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.
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