Let’s set the scene. C-Sunday is right around the corner and I – as a very clueless Fresher – have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Jesus Green, yes. Drinking, yes. And then, admittedly, my knowledge stops there. Yet, all the excitement around it (brewing since the beginning of Lent) has been unignorable. And whatever campaign everyone is trying to build here, it’s working, because I can’t wait either.

All I’ve heard about this infamous C-Sunday is from the older years reminiscing – calling it easily ‘one of the best days’ of the academic year – alongside plenty of chatter about this year’s drinking strategy, with (hopefully) some exaggeration about how drunk they’re really getting. I mean, surely you don’t actually want the porters tucking you into bed?

What I can predict, just like all my other drinking experiences here at Cambridge, is that any plans that were created sober, will disappear as soon as alcohol is involved. Multiply that chaos by a field full of students, and you get everything I’m expecting C-Sunday to be.

But right there, lingering in the background, is the exam pressure that everyone seems to be avoiding. Between C-Sunday and May Week, there is this depressing grey area that everyone is reluctant to acknowledge. The avoidance is almost laughable, as if this collective silence will make exam season any less inevitable.

"Where do we draw the line between drinking culture and just, well, culture?"

Here in Cambridge, social life and academic life blur into the same spaces. The result of this overlap is that drinking quietly becomes the default stress response. It’s no secret that alcohol is a significant feature of Cambridge life, but where do we draw the line between drinking culture and just, well, culture?

I’m no stranger to a vodka cranberry, but when we look forward to incapacitating ourselves weekly more than anything, it starts to feel like a cry for help. C-Sunday is not a stand-alone event. If anything, it’s the pinnacle of all the alcohol consumption that takes place throughout the year. And unsurprisingly, it coincides with the peak time of academic stress. At what point do we get concerned about the same faces at the bar, ordering another drink for the umpteenth time that week. Between Revs, Mash, and KiKi’s, where do we find the space for anything else that counts as stress relief? It doesn’t help that for many of us, certain friendships only exist after dark, when the day’s academic expectations have been managed, forgotten or become socially acceptable to temporarily forget.

“Although the academic environment of Cambridge seems to value productivity and achievement, once we get into a drinking environment, the recklessness of avoidance and procrastination is praised instead”

Interestingly, once I’m back home in my South London bubble, all interest in alcohol is left behind in the whirlwind of the last term. I remember how to interact with my home friends without resorting to the words ‘vodka’ or ‘club,’ and time spent away from studying becomes genuinely enjoyable again. So, what is it about this University that makes drinking seem so much more appealing than anywhere else?

The common denominator here seems to be stress, which is telling of the socially sanctioned ways in which we cope with academic pressure. Lubitsh’s article aptly points out a performativity in how we share our experiences of said pressure with one another. I would take this further and argue that although the academic environment of Cambridge seems to value productivity and achievement, once we get into a drinking environment, the recklessness of avoidance and procrastination is praised instead.

We uphold this culture with our endless, informal traditions that define the Cambridge experience. In doing so, truthfully, I think we glamorise it. I’m often met with reactions of bewilderment when I’m trying to explain how our drinking culture operates. Friends don’t understand initiation nights, swaps, or themed bar crawls. And to be fair to them, I see how it sounds a lot more absurd to an outsider. As freshers, we write these dates in our calendar alongside essay deadlines, supervision times, and the occasional meeting. Drinking becomes something to finally look forward to. Perseverance becomes a matter of social performance and compliance, which creates a dangerous cycle of masking our anxieties and turning them into a spectacle of excessive drinking under the guise of ‘stress relief.’

Don’t get me wrong, you will most definitely see me on Jesus Green on that first Sunday in May – but just remember that it’s worth questioning what we’re celebrating (or suppressing) when we get together for yet another drinking event. Then again, I’ll probably be amongst those rinsing Mainsbury's at midday once the drinks have run out.