Emily:

Easter Term feels like one great big gaslighting trip. We are promised endless sunny evenings and joyful occasions, all on the condition that we lock ourselves in the library for a few weeks. Except it’s never that simple. Library sessions turn into 6-hour-long slogs in roasting hot or freezing cold conditions (or if you’re in the Seeley, both at once!). The summer weather we are promised never comes – instead we are confronted with disappointingly grey skies, aside from the few occasions where it hits 30 degrees – inevitably days when I am sitting exams. Everyone is stressed, everyone is miserable. You find yourself sitting in the library next to the guy who smells of egg salad sandwiches and won’t stop sighing (WE GET IT, YOU’VE GOT EXAMS. WE ALL DO), wondering why you’re even there.

Exams aside, Easter Term always promises loads of scheduled, organised fun, because spontaneity is dead in this institution, I guess. Except most of these are massive ripoffs. C-Sunday is what you did with your mates when you were 14, bored, and having just raided your parents’ alcohol cupboard, except now it’s in a muggy field, and you’re surrounded by 400 insufferable drinking soc people wearing silly outfits and committing biological warfare against one another. May Balls, while undeniably very fun, are a combination of old-fashioned traditions (dress codes that I still don’t fully understand – what is a “cocktail dress”?), and school disco vibes (dancing in a tent to an ABBA tribute band whilst getting drinks dumped on you), all for the small price of a music festival ticket. So yeah, call me a miserable git, but Easter Term feels like someone screaming “YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE FUN” whilst precisely the opposite is happening.

Hannah:

I’m that strange kind of person who sleeps with my curtains open. Normally, it’s not an issue, save for when I suddenly realise that if I can see the builders working on Christ’s scaffolding opposite, then they can see me too. But this week, I’ve noticed that familiar sign of Easter Term, and of the suffocating haze which we call a British summer: I’m waking up before my alarm. Long gone are the days of leaving for Sidge before sunrise and returning after it, missing the light of the day as I stare at a tiny screen. Instead, King’s College tulips brighten up a shockingly pleasant stroll.

Evenings are no longer a question of avoiding a downpour en route to Revs, but can be spent outside (yes, outside) in a pub garden, or if you prefer your drinks reasonably priced, albeit slightly warmer, on the green. Most importantly, day drinking is far more classy if it’s Pimms on a punt, not gin in a gyp. Lunches need not be spent bemoaning the quality (or lack thereof) of food in hall, or scoffing a meal deal en route to a class. Instead, you can fill up your Sainbury’s basket with enough hummus to feed a family of middle class Londoners for a week, and head to your nearest gardens. Or you can at least eat your meal deal without your hands freezing off as you pry the second half of your vegan hoisin duck wrap out of its packet.

Of course, the Easter-outdoors may bring sunburn, heat rash, and the nagging guilt that maybe you should be revising, but one of the joys of fewer — or no — lectures is that leaving your room is entirely optional. And as much as revision may be arduous, I much prefer its marathon to my Michaelmas and Lent fartlek training. No longer do I have to pull a library late-one because an essay has to be in the following morning. Instead, the distance until the Easter finish line leaves room for meandering, and the term is peppered with cycles to Grantchester, an afternoon at the Botanical Gardens, and lazy Sunday mornings.

Besides, the dreaded end to Easter isn’t all bad. Even if the E-word (exams) are a spectre over the term, don’t let them cast their shadows too far. Would you really be able to enjoy May Week to its full hedonistic potential if you weren’t put through the ringer just a little bit before it? Call me crazy, but sometimes reaching the light at the end of the long and potentially painful tunnel is worth the wait. Because nothing beats that feeling of finishing your last exam and collapsing into bed for an hour before settling into a dingy booth at the Regal.