From a young age, I have been drawn to the quiet gravity of words: their sound, shape, and subtle force. It wasn’t just writing I loved; it was the way language could hold a whole world between its teeth. So when it came to choosing what to study at university, English felt more like a continuation and a step further into something I’d already been living.
Now, after completing my first year of studying English at Oxford, I realise that what I had glimpsed as a child – the expansiveness of language, its capacity to both reveal and resist – was only the beginning. Studying English here has allowed me to approach literature and language not just with affection, but with precision. I have learnt that every text is a network of choices, shaped by history, power, and people – and every close reading is a conversation with both writer and world.
What I perhaps didn’t fully anticipate, however, was how wonderfully sprawling the subject would be. English at Oxford refuses to be pinned down: it is at once historical and contemporary, analytical and creative, intimate and structural. One of the most enriching parts of this year has been studying the linguistics module, where I encountered frameworks I hadn’t previously known how to name but had always intuitively sensed. I found myself captivated by Critical Discourse Analysis – not just as a tool for reading texts, but as a way of reading power. I was struck by how political rhetoric makes meaning through metaphor, how euphemism can conceal, how syntax can sway. Studying how ideologies shimmer just beneath the surface of seemingly neutral statements felt as if the language I’d always known was being reintroduced to me, line by line.
Yet, the beauty of studying English has not been confined to the classroom for me. At Oxford, the literary imagination spills beyond the walls of tutorials and lectures. As a former Deputy Editor for Identity at The Oxford Student, and Section Editor for both Culture and News, I’ve had the chance to shape stories that speak to the lived experiences of students like myself. I have written Opinion and News pieces for Cherwell and been a Social Media Manager for The Oxford Blue, helping bridge the distance between readers and writers in a digital space. In all of this, I’ve come to see journalism as another kind of literature – one that is alive, urgent and deeply human. It has allowed me to explore English not just as a field of study, but as a way of engaging with the world. St Catherine’s, my college, has been the perfect home for this kind of learning. As JCR Secretary, I’ve been closely involved with student life: organising, listening, writing minutes, sending emails that try to be both informative and not too dry (an underrated skill in itself). The role has helped me feel more rooted here, not just as a student but as a member of a community.
If anything, this year has taught me that studying English is less about answers than about attention. It’s about depth, about noticing how a line turns or a vowel softens, about asking what a sentence does, not just what it says. It has also reminded me that language is not a passive thing. It has the ability to act, bruise, heal and invite. To study English is, in some sense, to learn how to be responsible for language and how to use it carefully and critically. I no longer see creative writing and critical reading as separate pursuits. They feed and deepen each other. Perhaps that has been the greatest gift of this course so far: it doesn’t ask you to choose between intellect and feeling, between rigour and wonder. It insists that both matter, and are equally necessary.
As I look forward to the next two years, I carry with me the thrill of the sense that there is always more to ask, read and say. Oxford can be overwhelming, but studying English here has confirmed what I’ve long suspected: that language, in all its contradictions and colours, is the place where I feel most at home.
Iona Mandal is an incoming 2nd year student at St Catherine's College, studying BA English Language and Literature.
