Good luck to the English Finalists!

My first stable crop of BA (Hons) English Language and Literature finalists start their exams this morning. Everyone not tutoring finalists for the first time thinks I am over-invested. All my peers who are tutoring finalists for the first time agree that the experience is, you know, just a little like taking Finals again, several times, with no control over the outcomes!

My thoughts will be in the Exam Schools every morning this week. I am so proud of them all – which includes my non-student undergraduate friends, especially the wonderful NDK – for getting this far, and know they’ll do well (I’m already dying for July and the results). Oxford Finals are horrendous, and English is particularly tough because it’s so early & intense in the season. They’ll have an exam every morning this week, and then a final exam (which, like most of the others, lasts three hours) next Tuesday. The good thing is that Englishers also finish very early, leading to the GOLD RUSH: three glorious weeks of nostalgia, booze, punting, parties and (when not desperately cramming in aquatinted, heart-melting dreaming-spires experiences for the v. last time unless you just do more degrees) blessed, blessed sleep while everyone else still has exams to do.

In the spirit of things, here’s a picture of me finishing Finals in June 2008. Oh, goodness, just – if you’re finishing your Oxford BA this term, do everything in those amazing weeks which follow. I’ll stop now before, like, Tom Lehrer, I’m so-o-ggy with nostalgia, but, yes. Love is the only education worth having, and I loved (the last part) of that last Trinity term.

…of course, it wasn’t the last term at all, and I hope it won’t be for some of my finalists, but nonetheless…. /recruitment drive for eternal ACADEMIA.