One thing that people tend to assume about going to Oxford is that afterwards your life is just one long escalade of privilege and opportunities, with opened doors and special favours that place Oxonians at the head of public and private industries across the land.

It’s easy to see where people get this impression — most of the Government these days seem to have come from here or The Other Place, and ex-students seem to dominate a lot of the press, financial industry and acting sphere.

Of course, correlation is not causation; but I’m not necessarily going to pour water on the idea. Hypothetically speaking, it could be that alumni of this university are fated to join a shadowy cabal who gain ease in their lives through shady backroom deals and centuries of tradition. I’m not denying this could happen — in fact, in light of many aspects of society, it would make a lot of sense. Hell, on a personal level, I wouldn’t even mind it that much.

My problem is that if we are an evil illuminati, the buggers didn’t invite me to the meetings. I mean, I must have missed some kind of briefing. I did skip a couple of the orientation seminars in freshers’ week, but I figured they wouldn’t all be important — how was I to know that ‘World Domination basics’ was scheduled right after the Lorraine Kelly fire safety video? There may have been a lot of masked men in hooded cloaks descending to secret cellars, but I was watching South Park and just assumed Lewis had been taken in a new direction.

It can genuinely be a little terrifying how well some of my peers have organised their lives for after finals.

Every Tomos, Richard and Harold seems to have a Fortune 500 internship lined up at the very least — and they’re the family disappointment. The sums some people seem to drag in right after graduation can be extremely intimidating, especially for an unemployable arts student like myself, and it’s hard to associate that kind of capital and responsibility with the neighbour who three weeks ago painted himself entirely gold and spent three hours drunk wandering around Port Meadow singing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song.

But I’m at a loss how to secure my own glittering future.

I do have something to do next year — albeit more in the ‘pay people money to give me more exams’ category — but many questioned me why I, an Oxford student, didn’t go straight into employment. To which I calmly replied: “WAS THAT AN OPTION? WHERE ARE THE JOBS? ARE YOU MESSING WITH ME? I’M SO POOR I NEED MONEY. HELP ME. HELP”, and so on (probably answering their question as to why I was unemployed, in fairness).

I suppose it’s really a chicken and egg situation — it’s hard to say whether Oxford the university turns feckless kids into successes, or whether smooth operators just gravitate here naturally. Equally, it could be that while Oxford does not literally open doors for you, the perception that it does might act in your favour. Or maybe it’s all of the above in some weird mixture. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Really, I just can’t remember the secret handshake.