Being on my college’s JCR committee is my one personality trait. I ran for Secretary in my first year, and before I knew it, I was sucked into a world of elections, minute-taking, event-organising, and personalised stash. Almost two years later, and with the role of co-president, I couldn’t imagine Cambridge without my JCR.

And although most of the job is emails, admin, and meetings, one of my favourite weeks of the year happens before term even begins – Freshers’ Week. Despite being second and third years, we’ve attended Freshers’ Hall and matriculation dinner, run consent and wellbeing workshops alongside brilliant facilitators, and hosted the annual "dress-as-your-subject" Freshers’ bop. We’ve supervised a societies fair and sports BBQ, a trip to bowling and the theatre, turning up to multiple club nights with "St John’s JCR Freshers’ Week" plastered across our backs, with absolutely no shame.

But amidst this whirlwind of staircase parties and welcome speeches, there was something ugly growing in my stomach I couldn’t ignore. I wanted to be happy for that new cohort, to gaze them with motherly kindness and greet their wide-eyed enthusiasm with affection. Of course I expected some pangs of nostalgia, but seeing them line up for matriculation in nervous bunches, with newly bought gowns making their debut, I felt a knot of jealousy tie itself tight in my chest.

Where was my matriculation photo? Where was my Freshers’ Fair on Parker’s Piece? Where was my socialising that wasn’t in a group of six? It felt like I had been cheated. I was giving those born a couple of years after me everything I had wanted from a first year experience, and it just felt… unfair. Jealousy is a parasite. It latches on where it does not belong, and the more you feed yourself, the bigger it grows.

I felt a knot of jealousy tie itself tight in my chest

And as I reflected on that ugly stone in the pit of my stomach, the clearer it became that it was more than raw envy. At the start of summer, the thought of my final year at Cambridge settled an anxious cloud over my mind. I didn’t want my time to end. Final year meant the impetus to "make the most of every opportunity" – as we are told at Halfway Hall and from each alumnus who stumbles into our path – was truly an urgent one. This would be my last Freshers’ Week, my last Bridgemas, and my last "first lecture". I could always come back for further study, but is the postgraduate experience really comparable?

While the thought of that "last" sounded like a death knell in my head, here I was, reliving that which should be first – Freshers’ Week – in my final year as an undergrad. Nostalgia, resentment, and a wistful longing for what could have been, had intertwined themselves and wrapped a scratchy rope around my hands, restraining me from moving forward.

And yet, you have to resist indulging "what ifs". My other personality trait is studying Theology, and as a Christian, I knew the biblical precedents to what I was wrestling with. In the book of Esther, a young Jewish woman who nobody knew became the wife of mighty King Xerxes. When a royal official plots to destroy the Jewish population, her uncle urges her to plead for the king on behalf of her people, even though it might cost her life. He asks: 'And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?' (Esther 4:14).

Sometimes the human instinct is to long for what we do not have, but such longing blinds us to the fact that perhaps we have come to our positions for such a time as this. I’m not saying that the fate of a people depends upon how we use our time at Cambridge, but the principle holds. It’s okay to mourn the Freshers’ Week you never had, or the matriculation service you never got, but it’s important to know when your mourning period is over.

Perhaps you were called to enter Cambridge in the COVID-19 pandemic "for such a time as this", to meet the friends you can now call family, or join the society that would have fallen off your radar in the midst of a plethora of in-person workshops. Perhaps none of that would have happened if you hadn’t accepted your offer in 2020.

This doesn’t mean that these past couple of years haven’t been hard: isolation humans were never intended to experience was thrusted on some of the most vulnerable in our society. It means that despite these things, there is no relief in wishing for another person’s life, or another year group’s Freshers’ Week. There is, instead, a power in embracing the position you have, for such a time as this. Maybe I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Perhaps I wouldn’t have had the experience I did in this beautiful, messy place called Cambridge.