Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue9.pdf
Well, this is it, my friends. Mis
amigos. It has been fun, and
laughs, but now we must part, for
the Christmas Vac, and maybe
forever. Who knows. TCS have
betrayed nothing so far about
renewing this space, or even
letting me loose to do other
writing things for them, so
for now this is the last of
these mutterings.
A girl came up to me this
weekend a fter I refereed a
college water polo match
and was getting changed,
and after listening to a bit of
a conversation, said,
‘Oh! You’re Sophie
Clarke, right?
You write the
column? I like
it, it’s funny.’
To be honest, she was probably
just scared, as she’d caught the end
of the match before hers, when I’d
‘accidentally’ mullered Tit Hall’s
captain and shoulder shoved
him underwater. Even if she’d
thought that what I write is,
quote, ‘a pile of steaming
incompetence’ (thanks,
ginger end! You know
who you are!) she was
unlikely to tell me
that as she feared for
her life. Probably.
Considering that I
was also nursing
a large lump
on my jaw
b o n e
from an
elbow to
the face
a er some argy-bargy in the pool,
it’s not an unlikely explanation.
Nevertheless, I was suffused
with joy and happiness – someone
knew who I was simply through
my writing! is was almost as
good as that time when I was
referred to as ‘the infamous
Sophie Clarke’ in the queue for
Life. It made me think, what have
I got from this column nonsense
apart from nine missed deadlines
(sorry Suzanne! You’re the best
editor ever for putting up with
me!) and a few thousand words of
ramblings about my life?
Well…people have liked it. I
think. To my twenty or so readers,
thanks. It’s made me feel like I know
where my place is in Cambridge
again, helped me slightly to work
through the traumas of coming
back to this crazy town. I think my
friends are grateful that, instead of
cornering them with a packet of
Revels and a bottle of wine, I pour
out my problems to a collective
group with more re fined language
and a few more attempts at being
amusing than when I’m simply
rolling around trollied in the bar.
I said in my first column that
my gown had made me cry, when
I bought my BA gown instead of
dusting off my old undergrad one.
I wore the BA gown to formal at
Pembroke the other day, and on
my bike on the way there, a tear
froze to my face then as well. I
couldn’t believe how lucky I was to
be back here and to have had such
an amazing time with all of the new
people in my second Cambridge
life. I hope everyone else has had
good, if not so transitional, terms
too – and feel free to always say
hello. I probably won’t hurt you,
unless we’re in the pool.
Friday 22 November 2013
Friday 15 November 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 8
Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue8.pdf
How did we get here? It’s a question asked pertinently at this time in term as we sneak into week seven. Fresher’s week seems so far away. I feel now like I’ve never been away – as if Cambridge has played host to me forever. Yet we’re so close to the end of term, to my return to the north, that it’s di fficult not to start thinking about all the celebrations of Cambridge Christmas, and ignore my first graduate essay which is unfortunately due in the same day as the Selwyn Snowball.
If one more undergraduate tells me that I should be grateful it’s just one essay, I will have to restrain myself from Hulk-smashing them into a table. Sure, I know if you’re an arts student it’s entirely possible that you’re writing over three thousand words a week, and so six thousand words for one little essay seems silly. I’ve been there, done that, and spilled coffee from the allnighters down more t-shirts than I wish to count. It seemed to be at undergraduate I never had enough to say, had never done enough to fill up the word limits, would quote endlessly and ramble incessantly in what appears, reading my essays back, to be an extension of last week’s column.
Yet now, I have too much to say. I barely know where to start. The books I’ve read and notes I’ve made are piled around me as I write this and I just don’t comprehend how I’m going to sort them out. Alright, I know six thousand words isn’t that much. But it’s six thousand words which are worth around 25% of my course. Oh dear. Maybe I’ve got PPA (postgraduate performance anxiety).
