Tag Archives: Cambridge

Finally: Secrets of the Wonderland

Haha. I said soon. Who am I fooling at this point? The Garden Party was amazing. Although my friends and I arrived 2 hours after it had started, there was still free food, drinks, snacks, and other attractions left for us to enjoy.

I will try sum up that amazing evening as unconfusingly as possible. (not guaranteed)

When we arrived the first thing we did was to queue for food. Free hotdogs, burgers, and crepes… what a perfect start of a near perfect night! After successfully eating a hotdog (and when I say successful I mean without getting ketchup and mustard all over our dresses) a friend and I went to try croquet which became quite boring after some time as we were unable to get the ball in the direction be wanted it to go. The live band played great songs everyone knew and we were having a great time enjoying free ice cream,  colourful drinks, and a warm evening. The college also had arranged a chess board with figures 1/2 metres high. Indoors we could not only enjoy  a chocolate fountain with strawberries, marshmallows, and fudges, but also a table full of different sweets, and a corner with all sorts of teas (for those of you who forgot: there was a tea party in Alice in Wonderland 😉 ). In the dining hall they had put up a Casino. I went there twice: first with my friend L. to play Blackjack and the second time with a guy studying veterinary medicine I met at the Party. It was great: You didn’t have to spent money and were provided with a certain amount of poker chips. Every time you weren’t lucky, you could just go and get more of them. The first time I went, L. and I were that good that when we didn’t want to play anymore, we had to go all in.. in a game we were bound to lose.

I am sure you are wondering most about why I spent so much time on the toilet when I don’t drink? It seems that a few people don’t know when they have had enough alcohol… and one of those people happened to be a friend from college. She had been dancing around wildly before, singing at the top of her lungs, and had kissed at least one straight female friend of ours, and one not so straight male friend of ours, which is extremely interesting because usually she dislikes body contact. 😛

Anyway… she ended up sleeping on the toilet. AND NOW KIDS LISTEN CLOSELY, BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO YOU! Fortunately, she was able to unlock the door before she doze off; I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if she hadn’t. For a long time we weren’t even sure whether she was conscious or not. She vomited all over the place and I and  few other closer friends who happened to be there tried to keep her as …hmmm… responding as possible. After an hour we called an ambulance, but at that time most of use were already soaked in a pool of sick. We tried to pull up her pants and trousers to keep at least a bit of her dignity for when she was carried out and to the ambulance by two of the stronger guys. I was told that in the morning she called a friend from the hospital: She called her a good friend as was sorry that we missed out on a lot of things at the Party because of her. LET THAT BE A LESSON TO YOU, KIDS! 😉

Later that night we went to the Silent Disco. I had never been to a silent disco, but I can tell you that they are awesome! You get headphones and the music is played only through the headphones. Our headphones had two channels and they played a variety of music genres: pop, rock, oldies,… and the best part is that you can choose the volume yourself! No tinnitus, yay! Normal conversation is also possible, you just have to take of your headphones. I am telling you… this is the future! 😛

At 2 or 3 in the morning, as the music was getting more and more techno and less and less “danceable”, I decided to go home to get some sleep.

It was an incredible night, with all my friends, lots and lots of fantastic attractions, delicious hotdogs, colourful drinks & sweets, and good music. I want to go again… well maybe next year 😉

A week of May in June

At the moment, there are the so-called May Weeks in Cambridge. Yes, you heard me…. MAY.

In May Week, which is not even a week but usually a longer period of time, students celebrate the end of the academic year. The celebrations used to be in May, before exams started,(hence the name) but apparently end of exams is easier to celebrate than the beginning of them.Cupcakes

There are three types if events a college could organise (sometimes annually, sometimes every two years), and that depends on the college itself: is it old, wealthy, with a lot of students,… then it might organise a May Ball. This is the biggest event possible and (non-dining) tickets cost 155 pounds! The dress code differs from college to college. It might be white tie, black tie, formal, or smart-casual. The catch is that sometimes you have to buy two tickets, because they won’t sell single ones. Also, it is apparently very difficult to get tickets, especially if you want to go to a May Ball from a different college. May Balls are themed as far as I know. The one my college was supposed to have was: Down the rabbit hole (Alice in Wonderland). May Balls may include: a firework, big wheels, unlimited food and drinks, popular bands and DJs, balloon rides, etc.

