After an unnatural winter consisting of an Oxford snow week, a surprisingly electric basketball season and an even more popular flu season, Oxford is beginning to wake up and show its true colors. Tulips, dogwood trees and daffodils have sprung into action, welcoming students to the beginning of the end of the school year. Springtime is unequivocally the best time to be a college student, especially here on one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States.
In these final weeks, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the mounting academic pressure professors impose on us. A slew of responsibilities beat down students’ spirits and contradict the carefree atmosphere of the season, with essays and research papers due, theses to be reviewed and presentations to be stumbled through. I’m sure we all have a friend or two who completes a fourth-quarter comeback to redeem their GPAs every year. Salute them for taking the more difficult route.
To combat all the stress attached to the arrival of spring, I’d like to share some of my favorite Oxford traditions to celebrate the end of a hard-fought school year.
Baseball season is an obvious favorite for students for many reasons: beer showers, awkward tan lines and Rebel wins, for starters. Baseball season is essential because it offers a way to relax and be with your friends without the craziness of the football season. Football season is exceptional, but after a football game, I feel like I need another day added to the weekend to wind down.
Baseball games, on the other hand, happen throughout the week and weekend and are all-around much more lowkey than football games.
The spring concert is a luxury given to students free of charge every year. In the past two years, the university has welcomed stars PartyNextDoor and Riley Green to headline the much-anticipated show. It is common knowledge that college students as a whole are not the most financially stable individuals. We gravitate toward free stuff, and there is nothing quite like a free concert from a big-name artist to occupy what would otherwise be an uneventful April weekend.
Currently, the student body is eagerly awaiting a headline artist announcement. Still, there is a strong chance that the Student Activities Association and the university will attempt to slide by without a dedicated spring concert this semester due to Morgan Wallen’s rescheduled performance on April 20.
Finally, to wrap up the semester and distract weary students from the impending doom of finals week, Double Decker Arts Festival will arrive in style in late April. With the entire Square blocked off from traffic, everyone and their mother comes out to enjoy the art, drinks, food and live music.
Bar covers will be astronomical, musical artists like (Emmy award winner) Kingfish, Flatland Cavalry and Charlie Mars will play their hearts out and students are having the time of their lives. Double Decker is the quintessential Southern festival experience that gets me through the academic grind of late April like none other.
Spring symbolizes revival, but for some students, it also signifies transition into adulthood. Internships, graduate school acceptance letters, job offers, graduation and new school schedules can all be wonderfully exciting, but they come with the weight of leaving behind the life you have known to some extent.
To the students who are afraid of what the end of this semester can mean, remember that all these problems will soon be gone, just like the beautiful Spring in Oxford. Similar to the cycle of the seasons, periods of examination and transition come and go, and the problems and fears that they invoke disappear, too. So weather the spring, because there are many more to come.
David Ramsey is a junior public policy leadership major from Madison, Miss.
