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.
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