At Cambridge there are plenty of opportunities to act performatively. But there's something particularly theatrical about the way we perform class. For students attending a university with so many resources, we’re remarkably hesitant to acknowledge them. We joke about being ‘broke’, apologise for wearing something that wasn’t thrifted, and treat privilege like something that must be politely disguised behind a tote bag and a self-deprecating comment.

These performances aren’t malicious. Mostly, they’re a kind of social soothing – a way to avoid awkwardness when people are arriving from wildly different starting points. They create a polite ambiguity that means nobody has to declare their life story in the first five minutes of meeting someone. At a university where a sense of belonging is often precarious, this lightness helps us get by. But it also reveals something deeper: we’re terrified of what class might disclose about who we are. So we perform sameness even when we know it isn’t real.

And because we rarely address it directly, the topic leaks out sideways. In the pub, we argue about who is ‘actually posh’. It’s expressed in frantic denials, in exaggerated modesty, in long autobiographical disclaimers delivered over drinks. It’s theatrical precisely because we’re all avoiding the core discomfort: that class is still shaping us, whether we acknowledge it or not.

“Perhaps we could be a little more open to the idea that success is not purely self-authored”

This is where luck enters the story – quietly, but decisively. I don’t mind saying that luck played a massive role in my own journey here. More than not minding, I think it’s essential to recognise it. For me, getting to Cambridge wasn’t just about effort. It came down to timing, circumstance, and one pivotal opportunity: moving to London at 16 to attend a selective sixth form. That shift expanded the world available to me at a time when I didn’t fully understand how unequal access to opportunity could be.

We prefer the narrative that success is earned, linear, tidy. But life isn’t tidy. Doors open for some people at just the right moment, while others never see them. Recognising this doesn’t make achievements meaningless, it is simply acknowledging reality. It places us in a world with more honesty and less pressure to pretend.

The performance of class here usually comes from insecurity, not arrogance. Some people soften their privilege because they don’t want to be judged. Others downplay their challenges because they don’t want to stand out. Everyone is trying to fit in in an environment that hasn’t figured out how to talk about difference without making it awkward.

But belonging built on pretence is fragile. It needs constant upkeep – constant recalibration of how we present ourselves. When the surface becomes the main story, it gets harder to show up as a full person rather than a carefully curated version.

“For students attending a university with so many resources, we’re remarkably hesitant to acknowledge them”

I’m not arguing we should all dramatically unmask ourselves or confess our socioeconomic backgrounds before supervisions. Nobody wants that. But perhaps we could be a little more open to the idea that success is not purely self-authored. Luck is woven through all of it – the schools we attended, the teachers who encouraged us, the chances that appeared at the right moment, the futures we were able to imagine for ourselves.

Personally, acknowledging luck makes me feel more grounded. It makes me kinder to myself when things go wrong and feel less guilty when things go right. It helps me see others not as polished results but as people shaped by contexts I may never fully understand.

Maybe that’s what Cambridge needs: not blame, not guilt, but openness. A willingness to recognise that identity, class, and belonging are complicated and that we don’t have to perform sameness to build community.

People will probably always joke about being broke. There will always be pub debates about who is or isn’t posh. The theatre won’t disappear and that’s fine. A bit of performance keeps things light. But it’s worth noticing the gap between the performance and the truth. Class and luck shape this place far more than a lot of us would care to admit. Pretending they don’t doesn’t make Cambridge fairer – it just makes it harder to talk about what’s actually going on.

If we can acknowledge this without defensiveness or drama, conversations about class might feel less like a trap and more like part of understanding each other. Not a confession, not a competition, just a clearer picture of the world we’re living in.