The Final Examination Ritual (Part 2), by Annick Labadie

This is the second part of Annick’s description of Finals week at Oxford. For part one, click here.

Post-Examination Celebrations

On exam day, I vomited all of the engineering information my brain had never truly digested on a couple of A4-sized exam booklets. The intricacies of that process are not of extreme importance, I assure you. Infinitely more interesting than the psyche behind bullshitesque mathematical essays is what followed later on. As previously outlined, when I exited the examination building, over three hours after entering it, I was warmly greeted with a few generous fish slaps to the face, and to other body parts too. Here’s how it happened.

The Psychology, or Something Like It

Since the beginning of time, Oxford students have conventionally dictated the pulse of many of their own traditions. Sure, some have been imposed (i.e. thou shalt not walk on grass) but some were born from student initiatives (i.e. color coded carnations). In Oxford, the path towards graduation has not been known for its coziness. The need for numerous traditions might reflect just that. I’m no sociologist, and I’m probably missing 90% of the picture, but 10% is a start.

By now, I’m convinced that most conventions are rooted in this urgent need for anxiety suppression. Of course, Oxford students have sometimes (not always, I assure you) been perfect renditions of the type A cliché, but that isn’t what I’m referring to.

Let me explain. Unlike many other university systems, the Oxford one generally requires undergraduates to take very few exams along their academic journey. Generally, students take them after their first year (the exams are then termed moderations or prelims) and after 3 years of study (termed finals). They are never simply taken following one semester of class. This means that one can follow a Christian Art History class in October 2008, and be required to compare and contrast Byzantine renditions of the “Adoration of the Magi” with the Greek Orthodox ones in June 2010. By the same token, one can move along without being seriously tested on that subject matter for over 2 years. There is lots of room for inconsequential time waste in the short term, as exams are always far away. Yet, paradoxically, there isn’t much room for it in the long run. Each exam holds significant weight in paving the way to a “cozier” future.

Most people think this is kind of scary.

Oxford provides very few checkpoints along the way, aside from the occasional exchanges with those tutors overlooking student success. “You must start revising!” is regularly offered as sound didactic advice more than 13 months before finals. Sometimes, students follow suit. And sometimes, they don’t.

Now, as humans, we’re not particularly gifted at acting on threats lying in a seemingly far future. Hummers, tanning beds, cigarettes, trans fat, deforestation, subprime lending, antibiotic overuse, and nuclear weapons would not exist if we did. That being said, though we regularly fail to overcome our inertia in preventing future cataclysms, we’re not completely incognizant of those same failures. So we feel anxious. And then we suppress the anxiety. And then there comes a breaking point, where inertia meets urgency. Only then do we finally face reality.

When adapting that phenomenon to the Oxford context, the result is lots of bottled up angst over the course of 2 to 3 years. The anxiety finally culminates with a climactic crisis as finals slowly approach, and then comes a resolution. This slow accumulation of anxiety derives from the conflict between the knowledge of an impending threat (the finals) in an intangible future, and the inability to effectively feel that threat until it is almost too late (i.e: shit, exams are in 3 weeks and I have 1500 pages of notes to revise). So when June comes around, a good percentage of the student body is in emergency mode, sometimes because of that exact human tendency.

Why mention all of this? My thesis is that Oxford traditions survive at least partly as a remedy to this sense of crisis. And because every exam holds so much importance, it is celebrated more seriously. Other interpretations exist, of course. For example, it could also be that Oxford is in fact prime breeding ground for brainless assimilation into high society, and that normative adherence to truly stupid practices gets things done nicely. That wouldn’t be very charitable, or accurate for this particular tradition, of course. So I’m sticking to the communal Xanax approach.

When it comes to final exams, students find ways to diffuse this accumulated stress. Jocks use punching bags. Nerds use other methods. In this case, every student finds solace in throwing things at the student finishing his/her last exam (called finalist). Oxford students have termed this practice “trashing”, which means, “to damage or wreck whatever the finalist is wearing”. The trashing precedes heavy boozing, and sometimes more trashing.

After the exam, the finalist is usually greeted by a mob of friends patiently waiting outside on the street. Sometimes, he/she is welcomed with flowers. Sometimes, with a bag of flour emptied on the head. And most of the time, with variants of both. Once the friends finally spot the target among the massive exodus of amorphous gown wearers, inner jubilation occurs. After all, who doesn’t like throwing things around without fear of retaliation? And who can worry about the pathetic essay answers provided 20 minutes back when covered with egg yolks and cane sugar? Everyone wins. So when the finalists approach, friendly riots explode in the middle of cobbled stoned streets.

Of course, the post-examination tradition is not simply a baking-ingredient-dumping party. It also involves hugs, pictures, food, and slightly frightening remarks concerning the future. At some point, finalists and their posse usually stroll off to the pub for bangers and mash or Sheppard’s pie, washed over too many lukewarm pints of London’s Pride or Bulmers’ cider.

