MATT JEFFORD (Selwyn Historian)

If I told you I had spent the early hours of Wednesday morning lying in the road, happily intoxicated and nibbling on Domino’s pizza, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a first-year historian’s post-prelim term was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a skive. I subsequently woke up at noon, made a large cup of coffee to escape the hangover, and generally felt content with the world. But liver beating and binge eating is hardly representative of my term (until May Week, that is…). My prelims have finished, but the cycle of weekly reading, essays and supervisions continues in exactly the same way as before: I still work hard. The only difference is the weekly reduction in lectures from 10-12 hours to one coursework seminar, which requires a few hours' reading class material beforehand. I could attend revision lectures in preparation for next year’s exams, but being told what I did wrong before I even receive prelim results seems unnecessary self-flagellation. 

I can understand the ire of friends with ‘real’ exams. They can be forgiven for thinking that all us historians do other than sleep is extra-curricular, because when they see us we likely are relaxing on the lawn, going out for lunch (two-for-one on mains at Pizza Express at the moment) or heading off to visit the next college bar (I’m on 17/31). But this is only a demonstration of the flexibility of arts subjects, allowing me to study during unconventional hours so as to fully exploit an incredible life in Cambridge. In order to watch Nick Clegg at the Union, go orienteering or laugh hysterically at Trump parodies at the ADC, I worked throughout Caesarian Sunday. In fact I put in 12 hour days most ‘weekends’, rather than the scientist’s weekday nine-to-five. While I relish the halcyon days of Easter term, I’m not entirely let off the hook.

HOLLY KNOX (Newnham Engling)

It has been three weeks since I sat my prelims and while most other Cambridge students are locked away revising for the imminent exams, I can be found in the college gardens, slowly working through a pile of Shakespeare books. Looking at my workload, Easter term doesn’t feel very different to any other. I still have my weekly essays and supervisions; the added faculty classes are a nuisance but they, like my lectures, end after week four. My social life, however, is very different. I find myself attending picnics rather than pub crawls and I actually recoil at memories of clubbing from Michaelmas and Lent. When I talk to friends preparing for exams, I face jokes about how little I am doing this term. But the fact that I have time go to Grantchester or punt on the Cam is not because I’m entirely finished for the term, but rather that, as always, my contact hours are low.

The main consolation I can offer to those who are currently revising for exams is that I’ll still be writing essays and going to supervisions after they have finished for the year. In fact, I can’t go to a garden party with my friends because I’ve got my last supervision. Having said this, I’m aware that some might tell me that most of this term has been a garden party for me - as long as the sun remains out, I won’t argue with that. Easter term isn’t all the fun prelim students are promised: I’m doing the same amount of work that I’ve done every term. The main difference is that my excellent procrastination is more visible to everyone else since I’m doing it in the gardens rather than in my room.

SARAH BURGESS (Trinity Hall Historian) 

Prelims, contrary to popular belief, aren’t supposed to be a weapon with which first year humanities students should be attacked by their fellow exam-sitting students. Despite the much-perpetuated idea that prelims constitute an inconvenient activity at the beginning of a summer term filled with picnics, punting and procrastination, the slog of weekly essays that follow is in many ways worse than Part One exams. First of all, the Easter holidays weren’t a thing for us. That desperately-needed rejuvenation period was an elusive, far-away concept: it was spent, for me anyway, cramming History revision and stressing irreconcilably. Now, when we prelim students worry or we feel sad and overwhelmed, we are denied sympathy by the rest of the student population, who consider their exams ‘real’ and ours not, even though some of us felt the stresses just as strongly.

This brings me to my second point, which is that we didn’t ask for them. Of course I would rather do my Part One this year, and avoid the daunting prospect of taking exams for all my first and second year papers at the end of next year, especially since the necessary result of not taking degree exams this year is higher expectations and more pressure for the next. But that’s not the way that History, or any other prelim-examined subject, works. Rather than considering prelims something to be envious of and resentful toward, since we supposedly receive a term of academic complacency (which we most definitely do not!), I would like other students to accept them as an idiosyncrasy (and an unfortunate one at that) of the Cambridge examination system. Most of all, please feel for the fact that we prelim-suffers now have to produce eight weekly essays, between lectures and seminars, on topics we are probably indifferent to, motivating ourselves towards that non-existent cumulative goal that has been hitherto guiding us through Michaelmas and Lent.