Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue5.pdf
I’ve broken my graduation
present. The kindle I got for my
BA graduation in 2011 has died
a death; the screen is showing a
panoply of lines and blank
white space and it won’t
turn on. I think I might
have sat on it while it was
in my rucksack but I’m not
sure; all I know is it really
messed with my plans to do
work while I was away over
the weekend.
Luckily I’m a secret
Luddite and never
travel anywhere
without a few
printed paper
books so I was
sorted. Still, I feel like I’ve severed
a link to my previous Cambridge
life, even if it was a symbol of the
highly unsatisfactory end of
it.
Maybe it’s a sign of my
complete assimilation
to the grad lifestyle.
I
had to undergo a reinitiation
into my
sports club which
was perhaps a sign
that I might
cling on
to some
undergraduate tendencies a
little bit longer, as I succeeded in
completely stacking it on Jesus
Green, getting locked in a phone
box and waking up the next day
to row an outing completely
o ff my face. Still, the loss of my
graduation gi ft and subsequent
phone call to the insurance to
get a replacement made me
feel unerringly grown-up, as
did going to the bank to get my
overdra ft extended – time was I
would have just lived off rice and
peas for two weeks.
I even know people now. I
eat dinner in hall with friends.
The Grad is back, people. I am
back in the college zone. Maybe
that makes this column sort of
redundant? I don’t think so. My
jarring sense of dislocation recurs
at the oddest of times - the other
day I walked across Clare Bridge
and burst into tears just because
I was back and so happy and sad
to be here.
I played on a sports team with
someone born in 1994. 1994! I
was beginning my unending run
of education in that year! I have
rarely felt such an aged twenty-two
year old (apart from when I
made myself ill by going out five
nights in a row last week). There’s
nothing to remind you more of
how much of a non-fresher you
are than when you’re making
your kindle read to you as you
suffer from Freshers’ flu and are
too dizzy to hold it.
Thankfully it turns out my
kindle replacement will be posted
back to me, solving my problems
of illness-weakened reading
and book-burdened travel for
the foreseeable future. It seems
slightly fitting that I should have
managed to ruin it and get it
replaced even before the halfway
mark of this new term. My
graduation present has turned
into my matriculation update.
Got to love the poeticism in that.
Friday 25 October 2013
Friday 18 October 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 4
Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume4_Michaelmas_Issue4.pdf
As I write this I’m having a panic: I’ve got nothing to wear for Matriculation Dinner. Well, that’s a lie. I do, actually, but the dress I was planning to wear has been discarded as I’ve just realised that it’s the dress I wore to my original Matriculation Dinner four years ago.
I think it says quite a lot about my sense of eternal style (and my eternal state of student poverty) that I have the same dress hanging around in my wardrobe. I recollect as well that I am in largely the same situation as my last Matric Dinner – I’ve got a nasty case of Freshers’ flu hanging around, I’ve been out four nights on the trot, (with the nagging sensation that I embarrassed myself more on the previous Friday night than I’ll ever be able to apologise for) and I’m running late. Again. Oh yeah, being a postgraduate means I’ve got everything sorted and under control.
If you were to look at the intricate timetable I’ve crafted onto some magic whiteboard paper (look it up – it will BLOW your MIND) then this could easily be the impression you come away with. However, I feel ever more like a panicked fresher undergraduate: a large amount of reading, a seemingly endless amount of extra-curricular activities, and always the fear that by electing to stay in and sleep instead of joining in with the latest MCR event, I’ll be left behind by my peers. It’s a bit of a balancing act, fitting back into the college where people sort of know who I am but I’m trying to get to know the new postgrads. They’re all talking about novicing; I’ve somehow got myself signed up to W1. They’re chatting about the newest exciting thing they’ve discovered in town, and I feel a little bit world-weary as I recall the halcyon day long ago when I too found that same statue/space/ view.
