It's 11am on a Saturday and we're having brunch. One might expect, or even perhaps hope, that conversation would orientate around what a wild Friday night we'd had, or our exciting plans for the weekend. But this is Cambridge, where weekends don't exist and brunch serves to plug the gap between work and, well, more work. Instead, conversation turns itself to all things mildly controversial (or not, as it might happen) and we find ourselves getting worked up about some abstract topic. Once, it was whether or not “flat” is a relative term. Today, it was the prevalence of televisions – and “screens” in general – in the lives of today's children. We talked about childhood, the importance of play and accused each other of habouring bourgeois idealism.

I love a good discussion, and these brunch-time debates are always interesting. But I can't help feeling that they are somewhat bizarre. It seems like intellectual foreplay for the procrastinating undergrad. We're letting out all those frustrated ideas that we just can't quite get into our essays, intellectually sparring with each other as a warm up for the day's work to come.

Someone told me before I came to Cambridge that I would learn more from the people around me than from my degree. I expected this, and I was excited for it. I just never expected it to come in the form of brunch.

Support Varsity

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding and we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content and of course in print too!

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as £1, to help with our running costs. Many thanks, we hope you can help!