My First Collections

My working view from my room this term

So I've had my first collections and they weren't anywhere as terrible as I was expecting!

Collections are exams that Oxford students do at the start of every term on last term's work. They're relatively formal in that they follow the general exam style setting: sitting in silence etc. They're used as a progress marker and don't count towards your final grade or anything.

Nevertheless it still feels like you have to put the work in and revise.

Upon returning to college after the Christmas vac on Thursday, everyone seemed quite stressed and highly strung and was squirrelled away in their rooms desperately trying to cram in as much revision as possible before the exams started on Friday.

I think my collections (one three our paper of three questions) went quite well however the third essay was certainly the weakest. Nonetheless I think my revision put me in good stead and I did the best I could.

I think that its important to remember that the collections are not of huge importance for your overall degree and you just need to view it as a progress checker and learn from it. If you do well then excellent, you're on the right track. Otherwise, it's all useful to improve.