Daughter struggling at Oxford

[ThePoliteWriter]

My daughter is in her second week at Oxford studying English and German. She settled in ok during Freshers Week but is already finding the workload and time management a bit overwhelming. She worked really hard over the summer to do all of the preparatory work but has now discovered that the joint honour students had been sent the wrong instructions for English. This means she has done a lot of "unnecessary" work and, more importantly , has not done some of the required reading eg Ulysses! On top of trying to catch up with this, she is overwhelmed by the huge amount of reading required by one of her tutors and is finding the whole system very difficult to navigate. Of course she has also been unwell with " Freshers flu". Is this normal for Oxford? I have had several tearful phone conversations with her and feel unsure how to support her. She doesn't even seem to know who her personal tutor is. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/5423023-current-oxbridge-students-new-year-new-thread

Pop along to this series of threads which has been going now for 7 - 8 years. Lots of support & experience

It’s definitely an obsession on MM. Just look; 8 years of constant obsession plus loads of other threads. Medicine is too. No other parent need this level tailored support and advice, or ask for it. The op would never omit “Oxford” from
the title. She could but, as I’ve discovered in life, Oxbridge grads always tell you they are very quickly after you meet them.

I suppose most posters on MN do this to a certain extent. I think The Archer's threads are on around 200 threads now. Some education threads run to nearly a decade. Some posters thrive on their children's legal careers, some focus on their DH's business.

I studied English at Oxford.

Please tell your daughter that reading texts for her degree course is completely different from what she did for A-level, where you lovingly analyse every word of a very small number of texts.

For her degree course she will cover a huge number of texts and writers very rapidly - for example I studied Victorian literature in two terms. It's not humanly possible to read all the primary texts and all the relevant criticism.

Instead she will gain a broad understanding of each period - by going to lectures and reading overview guides - and then she will learn to select a small number of writers and texts that she really loves and has something to say about ... When it comes to exams, the questions are very open-ended and students are able to write about their enthusiasms.

For what it's worth I did "read" Ulysses - or at least I looked at every page in turn - it took me maybe two or three hours and I ended up with a vague but useful impression of what Joyce was trying to do by describing one day in a person's life, plus some useful quotes ("I said yes I will Yes") ... Trying to read it properly would take her years and probably kill any love of literature completely!

I do think the joint honours is a challenge, though, as the different Schools don't seem to liaise with each other particularly well ... If she is really struggling she may wish to consider asking to change to single honours.

The very best of luck to her - once I had got over the initial shock, it was the best three years of my life.

@HewasH2O I don’t keep threads going for 10 years about either of those! Answering questions yes, but never starting one. There’s a very big difference. Oxbridge parents are definitely a breed apart.

My older two both did a joint honours degree not at Oxford and it was challenging. Like po said mainly the schools not communicating with each other.
get her to soak with someone, maybe get some tips on how to organise herself. The start of uni is stressful until they find their ryhtm

But it will sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.😀

Just chiming in with everyone else saying it’s utterly normal, OP. I still have, somewhere, a torn-out diary entry from Michaelmas 1997 that says ‘Biggest mistake of my life!’

Some people seem to be interpreting this as a stealth boast because I specified Oxford as my daughter's university. This is not the case. I specifically stated Oxford for two reasons:

1. because Oxford has some distinct features with which I am unfamiliar
2. because my state-educated daughter feels particularly intimidated by the pressure and elitism of being at such an institution.

The good news is that since my initial post, her first piece of work has been marked as a high 2.1!

She should definitely know who her 'moral tutor' is. It is usually a Don based in your own College who also teaches at least one of your Joint Honours subjects. It is likely to be one of the people she is going to for tutorials.

The Cliffs Notes website covers Ulysses, OP.

I can imagine how much work is involved in her degree. I did a Double Honours degree, although in a different field.

I think that making an appointment with Counselling would be helpful for her.

Ignore the trolls op. It obviously is relevant because my first comment would have been ‘there’s a reason first year doesn’t count towards your grade’.

You do obviously still have to hand in the work and pass (40% I believe?)

The above may not be true for Oxford.

OP I was both a student and a lecturer at Oxford and I can tell you categorically that this is absolutely, completely normal. All the first years feel like they’re drowning at least for the first term or two. Some try to style it out, but even the ones who look like they’re taking it all in stride are paddling like mad underneath. A few suggestions for her:

She should talk to the nicest tutor she has. They will be very used to this and can at least offer a cup of tea, a biscuit and a sympathetic ear.

Realize that she can’t read every word. Skim skim skim and YES to audiobooks for the important texts.

If it’s really crushing, consider changing Colleges. They’re not all the same in character and some are much more ruthless than others when it comes to workload and consequences for work that they consider not up to scratch.

Don’t forget to sleep. Seriously. This sounds obvious but it’s so tempting to stay up all hours and try to do everything. You can’t. Get a good sleep hygiene routine going and prioritize that as much as you can. Everything is so much worse and harder when you’re exhausted.

The first year is brutal, mentally. It does get easier. She can do this. Don’t think about the next six weeks, just tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It’ll be Christmas before she knows it. All the best to her.

@TheCryingTheBitchAndTheFloordrobe it’s vanishingly rare to change colleges. I don’t think this should be suggested as an option. What if the new one is as bad or worse?

Good luck OP. (and ignore the trolls!)

