Original to be found here: http://www.bluebirdnews.co.uk/sophie-clarke-week-3/
Can you get used to losing? Can you get used to winning? What does it take to drop a game when you’re winning – or start winning when you’re already some goals behind?
To be honest, I don’t know. It’s very well to say that it’s the will to win – that if you want it enough, it will happen. There’s an element of truth to that – if you want it, you work for it, and that often tips the balance in your favour. But I’ve played on teams and rowed in boats and run races in which wanting and working was just not enough.
As much as people say that it’s just about digging deep when you’re behind and you need to come back for the win, there’s also an element of viciousness about when you’re leading – about being almost cruel in continuing to put away the tries and goals and the distance between you. If you get cocky, if you sit back on your laurels, it’s easy to see that get snatched away from you. It’s difficult, too, to keep your head up if the flow of play is in your favour – and then all too soon it turns against you.
I’ve been thinking about this because over the weekend my team lost a match on Friday and then won on Sunday. We haven’t won a match since 14th November (beat Oxford 4-3) so it was long overdue. We’re not a bad team, far from it, but for some reason when we play, we haven’t managed to grasp that higher element, where training and hard work and team spirit all comes together and you trounce whoever you’re playing against. I read about the fantastic work of CUWLC and CULNC and remembered how good it feels to win consistently. It’s difficult to stay peppy and positive if you’re losing all the time – and people forget how great it feels to triumph. You start believing that maybe you are second best – how do you fix what’s wrong? What even is wrong? Why are we losing? Maybe you should be losing if you can’t even figure it out and make it better.
As the women’s water polo finally won after many months, the men’s water polo suffered some unfortunate losses – in one, going from a 3-1 lead to losing 6-3 after conceding 3 goals in 1.5 minutes. I feel their pain as in our BUCS matches this year that is how a few of our games have panned out – the momentum is with you, you go out hard, in control of the play, and then inexplicably everything is slipping from your grasp and the more you work to scramble back, the more everything goes wrong. When you’re on a winning streak and you’ve got all the confidence behind you, the fall is harder when an inevitable loss comes – and it’s tricky then to pick it all back up and make it all seem right.
Now that we’re back on the win train though, we remember how it feels when everything clicks. After the night of RAG Blind Date it feels important to acknowledge that when you play as a real team there’s an element of chemistry there, something more than just working hard and fighting to be the best. I play for my girls and I play for CUSWPC and I play for the sport, because I love it even when I hate the losing. That’s how you come back from losing – whether stopping a bad run of form or suddenly bringing the field level again in the third quarter – when instead of gritting your teeth singularly and trying to do it alone, the whole team digs in and refuses to let it happen that way any more, and you pull up to that higher level of play, where everything works and you can’t be beaten.
So I’ll be closely following the water polo men on Twitter tomorrow as they fight to turn around some tough results – and I’ll be looking to see my girls fight our way up the league on Sunday when we take on Birmingham and the Other Place in our final BUCS matches before the knockout round.
Work hard, play hard, fight together as a team – Light Blue victories all the way. Simple.
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
The Blue Bird Column: Week 2
Original to be found here: http://www.bluebirdnews.co.uk/sophie-clarke-week-2/
I had such plans for this week’s column, such plans. First I sat through a Women’s Blues Committee meeting, and was going to write about Korfball, parity in and between sports, and the half blue divide, but the Tab got there first. Then I had the bright idea to write about Heather Watson’s comments regarding menstruation and sport but quite a few people discussed that better than I ever could. By Thursday I was trying to write a column based on the phrase ‘summer bodies are made in the winter’ but my disgust made every piece I wrote very short, because it turns out bodies are bodies, our bodies, and I don’t much care what season they are ‘suited’ for as long as it does what I need it to do (push people under water, throw weights around, run marathons) and I take care of it (should probably leave off the sugar, it does nothing for recovery time).
