden party as well, and then the St Hugh's ball,
the postgrads usually end up coming back here as well after that.
So every college has their own ball,
the St Hugh's one happens every two years,
so it's just lots of foods and drink,
people wearing like nice ball gowns and tuxedos, yeah it's really nice
just to have it out in garden.
So this is the Dickson Poon China Centre, which is home to
the China Center library and lots of seminar rooms so it brings
together students and professors from around the university interested in
Chinese studies, in Chinese language.
So it's a Bodleian library which means that
it's a centralised library, so you can kind of call books from around different
faculties and colleges around the University and read them here,
and there's also a cafe as well.
So this is my room in the Dickson Poon centre.
There's some accommodation on site at St Hugh's,
either in Dickson Poon Centre or in cottages dotted around the gardens,
and then there's some postgraduates that choose to live off-site as well.
So this is St Hugh's dining hall,
and so five days a week there's breakfast, lunch and dinner available here,
both hot and cold options, and then on the weekends
there's a brunch up until about two o'clock in the afternoon.
We also have our formals here, so every Tuesday or Friday
students can buy tickets for a three-course meal with wine and drinks,
and those are usually themed,
so last week we had our Burns Night formal,
before that we've had a Chinese New Year one,
a Thanksgiving one, it's a really nice way to break up the week.
Yeah she's, our principal is Scottish so Burns Night was a big, big thing here,
lots of different speeches, and, like, toast to the haggis and things like that,
which was fun, yeah.
I think my favourite thing about St Hugh's is the fact that there's such
an active and lively graduate community here. I think some other colleges there
are more undergrads than there are graduates but here is like a 50-50 split
so this means there's lots of events going on,
it's very sociable, and I found it really easy to kind of fit right in as soon as I arrived.