Oh, good God – for a place with some of the brightest minds in the country, there sure is a worrying lack of self-awareness going around. Plenty of Cambridge students, bless their little cotton socks, wouldn’t know the real world if it slapped them across their bespectacled faces. Case in point: as I sat down with the latest edition of Varsity over breakfast this morning, exhausted from last night’s shift, one article in particular stood out to my bleary, caffeine-craving eyeballs. Feature! “I worked at a college Halloween formal”. Shocker! A student? Working? For money? How absurd!

This title sticks with me as I dig out my waistcoat and tie. No, this is not some avant-garde fashion statement for Sidgwick site: this is a uniform.

As I head to work at college – a job I have had since my second year – I mull over the author’s opening gambit: “I am aware that this article’s title will conjure two conflicting perceptions”: on one hand, “those of the live laugh (vote) labour lifestyle” will see working a singular shift at a college formal as an act of “self-fashioning saviourism”. On the other, it assumes, conservatives will be “disgusted” at the idea of stooping so low. Neither of these corresponds to my reaction. There should be a third choice: “I don’t care”. Not everything is political and divisive, despite a seemingly large group of anonymous students on Camfess whose life’s work consists of making mountains out of molehills. Students around the world work part time and full time every day in order to fund their studies. This alone should not come as a shock. The fact that some Cambridge students seem to think so is telling.

Squeezing any substantial funding out of most Cambridge colleges is like trying to get a panini at the ARC café after 2pm

In fairness to the author, I am being unreasonably harsh: Cambridge ostensibly prohibits work. If you know no better, it’s logical to take this at face value as an undergraduate. However, in reality, this rule is very rarely enforced, and there are many loopholes. If you work for the University, for example, as I do in my two current jobs, you are permitted to work alongside your studies. Perhaps this is advertised more clearly by mature colleges, one of which I am a member.

But frankly, if you can’t afford to study here on your own, there is no alternative to working. Colleges have a habit of saying they’ll provide enough support for you to focus on your studies without the distraction of real work, but more often than not these are empty promises. If your parents earn over a certain amount, regardless of your personal financial situation, this is not the case. Squeezing any substantial funding out of most Cambridge colleges is like trying to get a panini at the ARC café after 2pm: near impossible.

“Is it not bizarre that, despite us navigating similar stages of life, we spend our evenings being waited on by people who are, in essence, our peers?” the author asks. “In essence”? I’m right here! Both as your peer and your server. We are not invisible. Cambridge students work. You just don’t see us, too busy greedily guzzling your formal wine to notice it’s a friend from college who’s pouring it (and yes – this has happened to me). Apparently, I’m positively a paradox: paying to attend this university while also being paid by them. Maybe I should just get a discount on my degree instead?

“If I were to work full-time in a Cambridge dining hall, I wouldn’t hate Cambridge students, but I would certainly envy them. Who wouldn’t be envious of being served posh dinners?”, the author concludes. I’ll tell you who. My co-workers. Me. Because at the end of the day, that’s the job. And the joke, really, is on everyone else, because you’re paying for this dinner, but I’m getting paid for it – while also enjoying my job(s), the people I work with, and the routine it provides me with. And when my monthly paycheck shows money coming in from this university, instead of going out, I don’t feel jealous at all.