So now I’m stuck. I could recourse back to some old favourite topics: why doesn’t Cambridge University have a swimming pool? Why don’t Ryder and Amies stock women’s Blues blazers? Why can’t I resist Reese’s Pieces? (It was the saddest day of my life on Sunday when I saw they’d replaced Reese’s with mini eggs in the plastic bowl halfway down the self service queue in Sainsbury’s.)
But the best laid plans ‘aft gang agley’ so:
TOP THINGS I HEAR ON SWAPS I’d like to publicly call out the boy from horse polo who was meant to turn up dressed as Wooster to last week’s swap. My Jeeves outfit was amazing and you really missed out. Super poor form.
1. ‘So what do you do?’
2. ‘Wait, so you’re how old?’
3. ‘No, really, how old?’
4. ‘So you’re actually a real Blue?’
You would not believe the amount of times, especially later in the night at dinners and things, people just assume you’ve nicked the blazer. Yeh, I know it looks boxy, and on swimmers shoulders it’s a genuine issue. Where’s the petition for getting it cut differently if you want already?
5. ‘Is [NAME A SPORT] really so difficult?’
Let’s have you try it, and we’ll see.
6. ‘Are all your team lesbians?’
Why is this a question? Genuinely why are you asking me this?
7. ‘How often do you train?’
The worst bit is when you answer, and get a sort of pitying head shake in return. Oh, poor girls. Can’t handle any more. See above: why doesn’t Cambridge have its own pool?
8. ‘Why don’t you shave your legs/your pits/your bikini line? Do you do it to scare the opposition?’
Ok this is actually a question I get asked at matches rather than swaps – no, I’m not even lying. Manners truly are dead. Oh. My. God. I’ve played in mixed matches where a boy has genuinely recoiled in horror at grasping my leg and finding it not smooth. I’ve also had my fair share of see through swim costumes, especially a couple of years ago when we dealt with a couple of fairly rogue comments about ‘new hairstyles’ from several of the men’s team. Urgh, grow up. Have you ever thought about how much effort remaining hairless is, and combined with the fact that you’re always showering at the pool/the gym/the boyf’s it’s a nightmare. Maybe it does have the fortunate effect of scaring the opposition. Or maybe I’m just super lazy. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
9. ‘Could you beat me in an arm wrestle?’
No, but Rosanna O’Keeffe probably would.
10. ‘Do you want a drink?’
Oh, go on. Twist my arm, I’ll have a tequila – here’s some cash.
I had such plans for this week’s column, such plans. First I sat through a Women’s Blues Committee meeting, and was going to write about Korfball, parity in and between sports, and the half blue divide, but the Tab got there first. Then I had the bright idea to write about Heather Watson’s comments regarding menstruation and sport but quite a few people discussed that better than I ever could. By Thursday I was trying to write a column based on the phrase ‘summer bodies are made in the winter’ but my disgust made every piece I wrote very short, because it turns out bodies are bodies, our bodies, and I don’t much care what season they are ‘suited’ for as long as it does what I need it to do (push people under water, throw weights around, run marathons) and I take care of it (should probably leave off the sugar, it does nothing for recovery time).
So now I’m stuck. I could recourse back to some old favourite topics: why doesn’t Cambridge University have a swimming pool? Why don’t Ryder and Amies stock women’s Blues blazers? Why can’t I resist Reese’s Pieces? (It was the saddest day of my life on Sunday when I saw they’d replaced Reese’s with mini eggs in the plastic bowl halfway down the self service queue in Sainsbury’s.)
But the best laid plans ‘aft gang agley’ so:
TOP THINGS I HEAR ON SWAPS I’d like to publicly call out the boy from horse polo who was meant to turn up dressed as Wooster to last week’s swap. My Jeeves outfit was amazing and you really missed out. Super poor form.
1. ‘So what do you do?’
2. ‘Wait, so you’re how old?’
3. ‘No, really, how old?’
4. ‘So you’re actually a real Blue?’
