(no subject)
So it's 2.45am and I am sitting on my bed listening to the traffic on Magdalen Bridge (yes there is still traffic - it might as well be 3 o'clock in the afternoon. As an amusing aside, apparently on May Day they close the bridge to, like, everyone (due to fools jumping off/dying), and have to get a bus to take everyone over the bridge from the 'Flete. That is rather silly. But anyway.. I am sitting and I am basically feeling totally... something. I don't even know what it is, but I feel that LJ may be the only place I am allowed to get all this crap out and for it to be considered acceptable! I was reading some peoples' stuff about "fifth week blues" last week. At the time I was like, fifth week blues - no way - I am so happy! And I totally was. But come sixth week and something has just changed. I feel resoundingly crap. I don't even know why. There are loooads of possibilities but I just feel terrible. I am like, why am I so upset? This - the place, the people - is what I have wanted forever. I feel bad and awful for even thinking these things. But I am.
I am unused to feeling stupid, and here I feel stupid. Every week in tutes my tutor, who is not even of the evil variety, completely lambasts my essays, criticising everything, even my (alleged) misuse of punctuation. I get told that all I know of history is "imaginary baggage" and that my views aren't "controversial" enough. I have to qualify EVERYTHING I say, he has no sense of humour. And my Anthropology tute partner, who just happens to be one of my best friends, turns into a complete monster in tutorials. He is just rude and competitive. And I always seem to get a high 2:1 but with no hope whatsoever of getting a first, and I WANT a first. Well, I guess everyone does, but I just don't know if I can think in the way that will ever allow me to get one. And James (aforementioned tute partner) is on a weekly mission to make me feel bad if he gets a first. And he is not even better than me. And.. yeah. I feel undeserving of being here. I barely work enough as it is, but I get totally embarassed by how mediocre most of my work is. And I am not fishing for compliments here, I just feel completely stranded. I feel like they're all thinking how foolish they were to let me in.
And I am living with 75 other freshers, and I never go anywhere but college/the Flete/the rather small town centre. It is mindblowingly irritating at times. There are some people I would gladly throw off Magdalen Tower, I swear!!! And there is sooo muuuch bitchiness it's untrue, and college itself is the weirdest atmosphere ever. The older years are predominantly cocky, male-dominated bastards and total slags, and my own year is like, the tamer version of that. I have started going to Evensong daily, and I'm the biggest atheist I know. I just feel like it's the only place I can relax for half an hour a day. But I even feel bad about going there, because I really am by no means an Anglican and I don't really know if that's OK, if I'm in chapel every day. But for example, this evening, I was in tears, literally crying, because of the amazingness of Magdalen Choir. I got ridiculously emotional! And then proceeded to have several arguments with one of my friends, then not end up going out and having fun, then trying to sleep and not managing it because my corridor is so FUCKING LOUD. And this is not me, at all. I feel.. stranded. I said that before.
Fuckkkkkkkk, I am not sure if I can do this! It's like brain boot camp, in a sort of "Big Brother" setting, with prison-style accommodation and a completely uncharacteristic tendency toward alcoholism.
Hope everyone else is doing OK. I am so sorry if anyone just read that whole rant.......
- Harriet