Oh, Cambridge. How do you do it? You keep entrancing buckets of new people to fall in love with you. Despite the fact that you’ve replaced the pasty shop with a Jack Wills, for which I lay the blame squarely at the feet of one D. Cameron, somehow the charm of my town (I’ve been here ages – of course it’s my town!) is bringing me together with loads of new fun people who all appear to like the same things I do – revels, of the chocolate AND party kind, champers, and studying what you’re passionate about to a high level.
I’ve found a dress now, in between typing this column, having a bit of a nosy round some Facebook pro files and reading an article about the impact that cultural background has on education. The MCR are meeting up for gin and tonic pre-drinks. I’ve sorted out the embarrassment hangover from Friday night and I feel like I’m ready to face the evening ahead. Unlike the fresher I just heard scurrying past my window, fretting about her almost-overdue essay, I think I’ve got stuff just about sorted.
As I write this I’m having a panic: I’ve got nothing to wear for Matriculation Dinner. Well, that’s a lie. I do, actually, but the dress I was planning to wear has been discarded as I’ve just realised that it’s the dress I wore to my original Matriculation Dinner four years ago.
I think it says quite a lot about my sense of eternal style (and my eternal state of student poverty) that I have the same dress hanging around in my wardrobe. I recollect as well that I am in largely the same situation as my last Matric Dinner – I’ve got a nasty case of Freshers’ flu hanging around, I’ve been out four nights on the trot, (with the nagging sensation that I embarrassed myself more on the previous Friday night than I’ll ever be able to apologise for) and I’m running late. Again. Oh yeah, being a postgraduate means I’ve got everything sorted and under control.
If you were to look at the intricate timetable I’ve crafted onto some magic whiteboard paper (look it up – it will BLOW your MIND) then this could easily be the impression you come away with. However, I feel ever more like a panicked fresher undergraduate: a large amount of reading, a seemingly endless amount of extra-curricular activities, and always the fear that by electing to stay in and sleep instead of joining in with the latest MCR event, I’ll be left behind by my peers. It’s a bit of a balancing act, fitting back into the college where people sort of know who I am but I’m trying to get to know the new postgrads. They’re all talking about novicing; I’ve somehow got myself signed up to W1. They’re chatting about the newest exciting thing they’ve discovered in town, and I feel a little bit world-weary as I recall the halcyon day long ago when I too found that same statue/space/ view.
Oh, Cambridge. How do you do it? You keep entrancing buckets of new people to fall in love with you. Despite the fact that you’ve replaced the pasty shop with a Jack Wills, for which I lay the blame squarely at the feet of one D. Cameron, somehow the charm of my town (I’ve been here ages – of course it’s my town!) is bringing me together with loads of new fun people who all appear to like the same things I do – revels, of the chocolate AND party kind, champers, and studying what you’re passionate about to a high level.
I’ve found a dress now, in between typing this column, having a bit of a nosy round some Facebook pro files and reading an article about the impact that cultural background has on education. The MCR are meeting up for gin and tonic pre-drinks. I’ve sorted out the embarrassment hangover from Friday night and I feel like I’m ready to face the evening ahead. Unlike the fresher I just heard scurrying past my window, fretting about her almost-overdue essay, I think I’ve got stuff just about sorted.
Friday 11 October 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 3
Full issue found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue3.pdf
Everyone – I must call your attention to a terrible injustice. I have been wronged, dear reader, by the abomination of... a picture.
It is not right. Why, one might ask, do I resemble someone with a helmet of hair, much like Donald Trump or Margaret Thatcher? Why is my chin so unreasonably large? Why, I want to know, do I look so much worse in reality than in my hazy view in the mirror of a morning?
Really this is because I usually don’t have my glasses on when I look in the mirror so everything appears as a pleasing blur in which spots are miraculously banished by the simple virtue of being wildly short-sighted. I can’t a fford contact lenses for everyday use. They fall out in the pool at water polo and for some reason the dailies are run like hooch, in a racket at extortionate prices, but without the redemption of a Lawless-esque Tom Hardy figure and his swoonworthy cardigan.