You would not believe the amount of times, especially later in the night at dinners and things, people just assume you’ve nicked the blazer. Yeh, I know it looks boxy, and on swimmers shoulders it’s a genuine issue. Where’s the petition for getting it cut differently if you want already?
5. ‘Is [NAME A SPORT] really so difficult?’
Let’s have you try it, and we’ll see.
6. ‘Are all your team lesbians?’
Why is this a question? Genuinely why are you asking me this?
7. ‘How often do you train?’
The worst bit is when you answer, and get a sort of pitying head shake in return. Oh, poor girls. Can’t handle any more. See above: why doesn’t Cambridge have its own pool?
8. ‘Why don’t you shave your legs/your pits/your bikini line? Do you do it to scare the opposition?’
Ok this is actually a question I get asked at matches rather than swaps – no, I’m not even lying. Manners truly are dead. Oh. My. God. I’ve played in mixed matches where a boy has genuinely recoiled in horror at grasping my leg and finding it not smooth. I’ve also had my fair share of see through swim costumes, especially a couple of years ago when we dealt with a couple of fairly rogue comments about ‘new hairstyles’ from several of the men’s team. Urgh, grow up. Have you ever thought about how much effort remaining hairless is, and combined with the fact that you’re always showering at the pool/the gym/the boyf’s it’s a nightmare. Maybe it does have the fortunate effect of scaring the opposition. Or maybe I’m just super lazy. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
9. ‘Could you beat me in an arm wrestle?’
No, but Rosanna O’Keeffe probably would.
10. ‘Do you want a drink?’
Oh, go on. Twist my arm, I’ll have a tequila – here’s some cash.
Monday, 19 January 2015
The Blue Bird Column: Week 1
Original to be found here: http://www.bluebirdnews.co.uk/sophie-clarke-week-1/
Last week, I lost my voice. If you no longer had ‘loud’ as one of three words to describe me I think you’d be struggling, so this was a bit of an issue, especially with 5 more training sessions to run.
I ended up mute because my team had two matches two nights in a row on our training camp in Edinburgh. I was in goal because that is a captain’s sacrifice when your normal goalie is not present and others would rather contract smallpox than end up between the sticks. Being in goal offered the unusual advantage that I was no longer too out of breath from playing to shout at people properly – so shout I did, encouraging on the ladies of Cambridge’s water polo team.
Sport grabs us because it makes us passionate about it – about watching, about playing, about becoming part of it. In this case I was so involved I shouted myself hoarse trying to get the team to play better, to score more goals, to put up a fight and ultimately to at least try and win (even though that aim, when playing against teams with several national players, was always a pipe dream).
I’ve always been caught up in the dramas of our play – I’ve always been one of the more easily heard members of the team, right from the start of my water polo career – but increasingly I find myself ever more tied up with the team’s fortunes, which is not least because this year I am the captain. I thought, before I took up the mantle, that I knew what it would be to lead, having been a senior member of the team (read: old, been around for ages) for a while, and having been close friends with several CUSWPC captains over the years.
However I have found that to captain is to invest in each player not just for this game but for the next; not just this season but those to come. When mistakes are made, as they always are, I see the potential and hard work behind the decision and the unfortunate turn of events which swings it in some unforeseen direction. I worry about all my players, think deeply about team lists when previously I would have dashed off my preferred thirteen without hesitation, and look to build a strong base for next season even as it means shelving dreams of repeating last year’s success. These may seem like obvious lessons but I feel like I’ve always been caught up in obsessing about my own performance and contribution to the team in the past to worry about anyone else’s.
I’m not sure I’m a particularly good captain – I’ve been told I’m too harsh, too caught up in wanting to win – and I’m constantly seeking feedback from my team so I can improve, or at least pass on some tips to my successor. Yet I feel like the ultimate judgement of my captaincy is if in five years, at least a few of the girls who turned up in October having never even tried water polo before are still training, still playing, still competing. I never found a sport I loved until I came to Cambridge – and even then, it took me until my third year to find water polo. To love a sport and dedicate your time to it is to let loose your passion – and sometimes the only way to do that is to sit in goal, and shout, and shout, and shout.