But first, flour, eggs, Silly String, confetti, sparkly dust, greek yoghurt, or [insert somewhat harmless dirtying agent here] are thrown in the finalist’s general direction. This process continues until the finalist’s hair turns into “cakey and dull”, and his/her attire qualifies for dry cleaning. It can also be prematurely ended a proctor’s vicinity. (Note: If you think I’m making this up, please go to the bottom of the article. Read an email plea sent by the proctors two weeks before my final exam. Worth your time, I promise.)

Basically, everyone goes a little crazy.

The Cod

On exam day, I was going to be the exception to trashing, or so I thought. After all, graduate students are not as militant about those kinds of things as the undergraduates are. Our journey is not as long or as strenuous. I’d be all right.

A friend of mine, a Finnish girl named Enni who studies Classical Archeology and Ancient History, waited for me with a bottle of champagne and a bouquet of flowers, just like the proctor’s email said she should. She didn’t even pour the champagne over me. Obedience it was.

Reed, a USC graduate and former Trojan basketball player was also present, mostly to toy around with a metallic spray can of pink Silly String. That episode wasn’t too bad either, and although the proctors didn’t generally approve of silly string, the whole thing didn’t cause a monumental mess. There were tons of people waiting outside the school, some of them holding concoctions ranging from ha-ha to evil. After a few brief exchanges on the exam itself, I thought my buddies were done with me. Off we went to the pub.

Not quite.

As we walked down the street, I felt something gooey rubbing against the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure what it was, so I shrugged my shoulder and turned around, only to find Reed right behind me, looking a little guiltier than he usually did. I was confused. I could smell tuna. Maybe a shower was badly needed. Unsure.

(Note: The potential lewdness of the previous paragraph is not intended.)

He used my moment of dumbfounded lethargy to grip my collar. Then, he attempted to shove whatever he was holding behind his back down my shirt. I started screaming. Screaming in the squeamish, girly, annoying, attention-seeking kind of way. I couldn’t help it. Onlookers gathered around us, their heavy cameras zooming and flashing and clicking away. The fish never made it all the way down my spine, so he pulled it out, and before I could see what it was, hit me in the face with it. It wasn’t a violent move. More playful, but still, a sharp slapping sound was heard.

It was a cod.

A cod. A pretty big one too. I still wonder what kind of thought process leads one to think that buying a fish – and then hitting someone with it- is somehow a good idea, trashing tradition notwithstanding.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I started fighting over the fish like a fat kid would over the last sugar-coated butter stick. Reed slapped me again. Twice. Trice. Then, I somehow clumsily punted it out of his hand. All heroics aside, because I was constained by the trousers, black tights and gown, my leg kicking ability was akin to that of a white-belt athsmatic kid. Still, it worked, and the cod fell to the ground. I jumped on it first and hit my aggressor with it. Twice. Trice. Now we’re even. All of this was happening in the middle of the street, while surrounded by an equal number of students and picture-taking tourists. I was wearing a gown covered with a red flower and pink silly string. I was lugging a bottle of champagne, flowers, and my mortarboard underneath one arm.

Just not something you see every day.

Post-Post Exam

Our fight ended with the cod being thrown in the garbage, and with both of us smelling like a can of Ocean Pure Chunky White Albacore. We walked over to the pub, had lunch, drank champagne, and attacked a few random gown-wearing strangers with the rest of the silly string.

3 months later, I would find out that I had passed that exam with a 68, two points away from a coveted “distinction”, and that my scholarship scam could continue a little longer.

Later in the summer, I spent a Sunday afternoon at a pub terrace with a bunch of new acquaintances I had met earlier that week. Since our lowest common denominator was academics, we inevitably discussed our recent exams. Very, very sad. I know. Of course, the fish story came up. One guy’s facial expression changed from waiting-for-my-turn-to-talk to no-effing-way as soon as I mentioned the cod, and the fact that I had been smacked around with it.

“You’re the fish girl? You’ve gotta be kidding!” they said. “That story’s ridiculous. So many people keep talking about that. It really did happen?”

Yeah, it really happened.

Right there, on a sunny afternoon by the Isis River, I reflected on the color-coded carnation tradition, on the sub fusc, on the rigid examination procedures, on the post-final trashing; on all those tedious customs Oxonians religiously follow. How did all of these things come to be? Could it be that a harmless prank slowly transformed into a few centuries of humorless praxis?

I’m unsure. All I know is that Reed bought a fish because he thought it would be funny to hit me with it.

It was.

In the end, it could be that like those rituals, the fish slapping might just become an obligatory rite the future. I don’t know if I’d be happy or mortified. Happy, probably.

Maybe some day cods will be purchased alongside carnations, and no one will ever question the practice. Undergraduates will run to the market and make their smelly selection, entering a scholastic tradition that always was and always will be.

…
Email from the proctors:

Trinity Term 2009