“This is a new low”. Indeed. It has reached the point of the year where the strings start to come loose: the library uninhabited, the verbs of a frantic essay unconjugated, and the MML student scribbling them down feeling distinctly uneasy – otherwise known as Easter Term. It is in this short term, when my flight instinct wins out against fighting through grammar worksheets, that I’ve found myself enraptured by Cambridge’s polar heights. It’s at a distance, whether panorama views or weaving staircases, that I have found the way through the messy in-betweens.

Despite being a famously flat city, Cambridge is nonetheless host to a variety of highs and lows within its fleeting terms, from the ritual of The Traitors viewings in the JCR (name a series, name a nation, we’ve binged it) to the blinking cursor on a blank essay draft. Sometimes, it can feel like we need a little perspective. And looking out onto the bustling postcard streets below from the top of one of Cambridge’s church towers, I finally felt like I had it.

“Sometimes, it can feel like we need a little perspective”

The Highs

Reaching the hundredth step of Great St Mary’s with no rooftop view in sight, I realised I may have heard the numbers given by the guide ever so slightly incorrectly. The steps ahead twisted beyond my paltry estimate, the ceiling dipping to graze my head in admonishment as I turned the corners. We were nearly there. At least that is what I told myself, and my friend a step behind, as I realised we were actually merely a little over half way. With the promise of Jack’s upon our descent, we eventually reached the upper door, spilling out onto the tower’s roof, and saw Cambridge stretch below of us. There is something unnerving about watching the town and all its hallmarks, which for so long were the stuff of Pinterest boards and motivational internet browsing, manifest in front of you, the lawns cast emerald by perfect weather as the people mill below. Standing over it all, I had some perspective, if not a tinge of vertigo.

Deadlines may loom, and worksheets tower, but looking over orderly quads stitched next to each other, work begins to slot into place in the city’s patchwork. It is so far from Cambridge’s entirety; rather, just one of so many facets stretching into the distance from the tower’s turrets.

The Lows

Descending into the red-brick nave of Clare Cellars for the first time was a peculiar type of surreal, a new subterranean addition to the various nooks and crannies of Cambridge we’d tripped into in Fresher’s Week. A variety of marathon pool games, quizzes, and comedy nights followed, and we seemed like regulars. In fact, when my friend from home came to visit, it was the first place I thought to take her, nestled between plans for open fields and cosy pubs. Jazz in Clare Cellars was a convergence: on one end, the life that I had built between classes, and at the other, the faces looking out from my pinboard were finally here. Approaching week four, the pattering of keyboard keys had begun to pepper like dull fireworks through lunchtimes and the semaphore of red flags flew ignored in my inbox, painting a rather dire picture for my visiting friend at this point in term. But this was about to change.

“At one of the city’s lowest points, we were in high spirits”

Finally stepping towards the stage on a packed night, I had a friend from each half of my life either side of me. Over the night, we swapped stories in an often misheard chain of whispers – at one of the city’s lowest points, we were in high spirits, three girls from the heights of the Pennines and Corbetts finding common ground below the flattened Fens. Here, home and away were on equal footing.

Upon driving into Cambridge at the start of each term, we can’t predict the highs and lows, the tos and froms, that will chart our journey through those fleeting weeks. With weeks spent with heads in books or behind laptops, sometimes the stresses of term can feel everpresent. But looking up, around, even down from the high church tower, can allow for a little perspective: an angle uncaptured, a view unseen. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need.