Students, who don’t grow money trees at home, like me, try to crash these huge and expensive parties (unlike me… did not think about trying until it was too late. stupid me). People try to climb over walls, which are often sprayed with anti-burglar sprays leaving green stains on the climbers clothes, swim to the banks behind the colleges and enter from there, or simply pretend you are a performer and part of the band (which a friend of my friend actually managed!). In the morning, a survivor photo is taken, with everyone who stayed until the end. People queue for ages to enter these balls; my friends came two hours early and were around the 100 people mark in the queue.

Garden PartyApart from the May Balls, colleges may hold June Events. They are a bit cheaper than May Balls with a fewer attractions.

The third and cheapest event is  Garden Party. As far as I know, Garden Parties are free, but there are no attraction and you have to pay for food and drinks. Dress-codes don’t exist, my friends went there in jeans and t-shirts.
Clare Hall wanted to have a May Ball, but as our College is so small, they could not sell enough tickets.  They then changed in into a Garden Party, which was more like a small June Event, really. I will tell you about our Garden Party, how I spent about an hour in the toilet, spent no money in the casino, yet won, and a disco that nobody is annoyed by soon, now I have to go punting with my friends…stressful leisure.

 

If you happy and you know it

I have enjoyed the past few days a lot! Well, honestly, I am not sure what to do with myself, but I try to make the best out of all my free afternoons. On Thursday, we all went to the Granta Pub, which is so lovely. It’s right next to the river and I really hate that I haven’t discovered it earlier.traffic jam on the Cam

On Friday, I went to town and met my friends Laura and Elidir. We had a drink on the roof of a hotel with a wonderful view over Cambridge.  After that… I was walking around aimlessly town. I walked from A to B to C and then back to A without having done anything. I just didn’t know what else to do. But as the weather was so nice, I felt it was a good way to waste my time.

All the time, a voice in my head kept telling me: No, you should go back to work. Revise, read,… you are not done yet.  I think this is something I need to get used to again 😉

On Saturday, ma friends and I had afternoon tea at Harriets, a traditional tea room in the centre of Cambridge. Absolutely lovely! Then we decided to just walked around a little bit. There was a huge park that I hadn’t had time to see earlier so we went there. It was extremely nice and I felt like being on holidays. I got an ice cream, saw cows, and ladybirds making out. 🙂so much action ;)

On Sunday, I enjoyed breakfast (at around noon, because seriously,…  who gets up in the morning?) at Autie’s Tea Shop, which is something everyone should visit. After that I got the Hollywood feeling when my friend took me to Grantchester (which is about 10 minutes by car) in his Cabriolet! With the roof down and music blasting we drove there and to walk around a bit. A lot of the houses have a thatched roof and a beautiful garden. I was so impressed.

That was my weekend. It was amazing 🙂

 

Trip to Grantchester

Wasting someone else’s place in Cambridge

 

 

Anonymous asked: So you get drunk, swear all the time and cant read? And you’re going to Cambridge? You’re wasting a place.

Well aren’t you quite the little charmer.

(Also, it’s ‘can’t’, with an apostrophe.)

As I am not on tumblr, I can’t officially like this or reblog this, but this is my way to pay tribute to The Cambridge Diaries. Not only do I think this is an awesome response, but the whole blog is hilarious. I find myself in almost every post on this site.

The only question left is: Am I wasting someone else’s place?

I can’t read… I am staring at articles hoping they will reveal their secrets to me. Usually I don’t knowing what is going on.

I swear all the time when I am sitting in front of my laptop, especially when I am with my Austrian friend. She is really a bad influence.

Thank god, I don’t drink. Makes me feel less bad for the person, whose place I took.

