This was a mistake. Sitting in All Soul’s College, an insistently blank stack of paper in front me, coupled with an insistent list of questions. Can music be immoral? Are the Americans the Romans of the modern world? What is the relationship between science and literature?
Rewind to this morning: I put on my gown but sub fusc wasn’t required. I arrived at All Soul’s; everyone is in gowns. And sub fusc. Maybe they feel that wearing sub fusc in exams helps the circulation of blood to the brain. But I’ve never taken an exam at Oxford. This was a mistake.
Let me be blunt: the ridiculous fact is I had never heard of The All Souls’ Exam. When I got a forwarded email titled ‘All Souls College Open Evening For Women’ with the text saying things like ‘We are concerned that relatively few women choose to sit the exam’, I thought, ‘It’s just an exam, what’s the big deal?’ I’m not English, so I didn’t grow up steeped in mystique about what lies behind the gates of All Souls’ College. And I’m not European, so my fees are something that makes me want to sell my love of learning to the highest bidder. So, in brief, I’m doing it for the money: I’m so tired of filling out damned funding applications, sitting a twelve hour exam seemed less of a hassle than trying to estimate my non-existent yearly income. Ultimately, my ignorance of what this exam actually is has led me, gowned, into the exam room.
The invigilator flaps in, in his scholar’s gown. He sat the exam a few years back. He is jovial. He struggles over reading the directions. A kindly administrator in a green suit helps him: ‘If there is a fire, leave your belongings’.
The only belongings we were instructed to bring were a BLACK NOT BLUE pen, a gown, and intellectual self-reflexivity. I have the pen and the gown. The invigilator leaves with the administrator. We are alone. We are the presumptuous ninety-odd sitters of the All Souls’ Fellowship Exam. I was not recommended to take this exam. I did not find out that one could be recommended until after the first paper. Maybe everyone sitting around me has been recommended.
There is a diverse cast of characters here. There are the recent undergraduates, who have a post at Prestigious Investment Bank in London waiting for them. They are sitting the exam in a final gesture of farewell to their academic selves. They wear navy, pinstriped suits, chat relaxedly and shake hands with one another. They were recommended by a college tutor to take the exam. They were flattered, already had their six-figure future lined up, but are sitting it for a story for their co-workers.
There is the herd of graduate students, varying in their levels of desperation. They wear thick-framed, intellectual but trying to be hip, glasses. They go around politely introducing themselves to people, inquiring about your coursework, your housing, your research. If they are studying humanities, they laugh about being self-funded and secretly hope for a miracle. If they are scientists, they are puffed up with false confidence that they do know as much about philosophy as the philosophy post-grads. But they secretly wonder if it reflects badly on them that they couldn’t get funding, even as scientists.
There are flocks of bashful girls who read English; they wear floral prints and trench coats. They all have familiar faces but you can never remember their names.
Then there are the non-native English speakers, quietly wondering if anyone from not England/America/Australia, has won this thing. They don’t really want to know.
Still staring at the list of questions: Does it matter if national identities wither away? Can charity be selfish? What separates literature from other forms of writing? I get up to pour myself some water. They have bottles of still and sparkling water, with the All Souls’ crest imprinted on them Will sparkling water help the circulation of blood to my brain? I sit down. I catch the glance of another sitter. She looks away. Someone else is staring out the window, head in hands. Some people have taken off their gowns and rolled up their white sleeves. They are writing furiously. I pick up my pen.
At ten ’til the hour, the invigilator waltzes in again. I supposed you can afford to waltz when you are guaranteed about twenty-thousand pounds for seven years for doing…I’m not sure what. If you get this thing, what happens? You move into All Soul’s College. You dine in Hall with all the other Fellows. Maybe you feel like an imposter. You wear your black gown and have a Scout empty your waste bin until you are thirty. You revel in your brilliance only briefly, and spend the rest of the time reveling in everyone else’s brilliance. But you get money, for seven years. You are living the academic dream, being paid to think. And to just be.
It doesn’t really matter what the All Souls’ Fellowship is exactly. It’s the All Souls’ Fellowship. If you find yourself sitting in All Souls’ College wondering about the morality of music, you are one of the few people in the world who has an undergraduate degree and has matriculated at Oxford. You might be smart. It would be a good idea to be. But you might not. You might have decided to take this thing on a whim, on a bet, on a dare. They told everyone that when you take the exam you should assume you could never get it. Assume it is Everest and that you are not Sir Edmund Hilary. One or two of the people assuming that will be surprised and will get the Prize. But the rest of us will have assumed rightly.
Afterwards, your friends will be flabbergasted that you even sat the thing in the first place. They’ll ask you lots of questions. You’ll debate what to say. It was horrible? It was the hardest thing ever? Or, perhaps, it was kind of fun? With no marks, jobs or future riding on this thing, you are asked to answer the question Can music be immoral with no strings attached. You take out your intellectual self-reflexivity and spend six hours thinking about music. Morality. Wagner comes to mind but you think Wagner is boring. So instead, you write about that neo-fascist band your ex showed you, or that radio programme about fist fights breaking out in classical music concerts or that speaker at your college who talked about the music of plastic surgery. You write something down. You submit. You take off your gown. You secretly think it was okay but you say it was hard and exhausting so no one expects too much from you. Afterwards, you walk through the All Souls quad and hear someone say, ‘I wrote about how Wagner is banned in Israel, you know, because of the Holocaust’. Maybe I should have written about Wagner. Or maybe intellectual self-reflexivity comes in many forms. The Fellows of All Souls will have to decide.
