I didn’t ever picture myself as a mature student. In fact, my first piece of published journalism was for this website, writing about what it was like to attend university at 17. Yet, over the past few weeks, I’ve become akin to an undergrad at the University of Oxford, where I’m doing a six-month fellowship researching how journalists report on missing people.
As a fellow, you’re part of a “college” – Oxford is essentially made up of lots of mini universities – and able to access all of the facilities, from libraries to catered dinners to social clubs. Getting to see the elitist, constipated bowels of the institution is fascinating enough. But having joined the college women’s football team, and being five-to-10 years older than everyone else playing, I’ve also been reminded of a less positive aspect of university. That being: how annoying teenagers and men in their early 20s can be.
Last weekend, I played in something called “cuppers”, which is where colleges compete to … try to win a cup? I don’t know; I’m still learning the Latin. My team and I spent the 90-minute match not just being beaten 5-0, with fist-sized bruises to show for it, but being relentlessly heckled – with a megaphone – by recently-spotty boys on the sidelines. Either they noticed my great talent down the wing or they simply realised that I was the only person on the pitch getting wound up by their chatter. In any case, by the end of the match, the taunts on the speaker were aimed almost solely at me. The ref even had to step in with some admonishments.
“Number 12, your laces are undone!” was the most frequent cry. (My laces weren’t undone.) When I almost scored an own goal, the taunts reached fever pitch. It bemused me that the other players weren’t outraged; they seemed to placidly accept that these boys would chat nonsense the whole game and walk away with smiles on their faces. Well, I wasn’t about to let that happen, was I? The grownup that I am?
And so, after the match, for the first time in my life, I walked up to a group of boys and told them in my sternest voice: “You’re not children and you’re being very immature.” They looked uncomfortable, went red – and then laughed hysterically as I walked away.
Without looking back, I stuck my middle finger up at them. Proving, of course, that I was not, actually, a very mature student at all.
• Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is a freelance journalist
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