veritas liberat

One down, seven to go. As the cool kids say, I am now one eighth of a complete person.

Ahhh, but. It feels so liberating to have just done one, I don't know. I got up this morning and it was a beautiful day - something about an early morning; a washed-out white quality to the light, a strange buoyancy in the clouds by the horizon - and had a shower and had breakfast and got dressed layer by layer, and finally sat down very still with luminometrice and shimgray looking at me in some amusement, and thought to myself, also layer by layer, that here I am, after days and weeks and months and three years, oh my, and I am sitting here on a bright Wednesday morning in full sub fusc with a white carnation pinned to me and, yes, yes, now is the time and here is the place.

All very unprofound, I know. But I walked down to Exam Schools and hung around in the big marquee and ran into apotropaios and potatofiend and my darling jacinthsong (who has just now asked, "Are you making a post about our DOOMED LOVE?", to which my answer is yes, yes I am, our doomed love) and looking at all the people milling about in sub fusc and the announcements and the signs indicating Honours Schools and appropriate rooms, it felt like I was in an airline terminal for transit to hell. Only, an artfully designed hell with echoing ceilings and giant clocks, but still. Veritas liberat and all that. When they called for PPE, I followed the crowds.

The South School is large and echoes. There are three hundred PPEists. Not all of them were taking this paper, but that's a lot of PPEists. I sat down and got out a pen and tried not to panic. Succeeded, mostly. And then they'd somehow got through all the pre-exam blurb without my noticing, and, yeah. Turn over paper. Panic.

( paper 0214, International Relations )

I call that a win. I handed it in, went outside, and it was sunny and warm and sebastienne and deathbyshinies had come to take us for lentils and lunch, because they are great. And I went home via college and the Wednesday market - where I bought six out-of-date Wonka bars and nothing else, oh I am so classy - and found that pridehouse had, collectively, given me all the chocolate in the world (and sherbet lemons!), because they are great and, oh, you guys, thank you, you are lovely. One great thing to come out of Finals - you realise that people are always looking out for you, always. People give me shirts and give me tea and give sugar and fresh fruit and endless good wishes and pats on the head, because they are lovely.

So, finally, I walked home, still in full sub fusc - a brief note on sub fusc, actually, because I think it is great and don't understand people who don't. No one doesn't look hot in it, for one thing, although some people more than others. I meant to do my hair in plaits today, purely for sebastienne's benefit - people who make fun of schoolgirl fetishism need to see three hundred fully-legal adults in full sub fusc, I am just saying - and on a sunny afternoon wandering home, with my favourite skirt and little black shoes that tap and the really-rather-enormous flower pinned to my gown and the occasional tourist gaping, it was all very Oxford. And if anyone deserves that, I think, finalists do; because you may be in the middle of the hardest thing you've done, but the sun is shining and you look pretty black-and-white ethereal in passing glass-reflections, and and the symbolism of the thing constitutes and surrounds you so everyone knows they have to be nice to you, and you are part of something greater than yourself. I am safe at home with the sun still out, and I can do this, I can do this.