This isn’t like a supervision where I could just turn up and explain the slightly dodgier bits of my essay with a dash of charm and appropriate worry and see my supervisor comprehend that I am just a rambling fool rather than a rambling fool who has done no work to back her argument up. I haven’t even located an argument yet for this essay. Or a title, come to think of it. I think it’s lost somewhere around the trip to formal last Thursday with my undergrad posse who returned for one night only. It led to me crouching over an A1 sheet on which is based my essay “plan” frantically trying to cram in di fferent colours of sharpies and quotes from at least seven di fferent authors before running to a supervision and trying not to sweat wine all over her sofa.
Actually, I don’t think I have got PPA. It’s de finitely UD – undergraduate delusion. I just don’t have the appropriately charming smile to get away with that shit any more.
How did we get here? It’s a question asked pertinently at this time in term as we sneak into week seven. Fresher’s week seems so far away. I feel now like I’ve never been away – as if Cambridge has played host to me forever. Yet we’re so close to the end of term, to my return to the north, that it’s di fficult not to start thinking about all the celebrations of Cambridge Christmas, and ignore my first graduate essay which is unfortunately due in the same day as the Selwyn Snowball.
If one more undergraduate tells me that I should be grateful it’s just one essay, I will have to restrain myself from Hulk-smashing them into a table. Sure, I know if you’re an arts student it’s entirely possible that you’re writing over three thousand words a week, and so six thousand words for one little essay seems silly. I’ve been there, done that, and spilled coffee from the allnighters down more t-shirts than I wish to count. It seemed to be at undergraduate I never had enough to say, had never done enough to fill up the word limits, would quote endlessly and ramble incessantly in what appears, reading my essays back, to be an extension of last week’s column.
Yet now, I have too much to say. I barely know where to start. The books I’ve read and notes I’ve made are piled around me as I write this and I just don’t comprehend how I’m going to sort them out. Alright, I know six thousand words isn’t that much. But it’s six thousand words which are worth around 25% of my course. Oh dear. Maybe I’ve got PPA (postgraduate performance anxiety).
This isn’t like a supervision where I could just turn up and explain the slightly dodgier bits of my essay with a dash of charm and appropriate worry and see my supervisor comprehend that I am just a rambling fool rather than a rambling fool who has done no work to back her argument up. I haven’t even located an argument yet for this essay. Or a title, come to think of it. I think it’s lost somewhere around the trip to formal last Thursday with my undergrad posse who returned for one night only. It led to me crouching over an A1 sheet on which is based my essay “plan” frantically trying to cram in di fferent colours of sharpies and quotes from at least seven di fferent authors before running to a supervision and trying not to sweat wine all over her sofa.
Actually, I don’t think I have got PPA. It’s de finitely UD – undergraduate delusion. I just don’t have the appropriately charming smile to get away with that shit any more.
Friday 8 November 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 7
Complete issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue7.pdf
Ah, week five. How good it was to have you here, however brie fly. A friend described you quite philosophically as the ‘ultimate leveller’. ‘How so?’ I queried. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘it just means that everyone is about as cynical as me, for one week only.'
It’s always nice to hear people welcoming a bit of cynicism into their lives. Go on. Live wild. Do it. The Oxford English Dictionary (obviously my first port of call for anything which calls for a de finition) informs me that to be cynical is ‘resembling the Cynic philosophers in contempt of pleasure, churlishness, or disposition to find fault; characteristic of a cynic; surly, currish, misanthropic, captious; disposed to disbelieve in human sincerity or goodness; sneering’.
I’m now tempted to trawl Wikipedia and the darker ravages of Google to find out what a Cynic philosopher is, but I’m on a time deadline with this column as I accidentally took a twelve hour disco nap yesterday from five in the afternoon just before circuits until five forty-three this morning when my alarm alerted me to the fact that my presence was required on the Cam, so I’m just going to leave it. You can look it up for yourselves. at’s independent learning right there, folks. That’s what you’re here for.
Anyway, sorry, back to being cynical. I think it’s good for you, injecting some cynicism – mainly because it makes the sunshine of optimism all the sweeter when experienced a fterwards. Human sincerity? Pah. I spit on it. All these blooming, darling Freshers, with their open faces and earnest vows of hard work – now is the winter of our discontent in the a ftermath of week five, now is the time to realise that cynicism will sneer with you at the missed opportunities of the previous weeks, will help you along the way in the next two thirty a.m. heartbreak, will lead you to a place of misanthropy.
