I first met Andrew back in May during the college induction day. He didnt strike me as the typical Brit student- not that I know much about the typical Brit student, but you get what I mean. He had gone back-packing in China and taught English in Vietnam after he was done with his A-levels (along, of course, with all the working in pubs and bars that people who don't go to university immediately after their GSCE's usually do).
He definitely wasn't your typical student.
Oxonians are, as far as I can tell, roughly divided into two main categories, with a dozen other distinct sub-classes in belonging to each. One is the traditional hard-studier type, the archetypical crowning achievement of muggerhood that all the premier universities of the world are renowned for and which most Asian parents would like their children to become.
The other group is composed of what Evelyn Waugh labelled the Aesthetes par Excellence, the hedonist-socialites, the ones who saw getting into Oxford as the ends and not the means, the ones who saw reading and studying as activities for mere mortal bookworms, while they, the Titans of entertainment and stimulation and pleasure, had all the world of fun at their feet, doing as they pleased with everyone else at their recreational bidding. The entire universe was not so much their oyster as it was their dance floor and drink bar, the whole world not quite a stage where they were the main cast as it was one massive dinner party where they were the toast of both town and gown. Life was LIFE to them.
It has to be said, though, that very few of the student body conformed to either of these pure types. Of course, there were the unmistakeable few. For instance, Dimitry, the Russian Reaper, the Mugger Lord. I personally refer to him as Dimitry Mortarion, named after the sepulchral Primarch of the Death Guard Space Marine Legion, Mortarion the Lord of Death of the XIV Legio Astartes, from the Warhammer 40k universe. Dimitry plays fantastic football, but he is chiefly renowned among the college freshers for being in his room almost 24/7, his tall and taciturn frame hunched over books and essays, his bald head shining in the lamp-light like the Skull and Star sigil of the Death Guard Legion from whose Primarch I gave him his label, his hockey stick lying unused to one side, resembling if not in size then in shape the Manreaper scythe of Mortarion. That's the pure example of the first category for you- a mugger, a hard worker, reaping the good grades as efficiently and relentlessly as Death himself reaps the souls of humanity.
As for the Aesthetes par Excellence- the best sample my college has to offer is Tom, hailing from the happening city of London. Rarely seen without a drink in one hand and a girl in the other, Tom first made a name for himself when he and Jared cross-dressed and doused themselves in black make-up in order to pose as Venus and Serena Williams respectively at a Sports-themed bop. And from then on, he never looked back. At subsequent bops, he would always be the one calling the shots and drinking the shots, and calling people to drink the shots. His failure to become the Entz (Entertainment) position on the JCR (Junior Common Room) Committee did nothing to dampen his spirits. Energy and time was poured into more productive pursuits, such as sneaking into the bars of the other colleges (I was with him on the raid on Keble's). As it is, he has as his chief academic goal a score of 20% for his upcoming economics test. (His Warhammer 40k character would have been Fulgrim the Primarch of the Emperor's Children, the Phoenix Lord of the III Legio Astartes, except for the fact that Fulgrim expected perfection in all things, whilst Tom's idea of academic perfection is shit.)
But Andrew-Andrew was neither. He was not a mugger, that's more than certain. He was late for his very first tutorial and overslept on the morning when he was due to meet the college principal- until the principal woke him up by gently knocking on his room door. He was into the less orderly type of college experience- in fact, his chief buddy and fellow perpetuator of misdeed would be none other than Tom himself- but he was never really the center of attention the way an Aesthete should be. In the first week, he did get plenty of attention when he took a piss in public at the side of a wall during one drunken night, and the police came after him and fined him 80 quid, while me and Jared stood by and pretended to be nonchalent about the whole thing, but that's not really my idea of attention.
The stuff he did was more comical than consequential. He walked into Margot's room at 3 in the morning, thinking it was his room. He fell asleep on the stairs of his house whilst walking to the wrong floor. He climbed up the scaffolding to Jared's room, entering via the window, at least thrice towards the end of term, because Jared refused to come down and let him in. All of which struck me as not the usual behaviour of the typical student. Typical students dont really do these things, and typically drunk students do even crazier things than these. He would go on and on about the most fantastic tidbits of general knowledge, gleaned from the vast repositories of Wikipedian information, whilst in tutorials he would attempt to become invisible and let Julian the German Meister own the discussion. I still cannot classify his character.
Hopefully, I will be able to do so next term.