Last week, I lost my voice. If you no longer had ‘loud’ as one of three words to describe me I think you’d be struggling, so this was a bit of an issue, especially with 5 more training sessions to run.
I ended up mute because my team had two matches two nights in a row on our training camp in Edinburgh. I was in goal because that is a captain’s sacrifice when your normal goalie is not present and others would rather contract smallpox than end up between the sticks. Being in goal offered the unusual advantage that I was no longer too out of breath from playing to shout at people properly – so shout I did, encouraging on the ladies of Cambridge’s water polo team.
Sport grabs us because it makes us passionate about it – about watching, about playing, about becoming part of it. In this case I was so involved I shouted myself hoarse trying to get the team to play better, to score more goals, to put up a fight and ultimately to at least try and win (even though that aim, when playing against teams with several national players, was always a pipe dream).
I’ve always been caught up in the dramas of our play – I’ve always been one of the more easily heard members of the team, right from the start of my water polo career – but increasingly I find myself ever more tied up with the team’s fortunes, which is not least because this year I am the captain. I thought, before I took up the mantle, that I knew what it would be to lead, having been a senior member of the team (read: old, been around for ages) for a while, and having been close friends with several CUSWPC captains over the years.
However I have found that to captain is to invest in each player not just for this game but for the next; not just this season but those to come. When mistakes are made, as they always are, I see the potential and hard work behind the decision and the unfortunate turn of events which swings it in some unforeseen direction. I worry about all my players, think deeply about team lists when previously I would have dashed off my preferred thirteen without hesitation, and look to build a strong base for next season even as it means shelving dreams of repeating last year’s success. These may seem like obvious lessons but I feel like I’ve always been caught up in obsessing about my own performance and contribution to the team in the past to worry about anyone else’s.
I’m not sure I’m a particularly good captain – I’ve been told I’m too harsh, too caught up in wanting to win – and I’m constantly seeking feedback from my team so I can improve, or at least pass on some tips to my successor. Yet I feel like the ultimate judgement of my captaincy is if in five years, at least a few of the girls who turned up in October having never even tried water polo before are still training, still playing, still competing. I never found a sport I loved until I came to Cambridge – and even then, it took me until my third year to find water polo. To love a sport and dedicate your time to it is to let loose your passion – and sometimes the only way to do that is to sit in goal, and shout, and shout, and shout.
Monday, 4 August 2014
Doctoral Delusion column: Sports Sadness
Original to be found here:
http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/columns/0032793-doctoral-delusion-sports-sadness.html
I need someone to take all the sports off the telly, please. Also someone to do all my marathon and water polo training for me. At the moment, sport is the biggest distraction to my thesis. If I’m not watching it, I’m training to compete in it. Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the Commonwealth Games – I’ve enjoyed every minute, almost definitely to the detriment of all the writing I’m supposed to be doing.
I can’t help it, I just love sports. If you’d pegged me when I was 18 and told me that six years later that was something I’d be saying, I would have walked into a wall laughing. I hated sports at school. I didn’t grow above 5 foot 2 until I was 18, and my competitive drive went into academia. It doesn’t win you many supporters in the PE department when you just don’t care.
Also, I think my teachers thought it was funny when I could barely put the shot past my foot, and when I hit myself in the head with a javelin. (Admittedly, that was hilarious.)
But Cambridge had a funny way of putting sports right in front of me, like it does for so many people, and since then athletic endeavours have filled a substantial part of my life. Most of them have been team-based, and it’s here that the summer falls down - undergraduates are the driving force behind 90% of Cambridge’s sport, and when undergraduates aren’t here, the sport stops. There are town clubs, most notably for rowing, but also for other sports, and there are the exceptions; grad colleges like Hughes Hall and Darwin run graduate sports throughout the summer.