Think of it as a chrysalis. You will emerge from cynicism’s cocoon to the bright lights and beautiful world of the almost-end of term, revitalised by those hours spent ignoring others’ happiness and instead mainlining four episodes of ‘Merlin’ on your own in your room and eating your weight in A fter Eights. My tenth week five has been spent much as my all my others – heartbreak, chocolate, running. Alone, and better for it. Don’t in flict yourself on others when like this; it is better for this introspection to be carried out when the cynic in you can yell in full ow, bothering no one else. Ideally at 3am I the morning, fuelled by some wine.
Cry not for me, though, Argentina. I take cynicism with me wherever I am – and even into week 6, following the OED’s last de finition of cynical: ‘With etymological allusion: Relating to a dog; dog-like’. I think my disco nap might have rotted my brain, but I think it’s trying to tell me to take a new brand of enthusiastic cynicism into the coming weeks. It sounds oxymoronic but I think, like Tim Gunn always tells me, that I can make it work.
Ah, week five. How good it was to have you here, however brie fly. A friend described you quite philosophically as the ‘ultimate leveller’. ‘How so?’ I queried. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘it just means that everyone is about as cynical as me, for one week only.'
It’s always nice to hear people welcoming a bit of cynicism into their lives. Go on. Live wild. Do it. The Oxford English Dictionary (obviously my first port of call for anything which calls for a de finition) informs me that to be cynical is ‘resembling the Cynic philosophers in contempt of pleasure, churlishness, or disposition to find fault; characteristic of a cynic; surly, currish, misanthropic, captious; disposed to disbelieve in human sincerity or goodness; sneering’.
I’m now tempted to trawl Wikipedia and the darker ravages of Google to find out what a Cynic philosopher is, but I’m on a time deadline with this column as I accidentally took a twelve hour disco nap yesterday from five in the afternoon just before circuits until five forty-three this morning when my alarm alerted me to the fact that my presence was required on the Cam, so I’m just going to leave it. You can look it up for yourselves. at’s independent learning right there, folks. That’s what you’re here for.
Anyway, sorry, back to being cynical. I think it’s good for you, injecting some cynicism – mainly because it makes the sunshine of optimism all the sweeter when experienced a fterwards. Human sincerity? Pah. I spit on it. All these blooming, darling Freshers, with their open faces and earnest vows of hard work – now is the winter of our discontent in the a ftermath of week five, now is the time to realise that cynicism will sneer with you at the missed opportunities of the previous weeks, will help you along the way in the next two thirty a.m. heartbreak, will lead you to a place of misanthropy.
Think of it as a chrysalis. You will emerge from cynicism’s cocoon to the bright lights and beautiful world of the almost-end of term, revitalised by those hours spent ignoring others’ happiness and instead mainlining four episodes of ‘Merlin’ on your own in your room and eating your weight in A fter Eights. My tenth week five has been spent much as my all my others – heartbreak, chocolate, running. Alone, and better for it. Don’t in flict yourself on others when like this; it is better for this introspection to be carried out when the cynic in you can yell in full ow, bothering no one else. Ideally at 3am I the morning, fuelled by some wine.
Cry not for me, though, Argentina. I take cynicism with me wherever I am – and even into week 6, following the OED’s last de finition of cynical: ‘With etymological allusion: Relating to a dog; dog-like’. I think my disco nap might have rotted my brain, but I think it’s trying to tell me to take a new brand of enthusiastic cynicism into the coming weeks. It sounds oxymoronic but I think, like Tim Gunn always tells me, that I can make it work.
Friday 1 November 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 6
Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue6.pdf
It’s finally happened. I thought it would occur later on in my life – yet no matter. I cannot be distracted from my ray of happiness. I have become an internet meme.