So when my glasses aren’t on I feel like I’m pretty much Miranda Kerr, minus Orlando Bloom and an adorable baby son. Turns out I’m actually not. Turns out that I no longer have the same body I had when I was 18, or even 20. I play much more sport now; I pack muscle on through weights training. I am solid compared to my flighty 18 year old self, and I quite like it because when someone gets tackled by me on the pitch or in the pool, they know about it. Which is good. And cycling out to Homerton for my lectures is no trouble at all.
The side e ffect is that I feel like a massive heifer when I stand next to the current second and third years, who all appear to be made from shapely twiglets, all lithe limbs topped with coi ffured hair. You wouldn’t know it from the picture, in which it appears to have been GLUED TO MY HEAD, but my hair is normally rather large, in the style of Caitlin Moran or Solange Knowles. Usually I wear it even bigger, in the hope that like wearing a rather large hat, what appears between the hair and the floor might look slimmer. This logic is usually infallible and can be the only reason why I look so much . . . larger in my headshot.
I’m even blaming the headshot for my complete lack of success at the Freshers’ swap this past Sunday. Not only did Fresherss eyes glaze over when they realised how old I was, but I spent two hours (TWO HOURS THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ‘STRICTLY’) flirting with someone only for him to call up the headshot and my column on his phone and then promptly turn around and latch himself to someone else with his mouth, like a leech, or a lamprey eel. So please, Editors. It’s di fficult enough dealing with the competition and the age thing. Just give me a chance to prove that my hair is not actually cast from Plaster of Paris.
Everyone – I must call your attention to a terrible injustice. I have been wronged, dear reader, by the abomination of... a picture.
It is not right. Why, one might ask, do I resemble someone with a helmet of hair, much like Donald Trump or Margaret Thatcher? Why is my chin so unreasonably large? Why, I want to know, do I look so much worse in reality than in my hazy view in the mirror of a morning?
Really this is because I usually don’t have my glasses on when I look in the mirror so everything appears as a pleasing blur in which spots are miraculously banished by the simple virtue of being wildly short-sighted. I can’t a fford contact lenses for everyday use. They fall out in the pool at water polo and for some reason the dailies are run like hooch, in a racket at extortionate prices, but without the redemption of a Lawless-esque Tom Hardy figure and his swoonworthy cardigan.
So when my glasses aren’t on I feel like I’m pretty much Miranda Kerr, minus Orlando Bloom and an adorable baby son. Turns out I’m actually not. Turns out that I no longer have the same body I had when I was 18, or even 20. I play much more sport now; I pack muscle on through weights training. I am solid compared to my flighty 18 year old self, and I quite like it because when someone gets tackled by me on the pitch or in the pool, they know about it. Which is good. And cycling out to Homerton for my lectures is no trouble at all.
The side e ffect is that I feel like a massive heifer when I stand next to the current second and third years, who all appear to be made from shapely twiglets, all lithe limbs topped with coi ffured hair. You wouldn’t know it from the picture, in which it appears to have been GLUED TO MY HEAD, but my hair is normally rather large, in the style of Caitlin Moran or Solange Knowles. Usually I wear it even bigger, in the hope that like wearing a rather large hat, what appears between the hair and the floor might look slimmer. This logic is usually infallible and can be the only reason why I look so much . . . larger in my headshot.
I’m even blaming the headshot for my complete lack of success at the Freshers’ swap this past Sunday. Not only did Fresherss eyes glaze over when they realised how old I was, but I spent two hours (TWO HOURS THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ‘STRICTLY’) flirting with someone only for him to call up the headshot and my column on his phone and then promptly turn around and latch himself to someone else with his mouth, like a leech, or a lamprey eel. So please, Editors. It’s di fficult enough dealing with the competition and the age thing. Just give me a chance to prove that my hair is not actually cast from Plaster of Paris.
Friday 4 October 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 2
Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue2.pdf
The problem I have with the people who are here in Cambridge currently is that they’re not my people. I hope you don’t take this in a weird sort of pure race kind of way; all I mean is, where are the people I know, that I eat lunch with in Hall? Where are my library-book-sharing, cup-of-tea-brewing, bar-propping-up mates? Why don’t I know anyone in the smoking area at Life?
