Fully rested after a jam-packed arrivals day, students leapt out of bed for an 8am breakfast, where they shared expectations and hopes for the first day’s lessons. Then it was a short hop down the Banbury Road to Ewert House to begin their studies, in the building in which those studying Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Oxford sit their examinations.

While most students met their teachers and spent the first morning of lessons at Ewert House, the Fashion and Textile Design class was whisked off to the Natural History Museum; students were encouraged to use shapes and structures from nature to inspire their own designs.

In the afternoon, the St Hugh’s contingent descended en masse on the city centre, as they were guided around the city’s key historical and cultural sights. They admired the curvilinear designs of the Sheldonian Theatre and Radcliffe Camera, wondered at the literal miles of knowledge housed within the Bodleian Library, and realigned their views of the Divinity School to see it in its true light as bastion of the University’s theological heritage, rather than as Madam Pomfrey’s Infirmary at Hogwarts.

Back in St Hugh’s, students’ general knowledge was put to the test in the famous, fiendish ORA Quiz. Quizmaster (and Junior Dean) Fred lobbed up questions for students to field on current affairs, science and nature, history, and geography― a special wild card round of “Guess the Counsellor from the Baby Photo” provoked hoots of laughter and concerted application of teamwork and brainpower.