Did you know that Oxford is actually a city? You may scoff, but apparently the university isn’t all there is — it isn’t just libraries, gowns, exams and books. There are actually shops and things.

You may scoff. “Pshaw”, I hear you say (you have a loud voice), “if that’s true then why do all representations of Oxford revolve around university buildings like the Bodleian and Christ Church, or the uniforms students have to wear? You don’t get that at Royal Holloway.”

But I’ve heard rumours for years of a world outside the bubble of university life, a land of normality and good emotional adjustment. Scraps, mind you, spoken in hushed tones by entrepreneurial graduates under the cloak of darkness, or etched in ancient tomes buried deep in the most venerable and restricted areas of the library.

Most dismissed them as heresy, or the ramblings of men twisted mad by the vagaries of studying Dutch textile merchants in extreme depth. But I could never shake the suspicion from my mind — there were clues everywhere. The flash of a Domino’s menu in someone’s pigeon-hole; an overheard snatch of conversation about a pub the porters were headed to; the occasional gust of wind twirling a cinema ticket past the library window.

I tried to resist the doubts but they only kept mounting, until that day, that fateful day when my degree was completed and the dark council of academia revealed to me the terrible secret of Oxford.

What I had heard was true. The secret city lived and breathed. All the stories were real. I mean, there’s flippin’ loads of it! I thought there were only cobbles and dreaming spires, but there’s a Nando’s and everything. While hordes of tourists traipsed around the Rad Cam and Magdalen, I stood transfixed by the selection of DVDs in WHSmith.

With my exams over, nothing could stop me experiencing this city as a proper resident for the first time, and I devoured it, trying to do as much as I could with minimal time and effort (some student habits die hard). It felt like living in a whole different place.

I’m being a little misleading; despite the ‘bubble’ effect of being a student at Oxford, you can never really forget that you’re in a real city. I mean, the pubs have to come from somewhere. The main thing that differentiates us from Cambridge (apart from having more attractive undergraduates) is that they’re a small town attached to a university, whilst here Town and Gown (despite some differences of opinion) are in a somewhat more symbiotic relationship.

I was at the Corpus Christi Tortoise Fair a few weeks ago, expecting normal uni ‘quirkiness’, but what really struck me was how much of a community event it was as well, with people returning year after year, long after the feckless students had cleared out. All were gathered together for a vaguely pointless and uneventful ceremony that didn’t seem to have much intrinsic value as an activity. It was very Oxford.

While I’ve had a great few weeks as a bona fide citizen, it’s all been with a tinge of sadness, as I knew my time was running out. But I can’t really complain. Even if you only really find Oxford after you leave, it’s still one hell of a place to discover. (And it’s still way better than Cambridge).