After the whirlwind that was the 0-3rd Weeks life became a little
calmer for me. I was still JCR Vice-President with the attendent
duties that took up a fair amount of my time - ranging from attending
meetings with the Fellows to organising the JCR photograph, to
advertising General Meetings, publishing motions, taking minutes and
publishing the results, and the bane of my life - the room ballot.
That said, I enjoyed it enormously and learnt a lot more about College
as a result.
Fourth Week saw the elections for the other positions on the
Executive Committee for the next academic year; I loved watching the
husts, as opposed to participating in them. I felt justified in asking
the odd silly question - having been subjected to them myself. Hannah
had tried to persuade me to run for another post, but I decided that
losing once was quite enough, although I was really touched by her concern,
it was about two weeks before her finals started, and she still found the
time to talk to me. It was my 19th birthday at some stage during that week, and
I celebrated with Charlotte (who shares my birthday) by going to somewhere on
Gloucester Green for a meal (anyone who was there happen to remember where we went?).
That was nice, things got funny on the way back - Benedict and someone
began to sing Jerusalem as we were walking
down the streets. Although I didn't realise it at the time, I was
developing tonsellitis and so was a bit cross with them - (ie. the illness
was making me snappy) - how much more pretentious can you get than singing
that song whilst walking through the streets?
Things got even funnier when we reached Charlotte's room for cake - we both
blew out our candles and then suddenly realised that the ensuing smoke might
set off the smoke alarms, and so we quickly opened the window to try and disperse it.
Rose Lane 5 is next to some Grade II listed buildings, and while it's not
connected to the same fire alarm system, we wouldn't have been popular if
we'd set the fire alarm off. We'd also have been in trouble for having
more than ten people in a room at once without permission - the PoP's
definition of a 'party'.
The following morning I woke up feeling ill - this is noteworthy, simply
because there isn't really time during term to be ill, and this was the only
time I was properly ill - too ill to work - resulting in moving a tutorial. The following day I went to my
doctor who said I either had tonsellitis or glandular fever (luckily I'd
been warned by friends that I might be told I had glandular fever, so I
wasn't too shocked when he suggested it). That evening was the hust for VP and the
welfare officers. In classic Karen mode, I asked the candidates for male
welfare officer, 'Rate your cuddliness on a scale of one to ten.'. Of course,
once I'd asked that, I had to go and cuddle each of them, and then give
everyone my assessment.
From my point of view the most notable incident occurred during the
IRO hust - Matthew had decided to ask the candidates for his job to
run mock husts, so David and I ended up husting for the post of
'Kleenex Rep'. Scott asked 'Can you think of any uses for Kleenex
outside the bathroom?', and I replied 'Well, *I* can't think of any,
but I'm sure you could show me some.'. Scott then said something that
made me blush, along the lines of 'Can't we let her stand for
anything else?'. That was so kind.
In addition to being ill, that week was very frustrating for me,
since, by convention, exec members are impartial regarding the
election of their successors (unless they're candidates, as I was),
so I couldn't talk to any of my friends about the people standing for
the various posts. There are good reasons for that convention, as
became clear when we had to reballot the VP election for the following
year, following the discovery that the interpretation of one ballot
paper altered who won that election, but that didn't make it any less frustrating.
Academic work was as difficult as ever that term, for we were
doing half of contract law and all of administrative law. Contract
law is something far easier to comprehend as a non specialist -
we all know what contracts are. Every time you buy your weekly
shopping, you're entering a contract. It's an agreement between two
(or more) parties for something (goods/services) in exchange for
consideration (something else, considered to be legally valuable
consideration eg. a peppercorn). The prevalence of contracts in
normal life makes them much easier to comprehend. Administrative law
isn't like that at all - there's a lot of very complex case law as
well as important academic articles. Essentially administrative law is all
about how to complain about the government - so the grounds for judicial review,
other ways to complain eg. tribunals. etc We didn't enjoy that at all - it's
very interesting, from a theoretical point of view, but it is very hard to understand.
That term my sister came to stay with me for the first time,
and got to meet the people I'd been telling her about for months,
as well as finally making me relax a bit - I couldn't do much work
while she was there, so we explored - we went down to the river for
Saturday of VIIIs week, ate in hall, sat in the bar, played pool and
bought Ben's Cookies. We played croquet - I guess that to
non-Oxonians, croquet sounds very upper class and boring, but it's
not. I don't profess to know the rules (I'm sure Google will be your
friend if you care), but it's a relaxing way to spend an afternoon
on the lawn. As are garden parties - the end of Trinity is characterised
by garden parties organised by subject societies and the college
drinking societies. Sitting on the lawn, drinking Pimms, wine and cocktails
is another excellent way to spend sunny afternoons.