Largely, however, the sport is gone, and with it, a ready made chance at socialising. Training on your own is lonely, boring, and not as effective. Other people push you to do better – academics or sports, that’s just the truth. I’m a slow runner, and my last long run was 15 miles, on my own. That’s two and a half hours with no one to talk to, and my iPod gave out on the last three miles. Faster, better runners than I undoubtedly aren’t bothered with this, seeing as they don’t run with music and they have pacing and splits and the will to go faster.
I, unsurprisingly, do not have the will to go faster. I have the will to grimly hang on for 15 miles, preferably whilst talking to someone, and if I’m training on my own that small pleasure is denied to me. Come back, undergraduates. All is forgiven – your peppy youth, your swarming tendencies, your essay crises. I need someone to train with, or that grandma who I lapped on my last run is going to set her Jack Russell on me. I can’t stave off a terrier attack on my own. That’s one sport I just can’t get along with.
I need someone to take all the sports off the telly, please. Also someone to do all my marathon and water polo training for me. At the moment, sport is the biggest distraction to my thesis. If I’m not watching it, I’m training to compete in it. Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the Commonwealth Games – I’ve enjoyed every minute, almost definitely to the detriment of all the writing I’m supposed to be doing.
I can’t help it, I just love sports. If you’d pegged me when I was 18 and told me that six years later that was something I’d be saying, I would have walked into a wall laughing. I hated sports at school. I didn’t grow above 5 foot 2 until I was 18, and my competitive drive went into academia. It doesn’t win you many supporters in the PE department when you just don’t care.
Also, I think my teachers thought it was funny when I could barely put the shot past my foot, and when I hit myself in the head with a javelin. (Admittedly, that was hilarious.)
But Cambridge had a funny way of putting sports right in front of me, like it does for so many people, and since then athletic endeavours have filled a substantial part of my life. Most of them have been team-based, and it’s here that the summer falls down - undergraduates are the driving force behind 90% of Cambridge’s sport, and when undergraduates aren’t here, the sport stops. There are town clubs, most notably for rowing, but also for other sports, and there are the exceptions; grad colleges like Hughes Hall and Darwin run graduate sports throughout the summer.
Largely, however, the sport is gone, and with it, a ready made chance at socialising. Training on your own is lonely, boring, and not as effective. Other people push you to do better – academics or sports, that’s just the truth. I’m a slow runner, and my last long run was 15 miles, on my own. That’s two and a half hours with no one to talk to, and my iPod gave out on the last three miles. Faster, better runners than I undoubtedly aren’t bothered with this, seeing as they don’t run with music and they have pacing and splits and the will to go faster.
I, unsurprisingly, do not have the will to go faster. I have the will to grimly hang on for 15 miles, preferably whilst talking to someone, and if I’m training on my own that small pleasure is denied to me. Come back, undergraduates. All is forgiven – your peppy youth, your swarming tendencies, your essay crises. I need someone to train with, or that grandma who I lapped on my last run is going to set her Jack Russell on me. I can’t stave off a terrier attack on my own. That’s one sport I just can’t get along with.
Thursday, 17 July 2014
Doctoral Delusion column: In Limbo
Original to be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/columns/0032746-doctoral-delusion-in-limbo.html
This column is late. Last night I went to the pub to celebrate my friend’s MPhil thesis hand in, scarfed down my share of the 2-for-1 pizza, had 1 pint, and was then (embarrassingly) so tipsy when I came in that I fell asleep with my laptop on my face whilst trying to write this before the deadline. Not a great start. Welcome to postgrad life.
Summer is a pretty strange limbo time for grad students. Those on one year courses are frantically finishing theses and handing in; first year PhD students are preparing and being examined on their end of year reports; for those further on than that, it’s all a haze of fieldwork, data, and the hellish writing up of the final product.
I’m putting together my first year report and as such am spending all my working days stuck in a library. Imagine exam term but you’re all on your own and everyone else is having fun. I’ve decamped to the ground floor so I can’t see the sun and know how much lovely weather and excitement I’m missing. If I’m working in my room I draw the curtains and create my work cave – but that’s also because the window above my desk looks directly into the room across from me. 1960s college accommodation blocks always have such strong echoes of the Panopticon.
