Next Wednesday will be Halfway Hall, the formal marking the terrifying fact that I am halfway through my degree. Half of my essays are written, half of my hurried runs to supervisions are over, half of my accidental 1pm wake ups complete. I have certainly missed more than half of my lectures. As it comes to this milestone it is hard to know whether to be overjoyed that half of my hours staring idly at a screen in Fitz library are over, or terrified that in a year and a year a half post-Cindies walks home with cheesy chips will be a thing of the past.

I’ve had some hard times at Cambridge. There have been times when not only have I felt low, but I have felt so low that I have doubted every decision that has brought me here. There is not a club in Cambridge with toilets that I have not cried in, not an essay deadline that has not had me wringing my hands and shouting expletives at my computer.

I have felt stressed, and I have felt lonely; the streets have at times felt steeped in history in a way that is terrifying. Edifying has been the weight of the institution; with every cobble and archway I have felt insignificant and frightened. Cambridge has felt unfamiliar, and as far from home as I could possibly be, remanded by stern supervisors and ominous Latin phrases. And there have been times when I have felt surrounded by posh boys in blazers and ties, laughing at jokes that perhaps make more sense if you’ve been to public school, and I have felt completely and utterly lost.

I have tied myself in knots trying to work out how I should spend my time, what should be my priorities in a place that expects you to be storming through your course, be the president of a society and make your best friends for life at the same time.

But I have interviewed Supreme Court judges and infamous feminist authors. I have stood up and debated, I have played sports I love, I have fallen down the stairs laughing, I have run up and down cobbled streets intoxicated. There have been moments where I have been struck by the feeling that there is absolutely nowhere I would rather be than Cambridge. I have sparred with academics in rooms lined with books, I have felt like an odd combination of Severus Snape and Batman as I have cycled to formal, and I have stood in the middle of Fitz’s bar, in a bop with cheesy music, foundation dripping down my sweaty face and hair oddly plastered to my forehead, looked around me, and seen some of my favourite people in the world throwing some of the loosest and most questionable shapes I have ever encountered. Stone bridges and tall pillars are somehow less imposing when one of your friends is draped around them after a Captain’s challenge to do a lap dance.

Now that I am approaching the half way mark, I am extending to myself and everyone in this crazy bubble an invitation to be imperfect.

Cambridge is a wonderful place when you step away from the sense of expectation, when you stop comparing yourself to the girl on your course with a first, a blue and who strolls serenely into a 9am lecture on Monday looking fresh faced and glowing despite having only rolled in from Life a few hours earlier.

Cambridge is a wonderful place when you stop listening to the quiet voice that is telling you that everybody else is somehow doing it better than you . Cambridge is a wonderful place when you replace your false assumption that unless you are doing it all you are failing. Cambridge is a wonderful place when you battle to overcome your anxieties and insecurities, rather than your peers for 1 per cent better in Tripos, or to ‘have the best chat’ on a swap.

For the next year and a half, I am going to be kind to myself, actively strive to take life here less seriously and enjoy all the amazing things that the Cambridge bubble throws my way. And next time I have a bad day, or a bad hair day, or even get a low 2:2 on my essay I’m not going to beat myself up.

As I near the end of my bottle of wine at halfway hall, I can predict my own drunken revelation – it will not be sadness that half my Cambridge experience is over, or gladness that I’m closer to the end of my last Tripos exam. I instead look forward to what the next year and a half will have to offer, in a Cambridge where I am liberated from the pressure to be perfect and firm in my faith that in one odd way or another everything will be alright in the end.