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By Jana A, Oxford Mentor, 2023
As today marks the halfway point of our two-week summer school session, it falls upon me as a mentor to craft a blog post recounting its most notable moments thus far. However, to detail the events of each day would serve for nothing, because despite the universal schedule delivered by Immerse to each group of participants – museum visits, excursions and activities in which we all engage – each student, mentor and manager will have experienced the week in a completely different light. Given the multifaceted nature of perspective, I have thus decided in this blog post to explore a feeling rather than an event, one that each of us has undoubtedly felt over the past seven days: the phenomenon of unfamiliarity.
For the students, unfamiliarity comes in the form of leaving friends and family for an alien city and challenging studies. For the staff on the other hand, unfamiliarity pounces unannounced with technical difficulties, uncompromising weather conditions, and scenarios for which it is near impossible to prepare. On Sunday I was stationed at the airport greeting students who arrived from as far as Australia in order to take part in the programme, and many admitted to never having travelled alone before that day. I myself generated enough confusion simply navigating between Terminals 5 and 2 of Heathrow Airport, so I could only begin to understand the pressure of the unknown environment into which the students had been thrown.
Once firmly established at St Edmund Hall College, I was introduced to the students in my mentor family as well as the other students, the three other mentors and the College Manager, which was nothing short of overwhelming. In summary, everyone had embarked upon the life-size jigsaw puzzle of matching 35 names to 35 faces. Then commenced a period of ‘ice-breaking’ (or at least thawing) under the heat of competitive games and fireside chats, but mostly aided by the group’s joint effort to make a fool of myself and the other mentors. Some of our more effective bonding methods included: exposing (and promptly adopting) a mentor’s embarrassing high-school nickname, explaining in great detail the nuances of British slang, and hosting a group sing-a-long to the entire soundtrack of Mamma Mia. And so the ice began to break.
As a member of staff, you have the privilege of witnessing friendships evolve between students from a distance, and this we certainly did over the following days. Many entertaining anecdotes emerged from the group’s initial interactions: during one game for example (at a point where the participants were still unsure of each other’s names) a student became appropriately dubbed ‘green-pants’, distinguished by the brightly-coloured trousers she wore – a nickname which was affectionately recalled the week-long after her real name had been well confirmed.
Each student made themself known to the group in a different way, whether it be for their remarkable quick-wit, their positive attitude, or their ability to reduce the entire cohort to tears of laughter. We witnessed the formation of unlikely (and likely) pairs as well as the growth of friendship groups, forming bonds whose strength can only be attributed to the unique and intense nature of the experience they shared.
What became apparent towards the end of this first week however was that every member of the programme, albeit from different countries, time zones and cultures, had faced the fear of unfamiliarity in some form. Even the four mentors, despite having lived in the same city for years, were but strangers just one week ago. Yet the challenge of being alone, removed from the people and places you know and unsure of the environment around you can be a surprisingly social one. So as we boarded the sleepy coach back to Oxford after Saturday’s excursion, tired and satisfied by the day of exploration, what prevailed was an atmosphere of comfortable understanding. For staff and students alike had shared in the very unfamiliarity which distanced us from the start, ultimately bringing us all closer and paving the way for a really memorable week to come.
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