Red Carnation

I’m one of the few finalists left who still haven’t finished, but tomorrow it’s finally over! It’s been a fairly awful experience. The last six weeks of my life have been mainly spent in a library, and more recently in exam schools too. I’ve had low revision points where I’ve honestly reacted to not understanding something as if it were the end of the world. Things manage to get a little bit out of proportion when all you’re doing is revising! But I think I’ve survived somehow, none of the exams were catastrophic. So far I think I managed to pull of something vaguely redeeming in each of them so it will hopefully all balance out. I’m going to go all out today and stay up very late revising as it’s the last time I’ll EVER have to do it, so I have nothing to lose. Well, I say that, but I’ll almost definitely lose will power at half 11 and then hit the sack.

I should also add, for the benefit of non-Oxforders, that the red carnation in the title of this post refers to a made up Oxford tradition of wearing carnations to exams. You wear white to your first one, pink to the ones in the middle and red to your last one; resulting in a stream of facebook statuses that read ’[insert colour] carnation’. This carnation gets pinned on to your sub-fusc: the full academic dress that Oxford insists that we wear to exams. So that’s a suit and white bow tie for men and for women, a smart black skirt and white shirt with velvet ribbon in a bow round the collar. To top this off we wear our gowns and mortar boards too. It is honestly the most ridiculous thing to enforce and serves no purpose whatsoever. The last thing I want to worry about before taking a set of really hideous exams is, ‘Where on Earth is that bloody ribbon??’. I suppose the bonus is that once you’re finished it is quite fun to get drunk in a silly outfit, and this time tomorrow that will be me!

Finalist x