Jess has just completed a success
filled week of work experience in the creative department. She
managed to write a whole website, and a viral which was magic. Jess
is studying English Literature at Cambridge. I'd never met anyone
from Hogwarts - i mean Cambridge - so i asked her to give us an
insight into what it's like at the UKs most illustrious university.
Turns out it's like Hogwarts... this is what Jess wrote.
Life studying English at Cambridge University is an interesting
experience. 'Life', in fact, may very well be the wrong word for
it. It's more like existing in your own little world of deadlines
and formal dinners - or, as it is so affectionately dubbed, 'the
bubble'. It's true, I sometimes envy students at other
universities; their wild nights out, their decent nightlife, their
freedom to lie in virtually every day of the week. Ah, to lie
in…
Our city nightlife isn't catastrophically bad. It's just mildly
terrible. The good stuff comes from the university itself, and,
from my own experience, going out in Cambridge is a largely
different experience to any normal night out. It generally begins,
for me, with a formal dinner. You know, the standard stuff:
everyone in gowns, candlelit tables, hearing the mass in Latin and
being served three or four courses as you down your bottle of wine.
Then we hit the town. Or there's our bops: small college parties
where everyone's in fancy-dress and it's so sweaty you can barely
breathe. All fun stuff.
And then, of course, there's the workload. One week last term I
was given the wonderful but soul-crushing task of reading five
Shakespeare plays (plus criticism), writing a presentation on them
and then (naturally) writing a two thousand word essay. Which, you
know, would have been fine if I had a month. Instead, I had six
days. But I managed somehow. Despite the several mid-week crises
where I thought my head was going to explode.
Because, in the end, Cambridge is a very special place. Yes, the
reading lists are as long as your arm (the Bible? Really?), and the
one-on-one tuition is, frankly, terrifying. But where else do you
get this stuff? Where else do you get to attend balls in grounds
that really do look like palaces, or eat guinea fowl on a regular
tuesday night, or stay up into the late hours with copious amounts
of caffeine at least once every week just to meet your essay
deadline? One year in, and I'm having the time of my life with some
of the best people I've yet to meet. Not too shabby, if you ask
me.
Tagged:
Cambridge