Among all the hype of May Week, a certain stillness has come over Cambridge. If you wake up just an hour earlier than usual, and sit along the riverbank, you just might catch the stillness of the water, where each ripple seems to cause a rupture. Scudamore's haven't hit the river yet, and bottle caps are all that's left on the paddocks from the night before. Bar a kayaker or two, you're pretty much alone.

The Lido at Jesus Green is similarly quiet on a weekday morning in the early summer. Those who swim swim laps, and the water seems content to entertain itself with reflections of sunlight. Whether we're soaking up the sun or getting some exercise at the end of a hectic term, the Lido has become one of our favourite places to relax.

Before and after you dive into the water, there's a moment of stillness, a calculation of what's about to happen, and where you're about to go. This pause - a state of limbo - between safety and stability and excitement and the unknown is mirrored by the transition occurring in many of our lives right now.

Whether you are completing your first year at Cambridge, or about to flee the bubble for good, the time between the end of exams and your final May Week plans engenders us all with a rare sense of freedom and contentment, affording us the right to pleasure-seek. 

It also, however, instills an atmosphere of suspense - as though we are dangling by threads, ready to be released from the shackles of responsibility into a world of independence and self-sufficiency. For those returning next year, the summer provides the opportunity to explore and develop, to gather stories to tell upon your return in October.

For finalists, the threads which are about to be cut may resemble lifelines, the surviving connections between childhood and 'real-life'. The inevitable departure from the bubble may feel more like jeopardy than an adventure. 

Whatever your position on the diving board right now, it is only in enjoying the momentary intermission - between the refuge of college life and the thrill of what lies ahead - by soaking up the sun, both literally and metaphorically, that you can make the most of it