Everything you did over the holidays

1. You realized you had learned nothing, and possibly had forgotten some things too.

Eight weeks after dropping you off, fresh-faced and excited, amongst imposing architecture and imposingly clever people, your family assumed you would return a leading expert in the field of theoretical physics. Your parents gazed expectantly at you during Christmas University Challenge, waiting for you to amaze with your newly gleaned knowledge. You inevitably disappointed them with your failure to remember what Paul Dirac’s biography was called. 

The sad realisation that you are no Loveday is not one you can get back from easily.

2. You did no work.

In truth, you probably did enough work to get by, but you will insist you did no work whatsoever, and have in fact forgotten how to read and count over Christmas. 

3. You had a sik New Year, ya?

Clubbing in Cambridge is terrible, you realised, as you rung in the New Year with the school friends you hadn’t spoken to in eight weeks, surrounded by the deafening sound of what was unmistakably not S-Club. You will lament the horror of living in a city with four terrible clubs until Tuesday, when you will lament the length of the Cindies queue. 

These happy faces beg to differ with your conviction that Cambridge clubbing is terrible.

4. You travelled, and either got smashed in different parts of Europe – with or without ski gear – or really learned something new about yourself, like how you take for granted the everyday luxuries we have.

Your Christmas either taught you the glories of consumerism when you were given The Thing You Wanted, or taught you how disgusting it is that we’ve turned Christmas into some kind of festival of capitalism, probably because you failed to receive The Thing You Wanted.

5. Your New Year’s Resolution is to actually work this term. No really. No more going out three times a week, and yes this term you will be going to lectures and getting up at 7:00am, and actually maybe you’ll also take up rowing, since it’s so in line with your fitness goals and getting up at 5:00 in the morning doesn’t sound too bad, does it? 

Sitting in a boat when it’s five degrees sounds like something you need.

6. You went to see the new Star Wars. 

Or maybe you didn’t go see the new Star Wars, and either way you will tell everybody emphatically about it. You will shout from the top of King’s Chapel: “I care so much about Star Wars!” or, alternatively, you will insist that you “have never cared about Star Wars and no-one can make me!”