“For crying out loud! Can I just sit my exam already?”, is a phrase that was repeated countless times in the latter half of my Easter term as I awaited my one (ONE!), singular (SINGLE!) exam paper for Part IA of my English degree that was tauntingly placed on the 13th of June 2024. A day after the 7 weeks of term had officially ended. With second year English students suffering from Inspera malfunctioning, losing important pieces of work and expressing their anger towards the Faculty, I’d like to take some time to remind them of what they had to deal with in Part IA, maybe rekindle some rage, and voice the plight of the English first year.

“Cambridge faculties are shooting themselves in the foot”

To those who finished their exams in May or early June, allow me to paint you a picture. The sun’s shining, your friends are out, laughing, throwing a frisbee to one another before laying on a picnic blanket. They bathe in the sunlight for a moment, munching on sandwiches before planning the next move. “What’s next?”, one of them asks, “well, I suppose it is a Wednesday” someone replies. They all look at each other, a beat passes, “Revs!” they say in unison. Of course this situation I’m describing is completely hypothetical. I don’t know if my friends were having a picnic, it might have even been a Monday. I simply did not know, for I was being an absolute academic weapon (read: victim) in the library.

As each day of exam season passed, and more of my friends found themselves able to join these hypothetical picnics, I felt more and more ready to take my exam. Not because of a greater sense of confidence after learning my rhetorical terms, no, but from the undying desire to get it over with. I was eager to bite the bullet. To rip off the Band-Aid.

Those of you with earlier exams may be thinking that having a later exam would mean more time to revise. Indeed, this could potentially be beneficial for some, especially those studying subjects that have a hefty amount of content to memorise. Yet, this argument falls flat on its face when you realise that the Practical Criticism paper, the one paper every English first year must sit, is an exam that cannot be revised for. Sure you can revise the rhetorical terms, sure you can sit some past papers, but the exam itself is undoubtedly skill-based.

“The time which students finish their year can have an important effect on their wellbeing”

However, despite my incessant moaning, I know that I was not the only one to have finished studying a day after term had officially ended. I would often find myself flicking through flashcards with the NatScis, who I did not envy for one second. They had an arguably worse fate than I, weighted down by the pressure to learn all their content as well as completing a flood of exams. My friend explained to me: “Some of the Natural Sciences timetable is laid out so that you can have five or six exams in the space of four days, with around half of the NatSci cohort having two exams in one day.” Which can mean six hours of exams in a day. Not only is this method of examination incredibly stressful, but also unlikely to garner the best results that Cambridge has to offer. It almost feels like Cambridge faculties are shooting themselves in the foot.

With some students finishing weeks in advance, such as those taking Part I of the Education Tripos and Part IA of the Geography Tripos, it baffles me how Cambridge could not devise a system that would allow students to finish their year at similar times. It is difficult to understand how such great discrepancies across subjects, and sometimes within subjects, can have any sort of positive effect on students. Students who finish too early may feel as if they had less time to prepare for their exams, as I have heard from first year Historians who had to frantically revise during their Lent holidays for exams at the start of Easter. And students who finish late may feel burnt out after their first seven weeks of term, with the sudden transition from working hard to partying hard in May Week offering no chance for respite.

The time which students finish their year can have an important effect on their wellbeing, their end of term experience and perhaps even their final exam results. The obvious solution is for different faculties to come together and to discuss ways in which exam timetables can be laid out so that students are able to finish more or less at the same time. Furthermore, having similar finish times could take away that gut-wrenching FOMO - whether it’s the fear of missing out on adventures with friends, or the fear of not having done enough to prepare for your exam because you simply didn’t have the time. It would be a fairer system, right? Given that we start our academic years together, it only makes sense to finish them that way too.