Nick Hilton on why finishing exams is not a reason to 'trash' the city

Trashing is an Oxford tradition, in the same mould as generally being the sort of entitled yob that would make the blood of an ordinary citizen boil. It consists of completing your final exam and then emerging from Examination Schools in full sub-fusc (black tie, gown, hat et al) to be greeted by flour, silly string, cava, poppers (of all varieties), flowers, crowns…ad infinitum.

As I write, the first trashing of the season happened yesterday, as English finalists (like myself) polished off their Renaissance poets forever. Being (John) Donne with exams appears to have had a liberating effect, and the celebrations were suitably exuberant.

Of course, we all woke up to find ourselves on the front page of the Daily Mail website, being deplored as elitist little twerps.

And, for once, I’m inclined to agree with the Daily Mail.

Finishing exams is nothing to celebrate. It is true that, throughout your academic career, exams get progressively harder, and, for most people, this is Everest. But, conversely, we’re also writing nonsense about Paradise Lost or Byron, rather than grinding through the unending tedium of life.

American comedian Seth Meyers once told a graduating class: “Your whole life is ahead of you. Not the fun part. That part’s over.”

Yep, that’s how it feels.

So, of course, images of nebbish scholars covered in whipped cream are going to rile those people who spend every single waking hour working harder than these Prosecco-swilling abnormalities. ‘Congratulations on completing your immensely privileged education and graduating to your inflated expectations of the real world which would make most rational people weep!’ I’m being harsh on my fellow English students. Perhaps they’ve worked twice as hard as me and have genuinely exploded with relief. Perhaps, to them, Chaucer is a subject of such earth-shaking gravity that committing it to paper can be greeted with nothing less than euphoria.

Or, perhaps, they’ve just been indoctrinated by Oxford’s unique systems of privilege to think that ‘trashing’ is the precision-tailored response to completing one’s degree.

In my opinion, the end of exams should be greeted with a combination of ashamed glances and reticent despair.

To herald out the ‘fun part’ of life in a mist of crazy foam and confetti is like celebrating divorce with cheesecake: tempting, but weird. The next part of life is, paradoxically, both longer and more finite. It will conclude, when it concludes, with a heavily eroded state pension, whilst inflation and global warming mean that silly string will be both too expensive and too toxic for human consumption.

So, maybe the Daily Mail is right about this valedictory display of delusion. Or maybe they’re just in the pocket of the proctors (or my nemeses, the junior deans) who have to scrub double cream from the cobbles on Merton Street each Trinity.

Either way, the facade of happiness is just a mirage. Ending my degree feels more like a bereavement than a relief, and has instigated more sombre introspection than jubilant celebration.

I may be in the minority here, but the flour clouds floating over Christ Church Meadows are just a temporary distraction. I’ll spend the next month dreading the revelation of just how terribly I did in my exams and then, just like this exothermic flash of elation, that too will be consigned to the lonely realm of nostalgia.