“So you didn’t ‘find yourself’ on a beach in Thailand?”

This is one of the most common questions asked when I reveal that, before starting my History degree, I spent my gap year training to be a chef at Leiths School of Food and Wine in London – a world nearly as unique as Cambridge and just as much of a bubble.

The first week of cookery school was a baptism of fire (not literally, although I certainly had my fair share of kitchen calamities over the year) as we donned our chefs whites straight away and began cooking. Chefs whites – checked trousers, neckties, hats and all – are a tricky look for anybody to pull off (but surprisingly comfy) and wearing them proved to be quite the bonding experience, as we all mourned the disappearance of the old, glamorous versions of ourselves, which we wouldn’t be seeing again until graduation ten months later.

Lesson one involved learning how to hold a knife. A basic, but fundamental lesson, that proves vital when handling a shiny set of new, and incredibly sharp, blades. Throughout the months, my fellow trainees and I increased in skill level, moving from cooking family food in the first term, to gastropub food, and finally, to Michelin star-standard cooking.

While at cookery school, you become totally immersed in the world of food – if you’re not making it, you’re watching someone else do so; if you’re not eating it, you’re waiting for the plate to reach you.

Days were divided into demonstrations and practical sessions, but no two lessons were the same. Sometimes, I’d wind up having deep fried brains for breakfast. Sometimes, a morning wine lecture meant I’d have tried six different glasses of champagne before midday. I became perfectly accustomed to eating five different soufflés in a morning demonstration, a two-course lunch cooked by another class, a causal 4pm snack of veal steak and potato rosti – and then, of course, dinner as usual.

I also quickly learnt to ignore the confused stares of other public transport passengers when they could smell a Thai marinaded mackerel, or golden syrup steamed pudding, on their journey home. They were used to it (and me) by the end of the year. Among the plethora of useful (and some less useful) skills I mastered at Leiths, I learned how to gut fish, pluck pheasants, artistically plate endless salads, roll pasta from scratch, make nine types of pastry, four types of ice cream and three types of meringue.

When my time at Leith’s was over, I was sorry for it. Arriving in Cambridge was terrifying – the longest exam question I’d faced in the past year was ‘give six points on the perfect cheese soufflé’, and now I needed to write a 2,500-word essay every week! Plus, when word spreads that you are a trained chef, people expect a lot more than pasta when they pop by for dinner. Living in halls, where my kitchen has no oven and there is just enough space for two people, (provided you know each other pretty well) the amount of time I spend cooking has dramatically diminished. My electric whisk remains in its packaging and Fitzbillies has temporarily replaced my homemade baking.

Nevertheless, I’m struck by the similarities between the worlds of Leiths and Cambridge. In both places, you become completely absorbed in what you are learning and experiencing, to the exclusion of almost everything outside that sphere. You are pushed to excel and constantly improve yourself. And you have the opportunity to make lifelong friends and ride on an unique emotional rollercoaster. In some ways, my year at Leiths prepared me for Cambridge, although no-one’s asked me for my Béarnaise recipe just yet...