As Freshers’ Week draws to an end and Cambridge students new and old settle in for eight weeks on the Cantab circuit, the mood is perhaps tinged with apprehension.

We start the year a disheartening five places behind you high-achievers at the Other Place (maybe we really would rather go to Oxford than St John’s), and coupled with the news that a local village hall has been banned from holding a BDSM workshop – some of us are wondering, why are we even here at all?

Some facts we learnt about Cambridge over the summer:

We can’t row

We CAN debate (we won the European debating championship! Who knew? Not you.)

But we still can’t row

But nevertheless it’s not all bad news. This week, Trinity College Cambridge beat Pembroke College Oxford 46-6 in the first Netball match of the season and this was in the SAME WEEK that we did lots of other Good Stuff. I promise. You may own the river, but we own the somewhat hazardous and rubble-ridden courts/pitches/arena for any fast-moving activity that sit behind the ever looming spires of Trinity. Who are the real winners here?

Perhaps our forte is not in sport, some might foolishly argue. In drama, however, we remain indomitable. The start of term sees productions of History Boys (Alan Bennett, Oxon. You may write the plays but they live on in Cambridge), Jerusalem and the somewhat surrealist Six Characters in Search of an Author (and who may also be in search of an audience). Auditoriums are packed with spectators desperately longing to see the Next Big Thing on stage and for a fiver. Then in the future they can say, “I basically knew that guy when he was at Cambridge”, and people can say, “Oh, cool”.

Some other news from The Place you applied to first time round:

There was a big skeleton of a whale outside a museum but then it got taken down.

They opened a new sports centre (a lost cause, some might say. But they would totally wrong, of course)

They changed PPS (nee SPS) into HSPS and PBS, but HPS remains unchanged. A few have wondered if certain Cambridge dons are just working through some dyslexia issues. Let’s give them time, guys.

I met a guy recently who told me that going to Oxford after being rejected from Cambridge had been “a blessing in disguise” and that he had “dodged a bullet”. He was really fun and you should all meet him. If he’s reading this, I bet he’s not feeling so blessed anymore! He’s also probably feeling a bit sad that he graduated this year but is still reading The Oxford Student.

A final note: two Cambridge guys have just rowed THE AMAZON. See you in Brazil, suckers.

Amy Hawkins is Varsity News Editor and was responding to The Oxford Student's Richard Foord's column, which you can read here.