Sub fusc wet dream

It's finals time of year, and here in Oxford the University insists that its students wear sub fusc to sit their exams.

So far so arcane, and I would argue so unfair, as the last thing you want to be doing the night before one of the biggest exams of your life is to be making sure you've got a clean white shirt and stupid ribbon thing to go with it. At Cambridge we were luckier, and I seem to remember taking most of my finals in T-shirt and pyjama bottoms.

And to be fair, most of them do look fairly ramshackle as they flick through their notes outside the exam hall smoking four cigarettes at once and drinking Red Bull.

But there's the odd woman who looks like she's about to be turned down by Page 3 and sent over to the Sport as more their style. Miniskirt, lip gloss, high heels and a mortar board makes quite an impact, and you can see men adjusting their trousers as they walk past and drifting off into little reveries about being their examiners.

Frankly, I am baffled. Why dress carefully like something off the top shelf in WHSmith in order to sit your degree? Who are you doing it for?

There's plenty of time to play the nubile-and-a-bit-slutty card, if that's your thing, when (to paraphrase Anne Robinson for the first time in my life) you discover the treachery of the workplace.

Your finals are blind marked. It's probably the last time in your life that anyone really will only want you for your mind. I'd be making the most of that.

joella