Maddy

Freshers’ Fair: one of the remaining events in the Cambridge Freshers’ (half) Week that doesn’t require black tie (yet). As an incoming third year, this would be my third and final Freshers’ Fair, if I hadn’t got Covid at the very start of last year. I was sad to miss the hustle and bustle of the big tents on Parker’s Piece. It forms a welcome reminder that this ancient institution is also a 21st century university, and we are allowed to have fun.

The possibilities – and the free food – are endless. Every year, the fair represents the faint hope that this might finally be the year that I actually try pole dancing, or ultimate frisbee, or Doctor Who society. This is before I inevitably take myself off the mailing list after a respectable period of time somewhere in between giving up too soon and soul-crushing guilt that I haven’t managed to have it all.

“It forms a welcome reminder that this ancient institution is also a 21st-century university, and we are allowed to have fun”

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, the fair now becomes a chance to relive my silly fresher days when I felt I could try anything. I grab freebies at every opportunity and feign enthusiasm with future investment bankers for a free packet of Haribo. Admittedly, I will probably never join the trampolining team. The point is that, at Freshers’ Fair, I could if I wanted to (and if I had any athletic ability whatsoever). It still needs a quiet hour, and often at times feels too commercialised, but the fair at its core represents all of the opportunities open to us during this infamous “uni experience”, and all the people we could still be. At least, that is what I am telling myself before the third year panic sets in.

If anything, it’s a nice reminder that the Cambridge SU does have a purpose: getting us free Domino’s.

Hugh

Freshers’ Week, alcohol-induced amnesia notwithstanding, is a time one tends to remember. I have warm memories of mine, way back in October 2021. I remember seeing my room for the first time, I recall clearly the chaos of my first bop, and I definitely remember the kindness of the third years who stopped to chat with me when I arrived alone at the buttery after all the other freshers had been and gone.

What I do not remember is going to the Freshers’ Fair. My recollections of plastic tables and handwritten posters are so vague that I cannot be sure that I am not hallucinating a false memory, cobbled together from other people’s Instagram stories and episodes of Fresh Meat.

“I don’t think the fair is ever really memorable”

This is not to blame the enthusiastic students and beleaguered SU sabbatical officers who put the fair together that year. I don’t think the fair is ever really memorable. In fact, I don’t think the fair is ever really worth going to.

That is because it takes place in Freshers’ Week. Needless to say, it can’t be at any other time. Societies have to grab new members before they get distracted by this strange and terrible thing called ‘tripos’. But when I think back to my first fortnight at Cambridge, I can hardly believe that I spent hours of it traipsing around one of the least interesting fields in Cambridge, signing up to ignore some mildly-amusing emails.

If I did, it was a mistake. Somewhere in Cambridge there was something more interesting to do – something which I would remember now as a wizened fourth year. Freshers, your first week at Cambridge is a wonderful, precious time; you can find something better to do with it than be hassled by Union hacks on Parker’s Piece. Or, if you can’t, maybe that means the dreaded hour has finally come, and it is time to put away childish things and start writing that first essay.