Rowing On!

As rowing novices, we only had a few training sessions each week, some on the water, some indoors on the rowing machines called ergs. At the end of last term, all of us have become senior rowers by participating in the novice regatta races and this term, we would form senior crews and prepare for the spring bumps races, called the torpids. Before I knew it, I was rowing in the first women’s boat and having a rowing session scheduled 6 days a week. As those lined up somewhat nicely with my weekly deadlines for Macroeconomics and Knowledge & Reality, the two papers I am studying this term, my weeks have gained a nice repetitive schedule, which fit perfectly with my nature. In the free evenings, I would plan to be social, spending them with my friends or my boyfriend so that I wouldn’t be isolating myself from people which could contribute to dropping mood.

While I will probably never be as excited about rowing as many Oxonians are, I am thoroughly enjoying the sport now, having overcome the initial training stages where the sudden and steep rise of physical activity would leave me unable to walk up the stairs. I have missed a sport in my life ever since I started studying in Oxford. I used to do synchronised skating for over a decade, and it has now become an activity I couldn’t regularly take part in, as there is no synchronised skating team at Oxford. Even at home, with many of my fellow skaters going to universities themselves, I would no longer skate as much as I used to, and we have not competed in the last two seasons. Rowing proved surprisingly similar to the sport I love. Synchronicity with others in the crew is key to doing well and we would even do our hair in the same style and tie them with ribbons in the college colours before a race, which brings in nostalgia of my skating days.

Today, the torpids have begun. Bumps races are a very specific kind of rowing races, where boats are ranked in divisions and start lined up one behind the other, trying to reach the boat in front of them to gain a ‘bump’, and outracing the boat behind to prevent being bumped. It’s a rather strange concept, that some rowers like to call ‘smashy smashy’ in social media posts about the event. Indeed, when we were, sadly, bumped today by the first women’s boat of Balliol College, they ended up smashing into our oars with their boat. The surprisingly sunny and warm weather Oxford has experienced today has made the first race day a very pleasant experience, in spite of us failing to prevent getting bumped and coming oh-so-close to bumping the boat of Jesus College that was ahead of us.

Focusing on more than just the academics of Oxford has so far proven to be key for a happier university experience. And it only took me a year to figure it out.