Having uploaded a photo which I found charming for its insouciance, as well as being a perfect example of my hat = slimmer theory (see previous columns) I wandered away from my computer for a few hours to actually do some work, take some notes and think about theorising my autobiography. I returned to find that amusing pictures and phrases had been uploaded by two of my friends, both of them, presumably extremely bored, had memed me. Is that even a verb? ‘Strutting Sophie’, apparently.
Well it made me chuckle. I’m not exactly sure why I feel so chu ffed about this but it’s kept me buoyed up the wholeweekend, past my friend sending inappropriate texts to my Cindies conquest from my phone a fter MCR dinner on Saturday, past seeing said conquest in a boat on Sunday and choking on my water, past my sister going home from her visit here and leaving me richer in cupcakes yet poorer in company.
The simple act of someone attaching some vaguely amusing words to a not-even-particularly-inspiring picture of me has turned everything around! If you have any ideas as to why this permanent mood change has occurred, dear reader, please email them in, or something, to the editor – lord knows I love a good postbag of columnist-hating vitriol mixed with a charming splash of innocent and lovely suggestions.
My sister thinks I’m just agog over someone paying attention to a photo of mine; my best friend put forward via skype that I just enjoy people making fun of my pictures as much as I make fun of them; and my mother googled the word ‘meme’ and threw a fit that my picture on the internet might be ruining all my job chances. As if, as an English graduate sitting a second Master’s degree in Children’s Literature I even have any job chances.
When I try to pinpoint why some words on a picture of me have brightened my life quite so much I am forced to admit that it’s because it makes me feel like I am Down with the Kids. In conjunction with the Taylor Swift song ‘22’, I feel like I am signi ficantly contributing to the idea that 22 is, really, the new 18. In fact, it’s so much better than eighteen. I can handle an internet meme about me without questioning my self-worth, and my long term memory for song lyrics is much improved. Oh yeah, so what if it took the internet to prove that 22 is alright. You just watch. A fter you’ve read this, I bet you want to be 22 with an internet meme as well. Maybe I should put it on my CV.
It’s finally happened. I thought it would occur later on in my life – yet no matter. I cannot be distracted from my ray of happiness. I have become an internet meme.
Having uploaded a photo which I found charming for its insouciance, as well as being a perfect example of my hat = slimmer theory (see previous columns) I wandered away from my computer for a few hours to actually do some work, take some notes and think about theorising my autobiography. I returned to find that amusing pictures and phrases had been uploaded by two of my friends, both of them, presumably extremely bored, had memed me. Is that even a verb? ‘Strutting Sophie’, apparently.
Well it made me chuckle. I’m not exactly sure why I feel so chu ffed about this but it’s kept me buoyed up the wholeweekend, past my friend sending inappropriate texts to my Cindies conquest from my phone a fter MCR dinner on Saturday, past seeing said conquest in a boat on Sunday and choking on my water, past my sister going home from her visit here and leaving me richer in cupcakes yet poorer in company.
The simple act of someone attaching some vaguely amusing words to a not-even-particularly-inspiring picture of me has turned everything around! If you have any ideas as to why this permanent mood change has occurred, dear reader, please email them in, or something, to the editor – lord knows I love a good postbag of columnist-hating vitriol mixed with a charming splash of innocent and lovely suggestions.
My sister thinks I’m just agog over someone paying attention to a photo of mine; my best friend put forward via skype that I just enjoy people making fun of my pictures as much as I make fun of them; and my mother googled the word ‘meme’ and threw a fit that my picture on the internet might be ruining all my job chances. As if, as an English graduate sitting a second Master’s degree in Children’s Literature I even have any job chances.
When I try to pinpoint why some words on a picture of me have brightened my life quite so much I am forced to admit that it’s because it makes me feel like I am Down with the Kids. In conjunction with the Taylor Swift song ‘22’, I feel like I am signi ficantly contributing to the idea that 22 is, really, the new 18. In fact, it’s so much better than eighteen. I can handle an internet meme about me without questioning my self-worth, and my long term memory for song lyrics is much improved. Oh yeah, so what if it took the internet to prove that 22 is alright. You just watch. A fter you’ve read this, I bet you want to be 22 with an internet meme as well. Maybe I should put it on my CV.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)