At university, we’re supposed to go a little crazy, right? Because when you’re old you won’t remember the nights you stayed in and went to bed early. But for all the warnings I’d been given about English drinking culture, I was not prepared.

In Singapore, going out on a Sunday or Wednesday was practically unheard of. People were too concerned about waking up early for school, or catching one of the last buses home. And while Cambridge might not be a high school, or even big enough to warrant catching a bus, the consistency with which students here choose clubbing over their courses would have been unheard of back home.

It’s not only the attitudes – high taxes on alcohol in Singapore means that getting drunk on a budget is seriously challenging. Even in the weeks of post-exam celebration, my friends and I didn’t come close to drinking as much as some of my Cambridge friends seem to do on a weekly basis.

Leaving aside the potentially skewed representation of Cambridge swaps and drinking societies, British drinking culture is overwhelmingly different to anything else I have experienced. Maybe it is just university life, but I get the impression that my friends in Canada and Asia are not going out nearly as often.

I expected that in Cambridge, much like Singapore, people would put academics before everything else. But no one bats an eyelid when 9am lectures and impending deadlines are brushed aside, as students down their drinks and order another. At first glance, I thought this was indicative of a complete disregard for the future, but upon closer inspection I have realised that it’s a deep-seated cultural phenomenon.

I won’t assume to fully understand British drinking, but one reason for its ubiquity seems quite simple – cost. From an international perspective, alcohol here is cheap, which makes consumption substantially easier. Binge drinking is obviously made feasible by low prices too. It seems to be the norm to end up drunk and in search of a club in the early hours of the morning, even while knowing that waking up the next day will be torture.

Contrary to the popular trope, however, it’s not just binge drinking – there are a plethora of options for socialising which centre around alcohol. People have become inured to the idea of drinking at every event. Watching football or even sitting at dinner, I’ve gotten more than one strange look when I ask for something non-alcoholic. Is it possible that people in Britain enjoy the taste of cheap wine and beer more than any other country? Personally, I think that’s an absurd suggestion. But people in Britain, much like in the rest of Europe, have grown up drinking sips of alcohol at the dinner table with their parents. Getting hammered is almost a rite of passage. This idea is unheard of in Singaporean culture, where getting drunk is something for the immature, the western visitors and the lower class.

Yet, Cantabrigians aren’t just in search of inebriation. In the perpetual insularity of Cambridge, I’ve quickly realised that clubs are one of, if not the only, hotbed for romantic relations, meaning almost every night there are people drawn to them, in search of a good time, a little company, and the type of fun they won’t remember the next day. It would be easy to mindlessly follow these crowds, which is what many new students seem to enjoy doing. However, in doing so, it becomes clear - getting drunk in Britain is about so much more than just drinking, it is the centre of most students’ social, romantic and college lives.

My transition from one societal norm to this one has been a complicated experience. Fear of missing out has pushed me to overindulge: a decision which has generated somewhat mixed results. While a few of my favourite nights out have ended mere hours before the sun rises, if every evening and subsequent morning follows this same drunk and hungover pattern, other things will certainly go amiss. Such as my degree. Somehow, I’ll have to find the balance between these alien drinking cultures... wish me luck.