The thing is, people think being a grad student during the summer is all relaxing in empty colleges, paddling in the sun at Jesus Green Lido, and enjoying beautiful Cambridge with the minimal amount of stress.
People really couldn’t be more wrong if they tried. Summers for grad students are for conferences (for the lucky – Dominican Republic, for the unlucky – Glasgow and Hull), studying uninterrupted by the minutiae of term life, and preparing journal articles for autumn submission dates, whilst considering attaching a snowplough to the front of your bike just so you can get to Sainsbury’s through the tourists for some actual real food.
For me, it’s also a good long stretch to get in some fiction writing, catch up on blog posts and rack up some vaguely interesting reflective prose work. In one of my more foolish moments, I totted up the final number of words I’ll end up with by the start of Michaelmas on the current schedule, and it was around 175,000. Forgive me if I seem a little panicked by that, but it works out at around 3,000 words a day. That’s roughly two hastily written supervision essays, one carefully constructed portfolio essay or a chapter of a dissertation.
Before you even ask, of course the 600 words of this column are being totted up as part of today’s count. If I wasn’t previously, I’m now incredibly glad for the late night essay crisis training of my undergrad because I’m beginning to understand how important it is to always just get the words on the page. By the end of summer, the ‘invisible words’ – those written, then redrafted, edited or deleted – will double the final polished total.
It’s so inefficient I want to hit my head on my keyboard, but only if that produces more words. No wonder I’m drowning my woes in beer and pizza when I celebrate that someone else’s academic journey is over. Welcome to postgrad summer. It’s rubbish.
This column is late. Last night I went to the pub to celebrate my friend’s MPhil thesis hand in, scarfed down my share of the 2-for-1 pizza, had 1 pint, and was then (embarrassingly) so tipsy when I came in that I fell asleep with my laptop on my face whilst trying to write this before the deadline. Not a great start. Welcome to postgrad life.
Summer is a pretty strange limbo time for grad students. Those on one year courses are frantically finishing theses and handing in; first year PhD students are preparing and being examined on their end of year reports; for those further on than that, it’s all a haze of fieldwork, data, and the hellish writing up of the final product.
I’m putting together my first year report and as such am spending all my working days stuck in a library. Imagine exam term but you’re all on your own and everyone else is having fun. I’ve decamped to the ground floor so I can’t see the sun and know how much lovely weather and excitement I’m missing. If I’m working in my room I draw the curtains and create my work cave – but that’s also because the window above my desk looks directly into the room across from me. 1960s college accommodation blocks always have such strong echoes of the Panopticon.
The thing is, people think being a grad student during the summer is all relaxing in empty colleges, paddling in the sun at Jesus Green Lido, and enjoying beautiful Cambridge with the minimal amount of stress.
People really couldn’t be more wrong if they tried. Summers for grad students are for conferences (for the lucky – Dominican Republic, for the unlucky – Glasgow and Hull), studying uninterrupted by the minutiae of term life, and preparing journal articles for autumn submission dates, whilst considering attaching a snowplough to the front of your bike just so you can get to Sainsbury’s through the tourists for some actual real food.
For me, it’s also a good long stretch to get in some fiction writing, catch up on blog posts and rack up some vaguely interesting reflective prose work. In one of my more foolish moments, I totted up the final number of words I’ll end up with by the start of Michaelmas on the current schedule, and it was around 175,000. Forgive me if I seem a little panicked by that, but it works out at around 3,000 words a day. That’s roughly two hastily written supervision essays, one carefully constructed portfolio essay or a chapter of a dissertation.
Before you even ask, of course the 600 words of this column are being totted up as part of today’s count. If I wasn’t previously, I’m now incredibly glad for the late night essay crisis training of my undergrad because I’m beginning to understand how important it is to always just get the words on the page. By the end of summer, the ‘invisible words’ – those written, then redrafted, edited or deleted – will double the final polished total.
