We’ve been robbed.

This has been my bitter mantra these past few weeks while my social media timeline is clogged up by friends posting their fun-filled, Freshers’ Week moments. My current coping mechanism is to smugly laud my superiority over them all: grow up, you’re all finalists now, what are you doing at the freshers’ icebreaker night anyway, loser. But, frankly, I’m sick with envy. As I watch my friends from afar – in ridiculous outfits for that terribly themed club night, ripping off societies at the Freshers’ Fair (“Yes, I would love to join Bridge Club, now where’s my free pen?”) – the rose-tinted glasses I have on when I look back at my freshers’ week simply shatter. That’s because we don’t really have a Freshers’ Week at Cambridge. We have a ‘freshers’ few days’.

Now maybe I have Channel 4’s Fresh Meat to blame for what I thought my university experience would be like (although we do have our fair share of Jack Whitehall/JP-esque figures), and I am well aware that I made the decision to apply to Cambridge which is hardly known for its renowned social life, but I don’t think we’re going about things the right way. Freshers’ Week is more than a mythic rite of passage for fresh-faced, newly independent 18-year-olds – a time to get hammered and make decisions that would make your parents shudder – it is a buffer. It gives students precious time to figure out what the hell they’re doing: how do I make pasta? Why are there so many buttons on the washing machine? If I drank this much alcohol when term starts will I make it to my 9am? (No).

We have no such privilege at Cambridge. Freshers’ Week, for most of us, clashes with the start of week one. One minute you’re in Revs dancing sweatily with a bunch of people you just met, the next you’re taking deep breaths in the UL as you try to locate the books on your reading list for that first essay. It’s not that easy to bond with people, or get your bearings with this adult business, when lectures loom over your shoulder like the Grim Reaper. Death to fun.

“We don’t really have a Freshers’ Week at Cambridge. We have a ‘freshers’ few days’”

Cambridge terms are infamously short, but Freshers’ Week is a whirlwind. It’s like the minute you sign your name in that matriculation book, the academic pressure kicks in. You’re thrown about from bops to books, from shots to seminars, so an already very unique environment is made to feel totally alien. But if you show signs of struggle, or slowing, you’re not fit for the system. It’s not hard to figure out why imposter syndrome is such an epidemic here.

This isn’t to say that no attempt is made. College freps put a lot of hard work into organising an exciting, varied week for their freshers and obviously we have staple events like the SU’s freshers’ fair. The issue is time. If freshers arrived just a week earlier, more room could be made for more events. Importantly, there would be more independent time for students to get their bearings; a jam-packed timetable, mere days before term gets into gear, is daunting. Everyone (freshers and those involved in running events alike) would have more room to breathe if the University committed to giving us the full week.

“It’s not that easy to bond with people, or get your bearings with this adult business, when lectures loom over your shoulder like the Grim Reaper”

This would also set a healthier precedent for work-life balance. I had to bin off the cafe hopping and scavenger hunts organised by my college to go to an introductory subject talk and tour with my DoS (still not over it). Socialising is made secondary to the holy academic grind. But if we had an actual Freshers’ Week, there would be no such clashes. There wouldn’t be this implicit encouragement that you should always put work first.

Maybe my musings over freshers’ five minutes (why even bother calling it a week?) is because my time at Cambridge is running out. As an elderly third-year, my perspective is shaped by existential dread as the realities of graduate life begin to draw closer. Maybe my call for more time is for myself more than anything. But this is beyond me. It would benefit all freshers to have a whole week to adjust, to discover the city, to figure out the cutlery order at formals. It might even ward off the universal phenomenon where that one best mate you made disappears into the ether, never to be seen again, once term starts. I hope he remembers me.

I don’t think this extra time will make people take university less seriously either. There’s hardly a culture of slacking when term gets going and those weekly deadlines start rearing their ugly heads. Cambridge may very much be ‘sink or swim’ in its mindset and practice, but I think it’s worth easing the freshers’ in rather than chucking them in the deep end. Cambridge will probably never provide that quintessentially British Freshers’ Week experience – you know things are a little bit different when you get handed a gown alongside your room key on day one – but that doesn’t mean ours should be cut short. Rather than rushing things, we should be given more time to enjoy ourselves, to soak in our achievement, to actually unpack our bags. Time will fly regardless, but still, every second counts.