The Tab Cambridge Tarot: A 1000-word reading foretelling your upcoming week

You have returned to the sacred circle of cards, once more seeking clarity amidst the carnage of term. But let’s be honest: you don’t want truth. You want reassurance. And we regret to inform you, the spirits are all out of that.

So light your anxiety candle (If the college allows fire hazards), centre your soul (if you still have one), and brace yourself for this week’s prophetic calamity.

Reading the cards.

The reading: three cards, one fate, and no Mercy

The Tab Tarot shall again summon your past, present, and future via the cardboard portals of doom. This time, the deck is infused with the scent of panic, week 2 despair, and the faint hum of the Sidgwick Site vending machines.

Card I: the three of deadlines – the past

Behold, the Three of Deadlines. A horrifying image: three looming clocks, each showing a different time, none of which correspond to the actual due date. A shadowy student weeps in the background. One of the clocks is melting.

This card speaks of time mismanagement, overconfidence, and watching four episodes of Succession because “you work better under pressure.”

Let us peer into your misdeeds:

• You once started an essay at 2am, citing “academic spontaneity” as your reasoning.
• You planned to finish your notes “by Tuesday,” forgetting to specify which Tuesday.
• You believed, deep in your deluded little heart, that attending a supervision counted as work.

The Three of Deadlines whispers, “You had time…” But you spent it ranking the hotness of 18th-century philosophers and rearranging your pens by emotional resonance.

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Card II: the hanged undergraduate – the present

You’re in it now.

The Hanged Undergraduate is suspended upside down from the shelves of the UL, clutching a half-eaten panini and -still- logged into Moodle. Around them swirl the words “Summative,” “Concluding,” and “Very Disappointed Supervision Report.”

This card is a harbinger of limbo—the space between doing and not doing, being and pretending, productivity and doomscrolling. You are trapped. Not physically (yet), but in the mental fog of academic paralysis.

Signs include:

• Rewriting your essay’s first sentence 37 times. It’s still “In this essay, I will…”
• Feeling the urge to cry every time someone uses the word “synthesis.”
• Considering if you could, technically, drop out and start an oat milk business.

You are frozen in time. And yet, somehow, still late.

Card III: the page of panic – the future

A new terror. The Page of Panic.

This card shows a first-year looking at a reading list that stretches into the sea. The sun is setting. Seagulls are screaming. A single annotation reads “this one is really important.”

In the near future, you will be swept into a frenzy of false hope, brief ambition, and eventual breakdown. Your To-Do list will become a sentient entity. Your highlighters will stage a coup. Your inbox will be designated a UNESCO disaster site.

Expect the following:

• Making a new study plan. Colour-coded. Optimistic. Fully delusional.
• Telling friends “this week is going to be different.” It won’t be.
• Googling “how to cite a religious experience you had in MLA format.”

You will attempt to rise, noble Page. But you will fall again. And the only thing cushioning you will be your 3-month-old mound of printed JSTOR articles—unread, unholy, and silently judging you.

The bonus card: the lovers (but it’s rowing)

Drawn from the river’s mist at an unholy 5:45am, The Lovers appear, rowmance is in the air, eyes meet across the river as two rowers dream of finishing each other’s sentences and race plans.

The figures gaze soulfully at each other across a boat that is wildly off-balance. One holds a protein shake. The other whispers lovingly, “bring the rate up?”

The Lovers warns:

You will fall in love.

You will fall in together.

You will fall in the river.

The universe does not believe in happy endings or good 2km times. It believes in early starts, blistered hands, and that one perfect stroke (wink) you’ll miss if you don’t shoot your shot this week.

Closing rituals:

The cards have spoken. The collapse is upon you. But the sacred spirits offer these wholly unreliable coping strategies:

1. Make an academic vision board. Use glue sticks, delusion, and Pinterest quotes. Burn it for warmth.
2. Scream your essay plan into the Fellows’ Garden. If a tree absorbs hears your grief, it counts as peer review.
3. Befriend the King’s library ghost. She died trying to cite Derrida, she will understand your pain.

The cards have spoken.

Final prophecies from the spirits:

Third-Year Linguists: “Your IPA transcription is flawless. Your sleep schedule? Dead.”

HSPS Students: “Yes, you’re emotionally intelligent. No, that won’t save you from this deadline.”

Mathmos: “The equation balances, but your soul doesn’t.”

Queens: “Confess to the woman you desire- she will say yes.”

Philosophers: “Descartes would not have started this essay either.”

Classicists: “Caesar crossed the Rubicon. You couldn’t even cross the road to the library.”

Economists: “The market has crashed. So has your morale.”

Historians of Art: “Your argument is structurally perfect. Pity your Word doc isn’t.”

Second-Year Engineers: “The bridge holds. Your willpower doesn’t.”

Jenglings: “Larks are approaching, fun times ahead- possibly violin related.”

Linguistics Tripos Papers: “It’s giving… conditional clause. It’s taking… your will to live.”

Finalists: “They ask what you’ll do next. You ask what the point of it all was.”

Anyone using ChatGPT for footnotes: “You are summoning forces you do not understand.”

Parting words from the spirits:

Academic downfall is not a disaster -it’s a rite of passage- it’s your emotional Freshers’ Flu. Everyone catches it, some just hide it better than others.

So take a deep breath. The spirits see your pain. They also see that you’ve been “working on your essay” for four hours and still haven’t opened Word. And they love you anyway.

Now go. Face your downfall with dramatic flair and a vaguely medieval sense of doom.

And remember: “You are the chosen one. Chosen to suffer. But still—the chosen one.”