In school, life has a proper order, or life cycle, if you will, that everyone acknowledges and follows. Wide-eyed Naive Freshman, Snotty, Been-There-Done-That Sophomore, More Diligent Junior and Relaxed, Worldly Senior.
It happened in high school; just when you were getting comfortable and starting to enjoy the old stomping ground, you are forced off your turf and onto a strange and frightening college campus. The cycle begins again.
Unfortunately, spending the semester at Oxford Brookes means I have skipped past that last stage of non-awkwardness and returned to the bumbling stage from whence I came. I am officially a freshman again. Or as the kids here say, “fresher.”
I no longer reside in a plushy University Commons apartment, fully furnished and complete with the odd mouse every now and then. I live in a dorm with communal bathrooms and a guest policy. I have to leave 20 minutes early to ensure that I have the time to get lost trying to find campus buildings and still be prompt for my classes. But I do that every year, so I guess some things never change.
Don’t get me wrong, there are benefits of being a fresher in England, mostly stemming from living in an on-campus residence. I’m in a catered hall, so breakfast and dinner are provided in a cafeteria-like setting.
The downside is the narrow, half-hour window we have to eat from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. And it’s kind of scary when Pam the Cook bangs on the table with her wooden spoon to announce we have 5 minutes to leave because it’s bingo night for the staff.
In addition to food, alcohol is also readily provided to everyone. The legal drinking age in Europe is 18, so I guess it wasn’t out of the ordinary for boxed wine to be given out at a fire safety meeting at the
dorm.
“Just don’t pull any alarms or play with the fire extinguishers later. Ha! Ha!” the fire marshal chuckled. But then the priests guess that you want sangria instead of the non-alcoholic orange punch at a
nunnery barbecue. No. There is something very, very wrong about accepting alcohol from people of the cloth.
The very best thing about living on campus is the view from my window. It doesn’t have anything to do with my being a fresher, but it’s my column.
Anyway, my window overlooks shrubbery and some apple trees. And an occasional frolicking deer, a few cats and several bats.
No, I didn’t pet any of the animals, but I have named the deer Gregory Peck. A few of us took to apple picking one night because I had never seen a fruit-bearing tree before. We returned with wounds from the prickly bushes meant to protect the apple trees, a sackful of the forbidden fruit and a light warning from the warden. The apples are still on my shelf, because there is also something inherently wrong with eating fruit straight from a tree.