Oh, right. They’re actually earning a living wage doing Important Things while some of us scrape by on some funding. Doing some reading. And some writing. Sometimes. It’s hard not to be a little bit estranged and more than a little bit bitter about it all.
I don’t really “get” this whole job thing. It’s like children; just not foreseeable in my near future. In fact, that makes it more like a dog, as children aren’t foreseeable anywhere in my future. Not even with a telescope and a really tall ladder. But jobs are where my people are at. They are working for banks, for the government, for literary agencies and charities and schools. They are training to be lawyers and doctors and accountants.
And me? Well, yesterday I watched 4 episodes of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, crying at the end of every single one, then baked a cake and made a head start on some pressing reading for a seminar… which is actually not on for another ten days. I don’t envy my gainfully employed peers the early starts (but hello, I’m a boatie!), the tiredness and the long days (I have worked before, you know, in the vac. I am aware of the tribulations) but I would like some cash and some kind of worldly status, please and thank you, instead of the weary glances you get from people on announcing that you are a sort of perpetual student.
Most of all I would like them all, simultaneously, to sack it in and come back for some sort of last hoorah, really, because I am not the world’s biggest fan of the awkward Hall dance, where I stand at the exit of the servery and fruitlessly survey the tabled landscape for all of the people who used to accompany me there. Except, in the main, I’m quite…well…glad that they’re not present. I made a choice to be here, just like they made a choice to be elsewhere. They’re happy, and I’m happy. They’re back this weekend for the Old Boys celebrations, and yes, we’ll have a great time at dinner on Saturday and at brunch the next morning, but in all actuality when they leave on Sunday I’ll be le ft with the research for a new paper that I’m itching to crack on with, an MCR who are really lovely and fun and a slowly growing amount of current undergraduates I know. These might not be my people just yet, but hopefully I’m one step closer to becoming one of theirs. And if you see me in the smoking area at Life, please say hi.
The problem I have with the people who are here in Cambridge currently is that they’re not my people. I hope you don’t take this in a weird sort of pure race kind of way; all I mean is, where are the people I know, that I eat lunch with in Hall? Where are my library-book-sharing, cup-of-tea-brewing, bar-propping-up mates? Why don’t I know anyone in the smoking area at Life?
Oh, right. They’re actually earning a living wage doing Important Things while some of us scrape by on some funding. Doing some reading. And some writing. Sometimes. It’s hard not to be a little bit estranged and more than a little bit bitter about it all.
I don’t really “get” this whole job thing. It’s like children; just not foreseeable in my near future. In fact, that makes it more like a dog, as children aren’t foreseeable anywhere in my future. Not even with a telescope and a really tall ladder. But jobs are where my people are at. They are working for banks, for the government, for literary agencies and charities and schools. They are training to be lawyers and doctors and accountants.
And me? Well, yesterday I watched 4 episodes of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, crying at the end of every single one, then baked a cake and made a head start on some pressing reading for a seminar… which is actually not on for another ten days. I don’t envy my gainfully employed peers the early starts (but hello, I’m a boatie!), the tiredness and the long days (I have worked before, you know, in the vac. I am aware of the tribulations) but I would like some cash and some kind of worldly status, please and thank you, instead of the weary glances you get from people on announcing that you are a sort of perpetual student.
Most of all I would like them all, simultaneously, to sack it in and come back for some sort of last hoorah, really, because I am not the world’s biggest fan of the awkward Hall dance, where I stand at the exit of the servery and fruitlessly survey the tabled landscape for all of the people who used to accompany me there. Except, in the main, I’m quite…well…glad that they’re not present. I made a choice to be here, just like they made a choice to be elsewhere. They’re happy, and I’m happy. They’re back this weekend for the Old Boys celebrations, and yes, we’ll have a great time at dinner on Saturday and at brunch the next morning, but in all actuality when they leave on Sunday I’ll be le ft with the research for a new paper that I’m itching to crack on with, an MCR who are really lovely and fun and a slowly growing amount of current undergraduates I know. These might not be my people just yet, but hopefully I’m one step closer to becoming one of theirs. And if you see me in the smoking area at Life, please say hi.
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