Beginning of the second year

Arrival of first years is undoubtedly a big thing. Freshers try to pretend to be self-confident, although they are really just curious and anxious of what they should or should not expect. On the other hand, second years can’t wait to ‘initiate’ them. It is interesting to watch how the premature groups of friends are form already in the first days or couple of weeks – being sort of a defensive mechanism against unknown. Second years, on the contrary, behave as they were born in Oxford and the whole place belonged to them. Nonetheless, as soon as our tutors start setting work, all socialising and fun are replaced by loads of essays, problem sheets, reports from practicals and above all ruthless deadlines.

Apart from the periods of preparation for exams in the first year and in the third year, for Materials Science students the heaviest workload is set in the first two terms of the second year. Usually we have around three lectures a day during which the teachers go through material that would normally be done in nine lectures at other universities. On Tuesdays we also have a two-hour lecture in the evening on entrepreneurship. Besides that we have once in fortnight three-hour sessions of practical work in labs on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after which we have to write a report due in one week that usually takes around fifteen hours to write up. In addition we also have approximately four tutorials a week alongside which we have to work more than forty hours on our own. However, one can’t just work all the time, but has to do other activities as well as work.

In the last year, our volleyball team won a promotion into the highest inter-universities division, and therefore we play every Wednesday against the best teams in the UK. Besides that we have qualified on the 1.st of December into the national tournament EVA which will be held next term in Norwich.

Along with volleyball and fitness I have also applied for the position of ‘Sports Representative’ at St. Anne’s which means that this year I am responsible for our gym and funding of the college sports. The gym has definitely been the most difficult task of this year’s Michealmas in my role of ‘Sports Rep’. We arranged a new place and equipped it with some brand new machines. The whole project cost St. Anne’s lot of money as well as effort of many people including myself. Additionally, it was necessary to induct people who wanted to use the gym. As to organisation, this was probably the most challenging task for me.

As a member of the Junior Committee at St. Anne’s I also had to participate on dealing with a problem that had arisen due to the ball. Balls in the UK, especially at Oxford, are always great events (for instance a single ticket usually cost around 85 pounds) and their organisation is therefore very complex. Since St. Anne’s doesn’t hold a ball every year, but once in three years, the Ball Committee has to organise it from scratch every time. Unfortunately, this year they didn’t manage the tickets marketing and hence they put into risk the JCR budget. Because of this, we decided to cancel the ball and push it back till the next year. This decision sparked harsh discussions and many people firstly disagreed with us. Our main fault was that we hadn’t communicated with all the undergraduates at first point and hadn’t shared our concerns before we made this important decision. In spite of these problems we managed to calm down the sitation and I think we all gained lot of experience from this situation.

If I should sum up the first term of the second year, I would say it became much more serious – mainly as to studying obligations. It helps me a lot that during the last year I learnt how to get more out of the lectures, better pay attention and work more efficiently. Nonetheless it still applies that the time management has to be on maximum and procrastination is not possible.

Christ Church Formal Hall