What I’ve learned from my first week at Cambridge

Almost two weeks in to my first term at Cambridge, and, although I’m still managing to get lost on the daily, I feel as if I’m almost settling in. My first week went by in a whirlwind of forgotten names and strange abbreviations (‘plodge’, ‘Natsci’, ‘ASNaC’), but I do think I’ve learned a lot… even if it’s predominantly learning how much I don’t actually know.

It does feel a tad surreal

Wearing a gown and having to sign my name “into the ranks of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton” for matriculation was bizarre.

However, during matriculation I was in an odd dream-like state which lasted for my first few days here. Often, I felt like an actor playing the role of someone else, and that everything would snap back to reality soon.

It was only during my second day of lectures (when I was daydreaming rather than listening to something that was probably extremely useful about ‘poetics and hermeneutics’) that it hit me that I was sitting in a Cambridge University lecture, and that I was now a student at Cambridge. Cycling back past King’s and inadvertently photo-bombing hundreds of tourist’s photos  did not help to make the experience feel any less surreal. 

"One week here feels more like a year; I can barely remember what my family look like. It’s exhilarating but also exhausting"

The tech stuff is ridiculously complicated

I thought I'd faced the worst of it after battling my way through Raven and Hermes at home, but trying to connect to Eduroam on my first day here felt like trying to get through a maze in the Hunger Games. It seemed like it was the first test of my ability at Cambridge - which I eventually gave up and had to get someone else to do it for me. Prophetic? Perhaps.

Putting money on my Camcard was the next challenge; I still haven't figured out how to pay to use the laundry room (or, in fact, found the laundry room). I plan only to cross that bridge once I have worn every item of clothing I brought with me. On the plus side, this means I’m being a lot more experimental with my outfit choices. 

Although the University Moodle seems to be harder to get into than the Pentagon, it’s not just the tech stuff that seems to be unnecessarily confusing. It took me hours to figure out how to find the time of lectures on the long list of lectures I was given, the concept of ‘keeping term’ is still a mystery, and because of the apparent different between ‘term’ and ‘full term’, I have no clue when I’ll be home for Christmas.

Everything moves so fast

It hasn’t even been two weeks yet and I’m already on my second essay, have had more information thrown at me during lectures than during the entirety of sixth form, and am now a member of more societies than the number of books on my reading list (basically - a lot). One week here feels more like a year; I can barely remember what my family look like. It’s exhilarating but also exhausting. 

Freshers' Week is a bit of a rollercoaster

The first few days of freshers felt a bit strange as there was nothing to do but make friends. On the fourth day, everything changed when I overslept, was late to my first lecture, and then missed half of my first meeting with the DOS because I was on face time to my mum (following which I cried because I felt like I’d started badly and was now doomed for failure at Cambridge). That was definitely a low point.

Perhaps not quite as low however as my experience at the foam party in Cindies. Being assaulted by numerous elbows and the smell of BO was bad enough, even before the foam got involved. Trying to battle my way out of a soggy mosh pit, soaking wet with eyes burning and blinded by foam felt like an insight into hell. Not being able to find the famous ‘Van of Life’ afterwards made the night even more dismal. Definitely not what I had envisioned as part of the ‘Cambridge experience’.

Although I’m partly to blame for agreeing to go to a foam party (why and for who were they invented?!), I really didn’t know what I was signing myself up for.

Despite this traumatic experience, there have also been highs. Going to see a show a Footlights show at the ADC, finding Nando's in order to claim the ‘free half chicken’ in our fresher’s pack. Above all, meeting so many friendly, interesting and fun people - as this was probably what I was most scared about before coming. You know you’ve actually found good friends when they make the walk back to college after a foam party (when you’re cold and wet with mascara running all over your face) even slightly bearable