veritas liberat

[raven]

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.

I don't know how much of it was panic because it was my first paper and how much was panic about it being International Relations, which is my (joint) worst paper; at any rate, I had a proper, epic fifteen-minute panic. Quietly, as not to disturb anyone. I shredded a bit of my carnation, I wrote stern notes to myself all in caps on the top of the answer booklet, I sat there very still and calmed the fuck down. Which is, I believe, step one. Step two, re-read the questions. Step three, realise I know things about the United Nations that are peripherally related to the question being asked about them. So I wrote those things down, and they weren't very good or coherent, but after an hour I had done one question. That was good. And the second question - "Was 2001 a turning-point in American foreign policy?" - was better, and the third question, about democratic peace theory, was better still. So there we go. I had another momentary panic close to the end and made an executive decision to do the hand-signally thing and run out for a while. I went downstairs, wondered to myself for the five-millionth time why the loos in Schools are always kept approximately sixty-seven degrees below zero, stared at myself in the mirror for a minute, went back upstairs and finished writing an answer on democratic peace theory. Just like that, there were three answers and a lot of my handwriting strewn over my desk.

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.

Comments

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I rather like the sound of sub fusc, actually. I mean, when I finished my oral exams for my Masters, I was just wearing nice clothes. As I walked along to the Graduate School building to turn in my paperwork declaring me officially done with my degree, nobody knew that I was somebody new and different who had just gone through something difficult and scary and come out the other side intact.

Of course, we were all wrapping up our degrees separately so probably would have looked silly wandering about one at a time rather than as a whole, but still.

And yay for getting one exam down and getting through it and continuing to function after the panicking. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, sub fusc. You need to wear it for vivas, too, so you do occasionally see a lone person all respectably sub fusc, and feel appropriately sympathetic. I do think it's a lovely tradition.