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Advice

I have a lump in my scrotum. I don’t have a regular partner, but I do have quite a lot of sex, and no-one has said anything. I don’t think that this is an STI but I am worried.
Graduate Student, St John’s.

The Delphic Oracle’s wisdom, Know thyself, is imperative advice. It’s impossible to offer medical advice by letter, but if you notice something for heaven’s sake, swallow your embarrassment and – to put it bluntly – have the balls to see a doctor immediately.

It could be many things, but let’s cut to the source of your fear and face the very worst possibility – the risk (rather obviously!) of testicular cancer in a man’s lifetime is about 0.4%, but it is most common in men in the student age range (well, 15 – 35 actually); but it has the highest cure rates of all cancers, virtually 100% if there are no secondaries. But early diagnosis is imperative. However nervous or embarrassed you feel, there really is no alternative to acting now…

I am a law undergraduate doing well and looking forward to a career – I have found that I’m in the very early stages of pregnancy, my boyfriend doesn’t know, and I think he will not see the issue as a problem, but as something to be dealt with. I’m not entirely sure.

I think that a lot of stuff about a foetus being a little person is sentimental, but I am a conscientious vegetarian and a pacifist and I have real qualms about what I suspect will be the inevitable end in a termination of the pregnancy.

I don’t want to waste the support and encouragement of my family who always went the extra mile, but I don’t want to worry them, I am supposed to be an adult after all. I don’t even want advice, but I do want to make a choice which I can live with.
ANON

Thank you for entrusting your story – we are not revealing college and have changed some detail to protect you. First, you are already an informed, thoughtful and reflective person with the rights and responsibility to make a decision that is so important, because you have to live with it.

I am sure that your friends and family will support you, and seek to advise you, but the decision has to be yours. I think that you are trying to make an informed and realistic choice about your life, and you’re right that you have to make the decisions. But that doesn’t mean that you have to face them alone.

You say that you haven’t yet told your boyfriend: he may well have certain expectations, but I hope that together you can face some of the things that face you over the next few weeks. Whatever the outcome, facing the issues together is a really important part of your relationship. I’d guess he will be well-aware of your approaches to life and I hope that he will be utterly supportive.

You write about wanting to protect your family – no doubt they would want to do exactly the same for you – obviously I don’t know your family details, but I suspect that if they have been supportive of you thus far, that’s not going to evaporate at a time when you need them very acutely.

There are also people you can talk to at different levels of anonymity – from student help lines, College nurses, doctors, and welfare provision in your College. People generally are trustworthy, unshocked and proactively supportive.

These structures can help you now, and sustain you whatever your choices. Most of all, treat yourself as tenderly and generously as you do your own friends, there is no easy answer, but with the support of those who love you, you do not have to face the decisions you have to make quickly without support.

I’m a cheat. I copy stuff for term essays, smuggle things into collections and am struggling hard to keep everything together – I haven’t been caught, but I am terrified of finals that are like a dark cloud on the horizon.

I get pissed a lot, and have been in trouble with my College because of that – but they haven’t a clue about how stupid and inadequately prepared I am, and I’m depressed that no one has caught me – or even seems to care.

My family want me to succeed and have invested a lot of time and money in my education. I don’t have a long-term meaningful relationship, and I don’t really want one – I get around, but I feel everything is going to crumble.

ANON

This is a very honest letter. Wherever you are there isn’t a place where you can’t make a choice. You clearly feel hemmed in, and it might be worthwhile pretty soon to talk to a doctor about how you are feeling.

But let’s move to the substance of your letter. Cheating – plagiarism if you like – is a sign, above all, of a lack of self-confidence. You didn’t say whether you cheated for your A-levels, but you must have got AAA (or thereabouts).

At any rate, smuggling stuff into Collections is crazy and unnecessary, and sounds almost like a deliberate attempt to be caught. Taking a paper and not doing well may get you a robust response at Academic Review or from your Tutor – but it sounds from your letter as if that’s really what you want – to be caught out, or at least ‘known’ well enough so that you can be taken seriously.

Seriously, your College would care very much indeed, so dare not to cheat, and go to talk with your tutor if she or he is close enough to you, or someone else in your College’s welfare structure who is committed to being confidential and they will support and challenge you.

This is something your Chaplain, for example, will be skilled, and no-doubt experienced, in dealing with. I don’t know any Chaplain who’d tell you to be good and sing a hymn, by the way… If you’ve been in trouble with your College for alcohol related offenses, they are probably aware that there is some problem, and your raising it would be counted very much in your favour.

However generous it was of your parents to spend time and money in getting you here, you’re not their FTSE investment – and they’d be pretty wounded, I suspect, if they thought you reckoned that they only spent the money to get you to Oxford to succeed ‘for them’. Of course they want you to have the chance to make the best decisions for your life, but don’t let a misplaced sense of debt oppress you.

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