4. Reentry: Back to hell, setting: New College, Oxford
A story about returning to the place of your wildest dreams turned worst nightmare
Trigger warning: allusions to suicidal ideation
August 5th going into the 6th, the day of the Oxford excursion, is a sleepless night.
Nausea even while lying down. Involuntary twitches. Joints that feel like they’re on fire. It doesn’t put me in a good position for the return proper — I dread the ring of my alarm.
However, I’ve already paid for my train tickets. Cheapness is what motivates me to drag myself to Marylebone Station for the 8:42 am train.
I watch the scenery outside change as the train relentlessly draws closer to the city — and with it, the University of Oxford. It makes me think back to the time when I truly believed the university was my future, not the ordeal it turned out to be.
14th January 2020: I get an offer to study Chemistry at New College, Oxford. I’m shocked. People like me, who are multiply disabled, LGBTQ+ people of colour and have been suspended from school before…we don’t get into places like Oxford. We don’t go anywhere. It’s like a dream come true. It’s the happiest day of my life so far.
12th October: On the very first day of the academic year, I get COVID. Self-isolation is fine enough: I keep on top of my work and watch trashy food competition shows on Netflix. I only cry once. I lose my hearing for a day. It could be worse.
25th October: I get hospitalised for the first time in my life. With long-COVID comes severe pain and fatigue. In exchange for those gifts, it steals my ability to walk unaided. My friends are very supportive and collect me from the hospital. Though I feel crushed, I resolve to work hard and catch up. I refuse to let this beat me.
1st November: Exactly one week later, I get hospitalised again. My friends are radio-silent. The grand setting of New College becomes my personal hell. There’s no way I can stay. And yet, I can’t escape: if I want to be safe, I can’t go anywhere by myself. All I can do is sit around and wait for the end.
20th November: It’s confirmed that I’m leaving Oxford, with the option to return in the 2021/22 academic year. I was always someone who believed hard work would see him through all his troubles to achieve conventional success. In the moment where I have to say I want to leave, that person dies.
Since that day, I’ve imagined what it would be like to return many times.
What would it be like to pull into the train station? To make the walk through the city centre to the college? To enter through those gates and wander around again?
What would it be like to revisit the rooms and staircases I got collected by the paramedics from? To return to my old room?
How would it all make me feel?
I didn’t think it would be a positive experience, to put it lightly.
I knew if I chose to return in October, they’d stick me back into one of the two accessible rooms. Perfect for a disabled student with mobility issues. Less so for a disabled student who already associates both with deep fear.
So on that cold November day, I’d basically already made up my mind that I couldn’t come back.
Because of that mindset, I approached everything with a sense of fierce desperation. I decided to take advantage of every opportunity I could find and create as many for myself as possible. I would even go as far as to weaponise the breadth and depth of my personal pain as an Autistic, LGBTQ+ British Born Chinese university dropout. Before giving up on myself for good, I would give myself one last chance and try anything.
That honest, risk-taking approach is why I’ve gotten an offer for Year Here, an alternative Master’s course in social enterprise, even though I don’t have an undergraduate degree. It starts at the end of August and my place can’t be deferred.
So now, although I’m happy with the outcome and excited for my new future, I truly can’t come back.
It’s a surreal experience. I left Oxford in the darkness of winter. Now, I’ve returned under the blue skies of summer.
As I walk through the streets of sandstone buildings, I see familiar places.
Places where my friends and I were messing around like normal uni students. The crepe stand that gets replaced by the Hassan’s kebab van at night, like a sweet and savoury Jekyll and Hyde. The road we lay down on at 2 am the night before I got hospitalised.
Places where I felt despair when I knew my time as an Oxford student was coming to an end. The Chinese grocery store I stood outside in the pouring rain, while my mom, who moved into Oxford as my live-in carer after hospitalisation number two, bought food for us. The bench where I told my best Oxford friend I wanted to run away to the sea, where no one would ever find me alive.
As I walk to the college’s Holywell Street entrance, I start to see the pastel houses. I pass the ATS, a shop with the only sandwich I think is an acceptable lunch option: a Spicy Chicken and Jalapeno (that’s how they spell it) panini. And then, at last, those tall sandstone buildings that I used to think looked like a castle.
It’s showtime.
“Er…hi. My name’s Aiden Tsen, uh, sorry let me think for a second. I matriculated here in October and then suspended my studies before the end of Michaelmas [Autumn term]. Mr Burden gave me permission to visit.”
“You mean Dr Burden?”
It’s a poor show: when I walk through those gates, it’s like I’m suddenly the person I was before public speaking, who always felt anxious and not in control. It’s also when I realise I’ve been using the wrong title in my direct correspondence this whole time. A doubly embarrassing moment.
After recovering slightly, first of all I collect a New College puffer jacket that I ordered. With it, I could be any random Oxford student. Though I’m not returning, I will wear it: it’s comfortable, I don’t own another winter coat, and I paid for it. I’m too cheap to buy another.
Next, I get as close as I can to the two rooms from which I got hospitalised. I’m grateful that I can’t see inside either. As I look down the spiral staircase at the top of the tower I was pushed down on a stretcher, I think to myself: This is fine. I don’t need to remember everything.
The path towards my old room overlaps with memories of mildly illegal late-night socials with friends. It overlaps with the memory of when I used my laundry rack as a makeshift walker to get back to my room one day when I was in extreme pain. This room I can see into — it’s empty and as massive as always. You’d never know that a terrified teenager and his mom lived there for a month. He doesn’t particularly want to live there again.
The last thing I do in the college is to head towards the Front Quad. It has the only patch of grass that students and alumni aren’t usually allowed to walk on. One of the few exceptions is matriculation, the formal ceremony when you enrol. I never got to take part in it: it happened in June 2021 due to the pandemic. I saw all the photos on Instagram.
An idea strikes me: I prop my phone up against one of the centuries-old buildings and film a video of myself running into the centre of the grass and spinning. Watching it back, I look happy.
It isn’t standard matriculation. It isn’t when or how I was meant to be on the grass. The person who got that Oxford offer wouldn’t be happy with it. Nor would the person who moved there, the person who had to self-isolate or the person who got hospitalised twice. Not even the person who left and immediately thought he couldn’t return.
However, it’ll do for the person I am now. I’ve self-actualised my entry to the university right before I leave it. Now I can move on without regrets.
On the 6:10 pm train back to London, I remember an interaction I had with my dad shortly before I suspended my studies:
“In a normal year, you’d be complaining about your tutors and messing around with your friends. You’d be completing your work just on time. You’d be just fine.”
“It’s not a normal year though.”
At the time, I said it with righteous indignation. Later, I would say it with a sense of resignation. Now I can say it with acceptance and without bitterness. I’ve finally gotten the closure I needed.
I pull out my phone and write an email to formally confirm that I’m not returning. Though it’s a Saturday, I press send — I have to send it on this train journey. I have to recognise the moment where I 100% made up my mind not to return. I owe it to that scared 19-year-old.
And just like that, I’m no longer an Oxford student. I’m finally free.
I continue watching the changing scenery outside. The train moves onward to London, to home. With it, I’ll move onward to better and brighter things. I’m confident they’ll shine far brighter than the darkness Oxford brought to my life.
