Tradition tradition tradition

St John's College is one of the most ancient college in Oxford University. It has lots of traditions and hierarchial system. It is very much a bigger King's College (NZ). The academic staff are the seniors, and the graduates and undergraduates belong to the middle and junior common rooms respectively. Almost every week, there are formal hall dinners. The normal ones are the informal ones. What happens, apparently, is that the dining hall will be decorated quite posh, and we have to dress up smartly and wear an academic gown over clothes. Sometimes it would be requested to wear a suit. There will also be waiters bringing the 3 courses of meal (although aparently the meals are similar to the informal ones) to you whereas for informal ones you line up to receive the food. Yes, it's very muh like at King's when we had to line up for meals. The queue is shorter though.



They use funny terms here. Here are just some I could think of right now:
Scout = cleaners
Porters = security people
Freshers = first year students
Terms: Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity

Everytime I went to meals in the dining hall (3 longitudinal long wooden tables and 1 horizontal), I could always hear a girl talking that reminds me of Hermione. Funny enough, there is actually a Harry Potter society in Oxford. Also, there's Tolkien society! I went to the freshers' fair today. It's held in the examination school (yes, that's a particular place where you have to go to sit exams) and there are probably like 100 societies. We actually have to have tickets to go into the fair at a particular time. It's just so different. I don't remember Auckland Uni ever had one. Maybe I just never bothered to go. But being in Oxford actually just feels like back in high school where they try their best to encourage to take part in various things outside academics. There are also university teams that play the varsity match. The first teams of Oxford are called the "Blue".

Another very traditional thing is that there is going to be a matriculation ceremony next week. We are all required to wear suits with white bow ties underneath the academic gown. We also have to carry the motar board although not wearing it. That's all going to cost me a lot of money to purchase, but they should be good souvenirs and memories. All the freshers will be taken photos of together afterwards, just like the house photos of St John's.

One last thing. I had the graduate induction in the college. There wer 4 hours of various people speaking about the structure, fire alarm and IT stuff about the college. One interesting thing though is that when the MCR people were talking, they passed around bags of condoms to everyone. Apparently, Oxford University is the most undersexed university in the UK. They also provide condoms in the MCR for 3 pence. I guess that's the only affordable thing in the UK I've seen so far! Hahaha...