Andrew Wychrij

Andrew Wychrij

2nd year, History and Russian

Partly inspired by my own background, I’ve always been fascinated by Russia, its language and culture, so, having done Russian at school for a number of years, I was keen to continue with that at university. That said, History was a subject that I was equally interested in and I don’t think I’d have been happy if I’d have had to settle for one or the other. It’s definitely not the most common subject combination: even my school asked me to consider whether this was what I really wanted to do, but I’ve not regretted my choice. Combining History with a language, especially the chance to study events in another language, was always a challenging prospect, but has proved to be a genuinely rewarding experience, particularly thanks to Russia’s own rich and dramatic past.

There aren’t too many universities that offer Russian, but I was encouraged by my school to apply to Oxbridge. I’d always had an ambition to go to either Oxford or Cambridge but it wasn’t really until I’d had the opportunity to have a look at both that I got a proper idea of where I wanted to be. Oxford really is an impressive place. After I’d visited and spent a bit of time I genuinely didn’t want to go anywhere else. In addition to the fact that the course was very attractive, Oxford as a city it seemed to have more about it than Cambridge, and I didn’t need much encouragement to apply. I was advised to go for Univ based on its reputation for Russian but considering that there are also 12 in my year doing History and three Fellows in that subject, it seemed like a perfect choice for me. As it’s turned out, I don’t think I could have been happier with my choice. Being pretty much in the centre, Univ’s location is brilliant- I don’t think I have to go more than 5 minutes walk for most of the things I need to do- and there is a great mix of people which means that it really does live up to its reputation of being one of the friendliest colleges. Although it obviously takes a bit of time to get used to Oxford life, it didn’t take long before Univ started to feel like home.

Doing a dual honours arts degree is, I’ve been told, about one and a half times the work of a single arts subject. However, 12 essays a term seems about average and managing the work and organizing yourself is a sizeable challenge for everyone. Personally, I found my first two terms weighted towards Russian with two tutorials a week (one literature, one language) as well as three classes and around three lectures. There is a lot of focus on literature and we’ve already covered works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, Akhmatova and Blok, all read in the original. On top of that, there is a lot of language work to cover, but I definitely felt more comfortable with Russian as a result. In addition to the Russian, the first year required me to pick two history options, which ended up being 19th century Europe and a foreign texts paper, which for Russianists is Trotsky’s ‘1905’, a perfect way to combine both sides of my degree. It’s worth mentioning that you only need to have done a language to A Level to be able to choose the foreign texts option – which is just as well since I think I’m the only one in my year in the whole University currently studying History and Russian. All this means that you take 7 papers at the end of the first year. The workload is challenging, with a lot of independent work, but manageable and I think I’ve learnt a lot and really enjoyed what I’ve done.

Being at Oxford isn’t just about the work though. There is so much to get involved with. I’ve tried to do as much as I can, and despite the amount of work, I currently row and play football for Univ’s 1st XI and am a Student Ambassador and a member of the Russian and Ukrainian societies. It’s definitely a challenge to fit everything in but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it so far and I think it’s well worth putting the effort in and getting as much as you can out of the relatively short time that you’re here.