Today Andrew and I attended the much-touted "Fresher's Fair". First, a quick explanation. All first-year Oxford students are called "freshers". Being a thousand years old and gigantic, Oxford has accumulated quite a few student organizations and such over the years. During Fresher's week, each Fresher (which I'm not exactly, but things are very fuzzy for spouses of students, so I sorta try to do everything and see what I can get away with) gets a ticket to the Fair. Since the tickets are distributed by the college and I am a member of the college (sorta), I got a ticket, too.
I met Andrew at the lodge at noon and, immediately after a very interesting pizza lunch at the dining hall, we headed to the very beautiful (and intentionally intimidating-looking) examinations hall for the "fayre". The Examinations School is mainly used for examinations - oral and written - which each student takes at the end of each term and/or year. If I understand it correctly, if you don't pass exams, you don't continue at Oxford. And the examinations are intentionally very difficult and comprehensive, so you have to know what you have studied since the beginning. Of course, that's how it should be, this is Oxford!
As Andrew observed upon our entering, this is probably the only time I'll get to see the Examination Schools, so that was a bonus. I won't get into it here, but they were pretty impressive.
So the fair is this event where the freshers go into basically like a huge convention-style exhibition hall and all the student organizations, local charities, churches, volunteer organizations, local businesses, etc, etc, have booths and try to get the students to join/buy/donate. I have been to many conventions in my 28 years and, believe me, this was bigger than any exhibition hall I've ever seen. It wasn't in one huge room, but multiple large rooms on multiple floors. They were roughly laid out by topic - charities, academic clubs, arts clubs, athletics, religious organizations, political organizations, musical organizations, jobs and military, businesses, campus organizations.
It was truly overwhelming. It took us about 2 hours to finish walking through, and we didn't really even stop and talk to anybody for more than 30 seconds! Everybody wanted your email to put you on their list and everybody wanted you to have their flyer or calendar or whatever. We wound up with four big bags full of stuff. There were some nice freebies (Blackwell's Bookshop's goody bag included a copy of Uno, a yo-yo, and a frisbee!). The local police used a special pen to mark my laptop and cell phone in case they are stolen and gave us an ID kit including the pen and stickers for our other stuff.
After the utterly overwhelming fair, I had to take the bus home (Andrew had a meeting, so I brought both of our things home). I sat down on the floor, dumped out the bags, and organized them into 13 piles! By far the largest is of student organizations. I imagine there are 50 or so in there that we are seriously interested in. Second largest pile is for local arts exhibits, shows, films, and performances.
So, if you decide to attend Oxford and are accepted, do go to the fresher's fair and enjoy the freebies. It is good to know that there are so many different student organizations. I was particularly impressed with some of the local charities that deal with at-risk children, homeless, and AIDS awareness. I guess those are pretty generic political issues, but I thought the local charities on those issues were on-target. It's hard to say if I'll be involved with any of these things and, if so, which ones, but it is good to know they're available to the student community, many of whom haven't had much experience with donating their time to others.
My only real disappointment with the fair (besides the rather aggressive nature of most of the booths, which I find intimidating and a little scary) was that there was no booth for the RSPCA, PeTA, or any other animal-welfare/-rights organizations. So I will tell you on my site. Donate your time and/or money to your favorite charity! If you don't have a favorite charity, find one! Mine is PeTA, but if you don't like them, do some research (some charities are definitely not all they're cracked up to be) and find an hour a week to volunteer or a few dollars to give.
Posted by Erin at October 10, 2002 04:43 PM