
Was Cambridge Worth It?
With Lent around the corner, Fucked Up Fresher TONY HARCOURT evaluates your Michaelmas for you.
So, Freshers (if youโre a second or third year this isnโt for you โ go cry cynically into the half-baked afterbirth of your dissertation or something), you did it it. You survived your first term at Cambridge University. You penned essays, skirted insomnia, battled Week 5, bullshitted through supervisions, gained valuable experiences, friends and weight.
Lent term is days away, but the question remains, niggling like a rabid beaver at the back of your bruised mind; was it all worth it? Were those eight weeks of horrific stress and scratchy gowns (with the promise of sixty-four more like them to come) worth all the years of hard study, of pent up aspiration and ambition, of frenzied revision and the self-administered lethal injection into your teenaged social life?
Like the intrepid Lois Lane that I am, I decided to find out for you by interviewing several of my friends who went to universities other than Cambridge this autumn.
Emma โ WARWICK
โWarwick is amazing. The worst thing is that we have lectures sometimes in the mornings, but those are usually good times to nap actually. The best thing about Warwick is the social scene, definitely; my flat is amazing, weโre like a family now, and we have flat parties on every Tuesday. Haha no theyโre not boring parties, a โflatโ is just a type of accommodation, we donโt have cloisters here- Yeah there are 31 flats in our block, and each of them has a party on a different weekday, so there are like always at least four or five different parties every- Essays? Do you mean essay? Yeah we had that, nightmare.โ

Cloisterless
Scott โ UCL
ย โLSD, man, you have to try LSD. You wanna come down to London sometime we can go see some Brecht or something and do LSD? Yeah.โ
Rachel โ DURHAM
โGod, the workload here is in-fucking-tense, you would not believe, but the collegiate system is great, we have such inter-college bantz, Hatfield LOL. Yeah, probably the worst thing is how much free time I have, though thatโs kinda useful as I lose hours every day to having to translate the localsโ dialects. But yeah, overall Iโm so glad I got into Doxbridge.โ
Oliver โ GAP YEAR
โI THINK I JUST SAW AN ACTUAL TIGER IT’S MOVING OMG BRB.โ

None ย to be found at the UL, although recent sightings ย suggest potential
Letty โ BIRMINGHAM
โThe night life here is quite simply phenomenal. Thereโs only forty or so clubs, but thereโs a nice complimenting sub-fringe of cheap bars too. My term? To be honest, I canโt remember much of it. I think it involved pineapple costumes and enjoying myself more than I thought was humanly possible.. I vomited in my sleep worryingly often, though.

If this is their library, imagine their club
Connor โ OXFORD
โWhy are you messaging me, Tony, we’re not friends anymore :)”
Jennieย โย YORK
โDid you know we have ducks in our lake?! Theyโre so cute! What drinking games do you play in Cambridge? Haha. Yeah Iโm not sure we even have a library in York. Haha yeah reading week, misnomer of the century am I right?!! Thereโs this awesome bar where you can get 90p shots if you flash the bouncers. We go there most nights. Iโm so good at drinking games now, and I have sex all the time. Itโs basically just sleeping, drinking, eating and fucking for me these days. How much sex did you have in Cambridge, Tony? Oh. Well donโt worry, Iโm sureโฆ yeah oh that sounds embarrassing. Iโm sure everyone will forget about it soon.โ
So, in summary, would you have had more fun going to a slightly less prestigious university?
The short, sad and truthful answer is yes, probably. But donโt forget that youโll come out of it with a degree that is guaranteed to get you a job. Just ask any recent Cantabrigian graduate โ though donโt expect to get a quick reply, theyโre all too busy being employed!