A Chill Summer (Quite Literally)

Since I only studied one paper this term, namely Quantitative Economics, instead of the usual two, I had much less work than I had been used to so far. Because of that, I had the opportunity to enjoy more of non-academic activities such as college rowing, reading something other than textbooks and academic texts (I finally managed to read H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds!) and watching excessive amounts of the Simpsons (one has to shut the brain down from time to time), guilt-free. Not only that; for the first time in my two years at Oxford I had the feeling that I had time to dedicate as much care and attention to my duties as I should and wanted. In my lucky streak, I also really enjoyed studying QE, and so I had the necessary motivation to work on top of the sufficient amount of time.

Even though one would expect that summer rowing is going to be a much more pleasant experience than winter rowing, the weather of England has the means with which it can successfully and thoroughly crush those expectations. This years’ summer races were held in the fifth week of the term, which fell on the beginning of June. On the contrary, the last races I participated in took place in seventh week of the last term, which meant the last week of February. The comparison of the first day of these two races? One of them I spent in the rowing ‘unisuit’, which resembles the suits wrestlers or weightlifters use, the other I spent shivering in three layers of thermoclothes. If you expect that the unisuit was worn in June, I have to remind you of the abilities of the English weather. After the tragically cold first day of the Summer Eights races, the weather luckily decided to play nice and on the last day, managed to give me unisuit-shaped tan lines. However, the short period of playing nice was immediately followed by a return to its winter mood. As far as results are concerned, I have finally managed to get my first ‘bump’, that is catching up to the boat ahead of us. Since the day before, we were caught by the boat at our stern, we didn’t move up or down in the finish rankings. That is a success in its own, given the ‘spoons’, awarded for having fallen in the rankings on each racing day, that we gained in the February Torpids races. Furthermore, none of the members of our crew took an involuntary swim in the Thames. Thanks to the lesser amount of work I had this term, I could properly enjoy the Summer Eights and watch the best Oxford college crews race for the Headship.

Even compared to my coursemates I have had a nice, calm and easy Trinity term, as all other PPE students from my college chose to study the first of their options papers. Although I was very happy with the relatively small amount of work, even I would have preferred to take one of my options in Trinity as opposed to one of the two terms next year. Nevertheless, since I plan to orientate myself very mathematically compared to the average PPE student, the papers I want to take are not taught until next year. Therefore, I will be looking forward to Econometrics in Michaelmas, the name Oxford uses for its first term, a killer combination of Philosophical Logic, Microeconomic Analysis, and all of the revision tutorials for the so far studied papers, in the second term, Hilary. In my final term I will probably successfully be finished by the exams, of which I will be taking eight, each three hours long. Even though the exams are a year away still, it would not be good to rest on my laurels, and thus I plan to spend the holiday making notes for the papers I have studied so far, to make revision easier and save myself unnecessary stress, which is undoubtedly already excitedly waiting to come get me.