Much like my initial reaction to Mamma Mia 2, I didn’t believe university at home would happen again until I saw it in writing.

Much unlike Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, I wasn’t convinced a sequel to university at home would be a box-office success and a glorious fantasy flourishing in a musical setting. I certainly wouldn’t be throwing a party in an Oxford graduation or embarking on a holiday to Greece, in any case.

If you read my previous article on doing university in a home environment, you may have gathered that my transition to online uni was anything but smooth. To everyone’s surprise, not least my own, Michaelmas term was better than anticipated despite its obvious difficulties — largely due to the numerous study* (*procrastination) sessions held with my fabulous corridor.

Even technology seemed to be on my side, though I naturally made time for my own buffoonery — an impressive highlight of which included booking my only in-person supervision right before an online translation class. By the time I’d realised what I’d done, it was too late — meaning I had to sprint out of my supervision in panicked White Rabbit fashion and find an unused room in faculty.

In short, I ended up sitting in the middle of an empty lecture hall with both computer and phone on 10% charge, nowhere to plug a charger in, and to top things off, my camera turned itself off 5 minutes into the class. I was very much the elephant in the room.

And now I’m back to square one, to the exact place where I was last summer with another full lockdown in swing. The saga that no one (including myself) asked for continues.

While Easter term’s events unravelled in a somewhat pantomime-like fashion — an original but failed theatrical set, so to speak — this term’s events were like a poorly adapted screenplay of the former. What I lack in inventive skill and common sense, I make up for in tasteless and predictable clichés, so without further ado, here goes:

LIGHTS: Cue the pre-term shenanigans

Preparation for term is always somewhat chaotic. Horrifying realisations of unfinished work, unwelcome deadline reminders, and doom-scrolling of Moodle to find more unwatched lectures are all integral parts of my preparatory routine. I guess the one difference was the lack of packing because I was, quite literally, going absolutely nowhere.

In the week before term, my schedule (unlike my suitcase) was already packed — filled with a coursework submission, essay deadline, and DoS meeting, complemented by extensive sessions of Camfess reading and meme generating for Violet. The weather was the visual embodiment of Toope’s “doom and gloom” scenario.

An interesting Lent Term was on its way.

I started the term as I meant to go on with an interesting DoS meeting. Last time, my internet kicked me out of Zoom, but this time, I was one step ahead and kicked myself out of the whole situation altogether by missing the rescheduling email. What can I say? The devil works hard, but my incompetence works harder.

Things only improved with my coursework submission. Twas the night before the due date and my paranoid self was busy over-analysing every point I’d made. Once I’d had enough of this foolishness and thought it best to submit, my WiFi decided to play a fun game of hide and seek.

Except it wasn’t fun. And there was no “seek”.

As a logical solution, I went downstairs to get some tea and calm my one remaining brain cell, only to end up tripping and spilling said tea on my cat’s head. As if witnessing the calamity it caused, the WiFi miraculously regained its moral conscience and returned for the time being, leaving me to submit my work at the fine hour of two o’clock in the morning.

In the next few days before term, I proceeded to cram my pre-reading and essay writing because I evidently enjoy self-sabotage and have the foresight of a carrot.

CAMERA: Launch the Lent Term chaos and attempts to focus

“Your internet connection is unstable.”

*cue internal screaming*

An accurate summary of how the term’s classes are going. People sound robotic, muffled, or like they’re delivering a message from outer space. In my most recent supervision, I felt like I was sitting in a remote lighthouse, with my supervision partner located at a beacon several miles away and my supervisor stood in the port between us, shouting over the crashing sea of static noise with desperate cries of “Can you hear me?” and “Could you repeat that again?”.

The same applies to some of the Zoom talks I’ve attended. A call of over four people is too much for my computer to handle, which didn’t help me out when I messaged a question in a talk and the second the main speaker mentioned my name, the screen completely froze over. My friend later told me that there was a nice 30 seconds of silence where the 50 attendants stared into the black abyss of my Zoom square and waited for me to speak. Always good to know.

Some other remarkably unhelpful habits of my computer include frequent malfunctioning of its mouse (a problem I wisely resolved by hitting it until it worked) and the automatic switching between windows when I enter a new call. As I have discovered, none of this is conducive to elaborating on the history of decolonisation in French.

As for my ability to focus, I think Lady A sums it up quite nicely: “she’s gone, she ain’t coming back”. Ten minutes into writing my fifth essay of the term, I found myself watching a YouTube compilation of baby giraffes running in Tanzania. Why? Good question.

ACTION (or lack thereof):

Dear supervisor, my essay wasn’t submitted three hours late, it was just playing hard to get.

It’s Week 6 of term and I think I’m losing my mind.

This week’s highlights have included my supervisor’s Zoom kicking him out of his own lecture, submissions of more assignments late than on time, and a newly invented variety of tea — courtesy of myself. I wouldn’t recommend said variation, however, because it originated accidentally through my Dad’s descaling of the kettle and my ignorant self sipping on mixed chemicals. Check before you pour.

Even so, you’ll be glad to know I have discovered a practical solution to all of my problems: oatcakes. They come in all sorts of flavours — fruit and seed, wholegrain, fine milled… and are surprisingly addictive, meaning I consumed an entire box this week alone.

At this stage, perhaps I should specify a few things I wouldn’t recommend doing, so this narrative might have some tenuous moral lesson.

• Firstly, do not leave the curtains open when there is lots of sun because the rays will reveal the dust on your screen and you will look like a yellow zebra on Zoom.
• Do not leave your half-finished lunch next to you during a supervision because you will look at it repeatedly and your supervisor will ask what you’re doing.
• And finally, do not go into the kitchen, spot the cat stuck in the garden tree, and instantly fly to her rescue because you will end up with an angry feline and Nutella on your white shirt.

The Final Cut

After eventually tripping over the finishing line of term, my last essay and supervision were completed in a newly fabricated Week 9. To relax after this whirlwind of a term, I thought I’d watch a film on Amazon Prime but ended up searching Moodle on autopilot.

Someone call Stephen Toope — I think I’ve found what academic rigour looks like.