Stu(dent)dying

I have only been here a few months but that seems to be enough to find 100 differences (attention! figure of speech called Hyperbole is used here to exaggerate) between the Graz/Austrian and the Cambridge/UK way of studying Linguistics:

  • I think the most obvious difference between a Master’s degree here and in Graz is (apart from the final degree) the duration: I would have to study for two years in Graz whereas here it’s only one year.
  • And that is not even correct: I started in October and my course officially ends on the 14th of June. I have to end in my thesis by 5th of June so I study for about 9 months.
  • The average length of a lecture in Austria is one and a half hours. Enough time to actually learn something and definitely enough time to be late if you want to (Which means you can sign the attendance sheet without feeling guilty!) In Cambridge I can’t afford being five minutes late because that means that I would miss about a tenth of the lecture. Yeah,… that’s right: The lectures over here are just 50 minutes long and because one lecture kind of ends at the same time when the next one begins the professors usually start  (for all of you who don’t know: In Austria there is a 15 minutes break between lectures so that the poor students have time to change classrooms)
  • Here they have three trimesters instead of two semesters.
  • I was used to a mixture of lectures and seminars. Here, the first term was full of lectures and the second term was full of seminars. I had to sit in one seminar where I wasn’t even marked. You can imagine with how much enthusiasm I wasted my time (yes, I could have learnt something but the problem is that you have to read a lot of background literature to keep up. I had to work too much for seminars where I was actually graded for/in# so I didn’t have time and energy to focus on more than I needed to).
  • Cambridge is a bubble. Fact. Different people, who don’t even know each other, phrase it exactly in the same way. It’s a bubble of safe nerdiness. It shelters you from everything bad in the world. But it also isolates.
  • In Austria, you have holidays between the semesters. I am not even sure, if we have something like that here. Honestly. I remember that we were told in the introductory session that the timetable that we have is the one for Bachelor students, but that they are not going to stick to that. Today, I got reminded by my friend what they said about our breaks: A student asked: “Can we go home over the breaks?” The professors were first confused, then smiled and said: “You won’t have any breaks.” AND THEY WERE RIGHT!
  • In Graz, I was able to work a few hours a week while studying, which was a nice change between being taught and teaching someone (in my case). Here, we were advised not to work at all during the year and I see why: there is no time.
  • The library is huge! I believe Cambridge subscribed to each and every magazine and journal that there is. Graz…. Is not. What a surprise 🙂
  • In Austria, we were never pushed towards academia and research. There was no need to read articles and no one ever mentioned conferences or publishing. In fact, in the one seminar where we were forced to read and prepare one article each week, 5 people (including me as it was only an extra class) quit after one week. Here, they try to help you and offer the equipment to work towards this direction (most of the time at least). The feeling here is different, as everyone (especially your colleagues) is excited about your ideas and motivates each other to visit conferences across the world.Study party
  • In Austria, most of the students are not concerned with their grades. As long as they pass, everything is cool and it’s a reason to celebrate. They are not reeeaally stressed. In Cambridge, students take studying a bit too seriously. I have never seen so many break downs, the consequences of sleep deprivation, friends losing at least 5 kg in only 2 weeks (she had been super thin already… with her hollow cheeks and dark circles under her eyes she looked like a zombie), other friends getting kind of depressed every other day (that includes me as well), a colleague cut her hair because after she had come to Cambridge her former beautiful hair  became very thin and fell out others dread the deadlines for funds for their PhD and can’t sleep, one of my colleagues has started taking meds….  So if you come from a place like me where university is not the most important thing in your life… think twice how much stress you can deal with. Fortunately, I am pretty hardcore.:)

 

 

These are just a few differences, but I got tired of writing. Even if what I wrote sounds horrible, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I came here, because it was my dream and I would do it again. Always. What I am saying is that studying is not for everyone and is completely different in different places. I am enjoying my time as much as I can and I am looking forward to our after-thesis-time 😀

Special Sunday

Friend 1: So when will we come back from Portugal?

Friend 2: We will arrive on Saturday, so we can do something on Suicide Sunday!

Me: WTF? WHAT IS SUICIDE SUNDAY? Last day of exams?

 

As it turned out, the term Suicide Sunday actually exists! And it is not what it seems to be and what I thought it was. It is not a day students regularly commit suicide. No. It is actually the day after the final exams and before grades are published. Time to binge drink 🙂 As Wikipedia informs: “The name, however, ironically refers to the celebration that students haven’t committed suicide due to stress of exams.”

 

Thank god! I was really shocked for a second!