It’s so inefficient I want to hit my head on my keyboard, but only if that produces more words. No wonder I’m drowning my woes in beer and pizza when I celebrate that someone else’s academic journey is over. Welcome to postgrad summer. It’s rubbish.
Friday, 22 November 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 9
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.
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, 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.
Friday, 25 October 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 5
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.
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, 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.
Friday, 27 September 2013
Flashback: Michaelmas Column 1
Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue1.pdf
One never thinks that a gown will make one cry, but that’s exactly what mine did this week when I heard from the president of my new governing body, the MCR, that I needed a new gown, forcing me to bid farewell to my navy lined formal companion.
Goodbye dear friend of 2008 to 2011. May your wax stains and slightly wine-smelling fabric rest peacefully in the big wardrobe in the sky. The fact of the matter is that I’m still eighteen, you see, and therefore have no need of the postgraduate student’s friend the BA gown.
No, don’t laugh. Whilst my birth certificate and the behaviour of my peers might encourage you to believe that I am really twenty two, a graduate of two degree programmes and survivor of more bad dates than you’ve had hot dinners, my lad, the truth will out: I’m stuck in the mindset in several crucial ways of an eighteen year old fresher.
I am ridiculously excited at the prospect of coming (back) to Cambridge, but the problem mainly lies in that I’m not quite sure what to expect when I get here. I mean, the last time I thought I was coming back to Cambridge I had a captaincy, a sort-of boyfriend, and a whole host of friends waiting for me until one mark in one exam redistributed my papers and my final grade and I ended up jetting off to Edinburgh for a year.
This time, not so much. My captaincy has been taken by a more qualified candidate; the now ex has a new girlfriend; the friends have jobs, have postgrad places elsewhere, have lives no longer situated in one small university town. No biggie, though, right? My mum keeps dropping hints that I should be thinking about ‘reinventing myself ’ but unless I were to chemically straighten my hair, laser my eyes and physically beat my need to geek out from my impulses with a giant hammer I can’t see it happening.
Instead I’m being a very much Fresher-type person in my very much un-Fresher town, joining new clubs and talking to new people and trying very, very hard not to remember that I have been here once before, and it was amazing.
One never thinks that a gown will make one cry, but that’s exactly what mine did this week when I heard from the president of my new governing body, the MCR, that I needed a new gown, forcing me to bid farewell to my navy lined formal companion.
Goodbye dear friend of 2008 to 2011. May your wax stains and slightly wine-smelling fabric rest peacefully in the big wardrobe in the sky. The fact of the matter is that I’m still eighteen, you see, and therefore have no need of the postgraduate student’s friend the BA gown.
No, don’t laugh. Whilst my birth certificate and the behaviour of my peers might encourage you to believe that I am really twenty two, a graduate of two degree programmes and survivor of more bad dates than you’ve had hot dinners, my lad, the truth will out: I’m stuck in the mindset in several crucial ways of an eighteen year old fresher.
I am ridiculously excited at the prospect of coming (back) to Cambridge, but the problem mainly lies in that I’m not quite sure what to expect when I get here. I mean, the last time I thought I was coming back to Cambridge I had a captaincy, a sort-of boyfriend, and a whole host of friends waiting for me until one mark in one exam redistributed my papers and my final grade and I ended up jetting off to Edinburgh for a year.
This time, not so much. My captaincy has been taken by a more qualified candidate; the now ex has a new girlfriend; the friends have jobs, have postgrad places elsewhere, have lives no longer situated in one small university town. No biggie, though, right? My mum keeps dropping hints that I should be thinking about ‘reinventing myself ’ but unless I were to chemically straighten my hair, laser my eyes and physically beat my need to geek out from my impulses with a giant hammer I can’t see it happening.
Instead I’m being a very much Fresher-type person in my very much un-Fresher town, joining new clubs and talking to new people and trying very, very hard not to remember that I have been here once before, and it was amazing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)