The sound of my voice: The rusticator

We continue our feature on finding Oxford’s hidden voices

I think they call it a “suspension of studies” now. I had to fill in a lot of forms and I’m pretty sure that was what was at the top of most of them.

Rusticate sounds better though – literally, it means to go off into the countryside, so that’s exactly what I did as soon as I left this place. I went on this massive trip around Britain, all the way up and down, visiting towns and villages and sleeping in the back of my car.

Rusticating was definitely the best decision I ever made at Oxford. By the Trinity of last year I was so overwhelmed by work and home stuff that I felt like my mind was about to crack and splinter everywhere. I was constantly carrying around a boulder of stress in my backpack that would make me miserable night and day.

And when I did it, it all immediately lifted.

‘Rusticating was definitely the best decision I made at Oxford’

Leading up to rusticating everything was a bit of a blur, but I can still really clearly remember driving home on the motorway with all my stuff packed up, knowing I wouldn’t be coming back for a year, listening to Rod Stewart playing on the radio. It was fucking brilliant.

I’m bumming around a bit at the moment. I’m thinking about maybe doing some travelling. It is a bit worrying to see all my friends who will be graduating this summer when I’m coming back to repeat another whole year, but I still don’t regret it.

Am I looking forward to coming back next year? Sort of. I think I’ll be more relaxed about everything second time around. Taking this year out has made me remember that some silly little essay about nineteenth-century corn famines or Soviet historiography is really insignificant when there is such an enormous world outside of Oxford. But it’s easy to forget here.