I was already £30 overdrawn when I bought my first ever May Ball ticket – not even actually to a May Ball, but to Trinity Hall June Event. Needless to say, after I had a lovely time enjoying the extravagance, a lot of Sainsbury’s Basics and a summer job were more than necessary to plug that black hole.

Looking back on that 19 year old’s decision-making process has been interesting to me recently, particularly because I’m 90 per cent sure I’d make the same decision now as I did then.It somehow fills me with a sense of pride. And I know that this year, and next year, and so on, a vast number of the students here will also make the same decision, even though it seems an impossible sum for one night (albeit a very long one).

My friends and I have had countless conversations about the possibility of having £140 worth of fun in one night and after careful calculations (mac ’n’ cheese portions consumed + gin & tonics thrown back ferris wheels ridden = not a reliable equation), we decided we could do it. When you reduce it down to £14 per hour, on the basis that you’re eating a meal maybe every two hours and drinking all the drinks all the time, it just about starts to seem reasonable. That’s the price of one cocktail at the Shard (another bank-breaking exercise). It’s 50p less than the ribs at Bill’s. Not too troubling after all, I say to myself as I stare at the water bill.

May Balls are undeniably great, the genius of prepayment meaning that you can, queues notwithstanding, bumper car to your heart’s content and eat as many ostrich burgers as your fancy clothes will allow (freshers: pick a fabric with some give). As one friend pointed out, by the time it gets to the actual night, you begin to feel as though the whole thing were free anyway.

But value for money (or forgetting the money) is only half the story, even if it does help make the decision. It’s having the money in the first place, which a lot of people barely do. How do we square spending that much money with making rent, or buying food? It’s really hard to do, and it’s certainly not a question I’ll claim to have answered in this article.

Peer pressure certainly plays a role, as does the image of Cambridge that freshers conjure up before they start unpacking their bags. Any sort of interaction you have with older students, be it in college families, with your freshers’ reps, or through (especially drinking) societies, there is always a conversation about how wonderful May Balls are. They are the promised land after exams. Who would want to avoid paradise, or even an older, wiser student’s advice?

Of course, I’d like to think the majority of people here are strong-minded enough not to spend £100+ plus simply because their friends have told them to. It’s a curious phenomenon of The Bubble, this consensus that it’s fine, it’s all fine, we deserve it, it’s fine, we can justify it, it’s fine.

Perhaps it’s more a question of groupthink. We’re not exactly forced by our friends to go along with it, but we get caught up in all the excitement and agree to ignore asking the cash machine for an advice slip for a few months. Who needs advice anyway, when you’ve already made the best decision you possibly could?

We’ve all gone through the stress of exams together. We’ve cast longing glances at the carefree tourists wondering around the city and dreamt of punting on sunny days with a bottle of Pimm’s and a book to cause a literary reviewer to self-combust. We’ve all decided that this period after exams is for enjoyment only, whatever the cost, and any naysayer is strangely pitiful. After all, where are they even going to sleep if they’re not partying at their college’s ball?

Four years and two degrees later and I still really want to go to the ball, even though I could have saved a lot of money and seen Deathcab last week rather than, er, The Feeling (Downing ‘s headline act this year). Glastonbury doesn’t cost much more, if you’re going to spend that kind of money. Flights to most European cities are considerably less expensive. And unless it’s terribly planned or so wild that you get yourself deported, a city break often lasts a lot longer than ten hours.

And yet the May Ball still looms large in my Cambridge experience. If ever I’m asked to think back to the highlight of my year, then an evening spent drinking, eating, dancing and laughing in a fancy dress and nice shoes takes an awful lot of beating. My most glamourous photos from the three terms of trials and tribulations are the ones taken after I’ve finished getting ready.

I love May Balls. It’s why I bought a ticket again this year. It’s why I nudged (pushed) my little sister into buying a dress on sale before she’d even met her offer. It just fascinates me that so many people are willing to pay so much more than at other institutions to get an end-of-year fix. Then again, as I glide between the gin tent, the dodgems and all the food at this year’s ball, the mystery will become clear again.