Last weekend Robinson College library was full to the brim with a group of anxious first-year art students, about to sit their first ‘real exams’.

The truth is, this experience is identical in every college, with first-years intensively focused, scribbling notes and frantically cramming every last fact, quotation and opinion into their heads.

One of them caught my eye and looked up at me over a high pile of early Medieval English notes and muttered: “I think my brain is going to burst.” I smiled sympathetically, because one year ago I was one of them.

Despite an intense atmosphere, full of nervous tension and quiet enough to hear a pin drop, these exams are not real, nor do they officially count towards your degree. This is the senseless system of Prelims.

What angers me most about Prelims, is that they are branded as ‘easy exams’, the chance for art students to have fun, free time and enjoy Easter term stress free and revision free.

This perception is false. I, as a naive fresher, also believed this myth. I remember looking forward to an Easter term where I would read for pleasure outside, have picnics with friends, punt along the Cam with strawberries and champagne.

But none of that happened – in fact, I had the same amount of work, if not more, than in my other two terms. Without the prospect of ‘real’ exams at the end of Easter term, supervisors see it as justifiable to step up your workload by increasing the frequency of seminars, doubling the length of reading lists and providing more challenging essay questions.

It seemed as if I was being punished for not having exams – any excuse for a supervisor to give you extra work was granted.

Not only was Easter term more challenging than my other two terms, but even when I did find free time there were no friends around to have fun with.

In fact, what made Easter term and having early ‘mock’ exams utterly dispiriting was being part of everyone else’s exam stress. For five weeks the vast majority of students are perched on a precarious edge while your own work-related problems are laughed at.

Cambridge felt like a ghost town, as other students were trapped inside the library or glued to their desks. Even when there is fun, the fun is subdued; a night out turns into an early night in, a formal becomes non-alcoholic, or a simple trip to the botanical gardens becomes a revision session for a fellow bio nat-sci.

Quite simply, there is no fun when exams are on, but worst of all Prelims grant you the opportunity to have it when nobody is around.

I am not wishing that I had gone through the stress of ‘real’ exams, nor am I suggesting that everyone feels the same during Easter term.

In fact, every time someone asked me how I was feeling about not having revision, of course I would say it was ‘great’. It was – but there was still a part of me which wished I could be a part of the ‘real exam’ term.

This longing was deeply felt when the exams were over. When the end of Easter term eventually came, everyone, no matter how well they went, could take part in official end-of-term celebrations.

However, Prelim students were significantly left out, unable to join in. Not only did many feel unworthy of participating (having not endured the stresses of exam term) but also many of us were still working – as unbelievable as that sounds, it was sadly the reality.

Term for myself finished in week 8 of Easter term, while term for a normal exam student may have finished in week 6 or week 7.

The irony was that this time round, it was myself and fellow Prelim students who could not participate in the end of exams and end-of-term celebrations.

It’s insulting to hear that art students get branded as having a somewhat ‘easy’ or ‘cop out’ Easter exam term, especially when work during Easter term is even more challenging than in the other two terms.

Also, the reality is far less enjoyable when there is no one around to have fun with during term. Exams and revision should be a unifying process; they are stressful, but through them friendships are strengthened and memories formed. With the current system running two divergent systems of exams, Prelims can create a solitary Easter term for those not confined to the library.

This time round, I am sitting ‘real’ exams. But the question which needs to be asked was were Prelims worth it? Is exam term this year any less daunting from having sat mock exams?

The simple answer is no. In fact, there seems to be more pressure on Prelim students than those with first-year exams. Having to cram everything in from Michaelmas 2014 is a relentless task, especially when October 2014 seems like a world away.

Not only is the quantity of content for Part I exams in excess, but the quality of note-making (which was carried out during fresher term – among matriculation, Cindies, and general fresher naivety of Cambridge) was significantly poor, compared to recent work in second year.

University is a learning curve, and forcing students to recite their knowledge of first term goes against the path of intellectual maturity. Prelims are nonsensical, another absurd tradition that Cambridge should abolish, along with the outdated class lists.