Yes it’s rare, true, and logistically tricky but doable and much better than leaving or becoming mentally unwell. I knew it to happen probably a dozen times or so while was there.

I doubt she would move somewhere worse if her current College is wretched (which it may not be at all) the students get a pretty good grip of what’s what fairly early on.

Wrong thread? Nobody obsessed?

I’m sure everybody’s grateful for your very helpful opinion about OP‘s daughter who is already at university and has a specific issue she’s struggling with.

If you have any specific advice, that would be great, it might help your comments seem less like you just have a chip on your shoulder.

Welll soñé to her OP. Sometimes our children second guess themselves when learning new things, not wanting to get anything wrong . This will probably give her the boost she needs.

This is a separate issue and doesn’t really help the OP.

But I went to a RG uni and the workload for an arts degree was slack. So there is a big problem that the pressure is so intensely high at Oxbridge but really nothing like it at just the next tier down.

Yes I agree with this. I did joint honours (at a Russell group uni) and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone reading this thread supporting their child into uni. The admin alone is a nightmare and you don’t read enough of each subject to really pick up the themes between it all.

Normal!

OP, I did a masters on Joyce. Everyone says that reading Joyce Criticism is more enlightening than the OG.

Get DD the Richard Ellman book and Ulysses from the library. Read Ellmann, dip luxuriously into Ulysses, it’s very very long. But the ideas are summarised in the criticism.

PS Don’t even think about Finnegans Wake. Ignore. 💐 to DD, she’s doing well already.

Hi Op, haven’t read most of the replies so may be repeating others…

DD is starting 2nd year this year, also from state school and a very non-typical background for Oxford. This is normal, but saying that doesn’t make the experience easier! Mine isn’t doing a joint honours but one of her close friends is and last year was particularly hard for her.

There are a lot of options for support - and all will help - academic services who can help with management of workload / organisation etc, welfare services for wellbeing / mental health, college tutor for awareness and can often put in addition sessions or tutoring if needed and college parents for the voice and support of those who have been there.

My dd struggled with a specific aspect of her course initially and her college allocated her a post grad for 1:1 for a block of time. She also struggled with anxiety and made her tutor aware and adjustments were made to help her through. The uni know that students find it hard and overwhelming and are set up to support.

Apart from the work, has she made some friends? How is she finding college life - depending on the college it can be very different!

If you want to dm me do, I would be happy to ask my dd anything more specific that might be helpful, or from her joint honours friend, could even be at the same college!

Yes. I came to say similar. Read a different humanities subject but the idea that you'd actually get through the entire reading list given each week or each term is fanciful unless you do absolutely nothing else and, even then, burn the midnight oil consistently. Not a recipe for a happy life.

I think at her stage of things I still thought I was going to get detention or kicked out if I turned up to a tutorial saying, "I only managed to read x, y & z this week and didn't really know what to say in my essay - can we talk about why?" She'll still be trying to impress them and justify her place rather than extracting all she can from the tutors for her own benefit!

It ends up being an exercise in prioritisation and understanding what's important and what's a nice to have (perhaps based on your essay focus that week), which has been very good training for the workplace in my experience (though it took me an incredibly long time to learn to lesson for someone who's supposedly reasonably bright!)

I also echo the bit about a lack of active teaching. In many ways quite nice as the focus is on exploring and discussing whatever sparks your interest, but quite alarming for those of us who appreciate a bit more structure.

As others have mentioned, there's a plethora of support in college and she can certainly email any academic office in the search for her personal tutor and they should manage to get her top the person with the answer. If in doubt about where to start, start with a generic college email address or even the porters! And when she's found them, she should feel free to speak to them about her concerns for reassurance and a not of academic guidance.

It sounds like her joint honours schools have been very irritatingly chaotic, unfortunately, so hopefully next term will be better.

If not, I also knew several people who stopped down to single honours after a couple of terms of insane overwork. There's no shame in that either if she eventually decides that would be better.

Poor thing. Please tell her not to worry and to really enjoy the experience, knowing she's not going to be perfect - not least because there's no such thing at this stage. If I could do it all again, I would (because it was great fun), but I'd take my own advice and worry less! I expect I'd therefore actually be more productive...!

Oh yes. No-one* has "read" Ulysses and it's frankly a standing joke that most undergrads (and beyond...) have never even cracked the cover!

Frankly, the very impressive extent of @PieLittlePony's attempt marks her out as a particularly swotty swotty swot swot 😉.

Hi, OP.
My DD is also a state-schooled Oxford ML fresher. Just single honours, and I believe that means her workload is quite a bit less. But she did say she had a tutorial, seminar and grammar lesson all scheduled for the exact same time!
Fortunately I’ve not had any tearful phone calls but, then again, I’ve not had any phone calls at all! Just a few texts. I’m mainly stalking her on instagram. She did send me a photo of the washing she’d done, which made me feel unreasonably proud. Tearful phone calls may not be what you want, but it’s lovely that your DD can open up to you. I worry that mine might be struggling but not want to say anything, for fear of disappointing me. Hopefully she’s just busy and having a great time.
I sent her one of those slivers of cake in a card last week. I will try to send her a card or some little gift at least once a week. We’re a bit too far away to visit regularly (about 2 and a half hours) and I’m not sure how discombobulating that might be, anyway. It’s certainly very weird not having her here. 😢