So here it all was, the new beginning. I was about to become an adult, the best years of my life. Standing in the sunshine and grandeur of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, were about 100 other first-years, animated, laughing, abnormally at ease and well-adjusted. While I, three days into Freshers’, was hunched over the flat toilet, throwing up Sainsbury’s Basics trifle like my life depended on it. 

This is not a story of how perfectionism and pressure in Cambridge sent me into a downward spiral. This isn’t about an upper-working-/lower-middle-class girl from a county most people I spoke to hadn’t heard of (“Lincolnshire... Next to Yorkshire...? The North.”) couldn’t cope in an environment that has become synonymous, rightly or wrongly, with unchecked privilege. This is about how I, as an individual, had a breakdown – and was supported by the institution that has been so often criticised for leaving students like me to drown.

The stock explanation heard time and time again for mental health problems in Cambridge is perfectionism. Spoiler alert: I never wanted to be at the top. Of course I was, and am, happy to be at Cambridge, of course it’s a leading light – but it could be bottom of the league tables and I would still love the place.

The reason why I so desperately wanted to go there in sixth form, the reason why I still want to come back, despite my problems, is because it felt like somewhere I could feel comfortable. Somewhere where I wasn’t simply a clever nerd, like in my comprehensive; where I wasn’t that girl who was nice but, you know, with a few problems, like at my sixth form. I actively wanted to be comfortably in the middle. 

“This is about how I, as an individual, had a breakdown – and was supported by the institution that has been so often criticised for leaving students like me to drown”

And yet for all my wanting to fit in, I didn’t. Cambridge was a whole new world for me, one that I had for so long wanted, but also one that scared me witless. The collision of some very different social circles probably wasn’t very helpful (there had been plenty of Shannons and Chantelles at my old school, but I’d never met a Reuben or – seriously – an Octavia); neither did the fact these kids generally were a hell of a lot smarter and cooler than me (I seemed to be the only one who hadn’t got the memo about basic Latin and Grade 8 piano being compulsory requirements for prospective students).

But I don’t think they did any real damage either. There was no snobbishness, no sneering at my accent, or my quirkiness (for want of a better word), or my blatant lack of anything approaching street cred – but, God, these people were so bloody capable. They breezed through living alone, through making themselves study hard, through meeting hordes of new people and adapting to an entirely new way of life. It was as if they had all lived it before and knew all the motions. I had two left feet, and no good moves. And not even any good metaphors to express how shittily I was handling this.

To say I just about trod water during my first year would be an understatement. I missed a lot of lectures, preferring instead to lie comatose in my bed, staggering around every couple of hours or so to make myself a cup of tea. I ran out in the middle of supervisions to have full-on panic attacks in the toilets and pass out. I blasted out crappy emo rock in the middle of the night. I cried so loudly at two in the morning that it kept my flatmates up. I was basically hell to be around.

"The pastoral support team were, in short, brilliant"

So what kept me from simply leaving – from taking the time out to sort out my life? The thought that this is where I had always wanted to be, and the weight of a hallowed Cambridge degree stopped me from quitting entirely, but the main reason why I rode the year out was that I had a hell of a lot of support. The pastoral support team were, in short, brilliant. They arranged counselling, notified my DoS and my supervisors, made me get GP appointments – even just giving me somewhere to talk about it all with a cup of tea. I had catch-up sessions with supervisors, had notes emailed to me, got some pretty hefty leeway and deadline extensions with my essays.

All too often, we assume that the independently sentient superstructure labelled as Cambridge University acts in a certain rigid way in accordance with a set of obscenely arcane rules, often to the detriment of its students’ wellbeing – as if the University wanted to sabotage its own, and as if it weren’t largely the sum of those students themselves.

The huge pressure I saw in the lead-up to exams, which turned half the people I knew into zombies, did not come from anyone’s supervisors. Nobody was told they had to get a First. But they were made to feel, by other students and by themselves, that they weren’t working enough, that they weren’t achieving enough. A friend of mine felt bad, she said, because “I try to work 10 hours a day, but I’m only doing eight.” The day before I heard this, I had had a ‘good day’ – I had managed to do three and a half hours of revision. Minus only one half-hour break to stress-eat three muffins. Win.

At the end of the year, things were going very rapidly south. I was self-harming again. I spent, on bad weeks, approximately £100 on gross amounts of dirt-cheap food, most of which I threw up. There was a spot at the back of my throat which burned when I drank orange juice. I had eyes which looked like what my mother referred to as “P-holes in the snow”, spot breakouts all over my face, and puffy swollen ankles. I was a mess, and not a hot one.

I had, indeed, been relocated to an isolated room as a result of picking fights with my flatmates over anything and everything, and giving up any attempts at giving the impression of being vaguely fine any more. But even in the midst of my self-sabotage, there were figures who made it seem like, just for two seconds or so, I could maybe actually function normally.

‘At no point did anyone treat me as an actual human’: students on intermission

Now this year, things are a fair bit better, better-than-last-year better, if not better-from-all-psychological-problems better. I have friends. I might need to knock on their doors at two o’clock in the morning, but I like to think we have generally normal relationships. I’m having counselling, generously part-funded by my college. I’m on medication which has drastically reduced the frequency and volume of my panic attacks. I’ve started socialising occasionally, and trying to do a little bit of something extracurricular. Of course, it’s still not great. I might falter for a second, have bleaker moments, or slip into a phase which leaves me needing to intermit.

But I’m OK with that. Whatever happens this year, I know I’ll receive support from all the University staff I’ve encountered. There are of course problems with the ways Cambridge addresses students’ problems, especially mental health problems. There needs to be greater consistency as to how problems are addressed, more transparency for students who are seeking help, and a wider dialogue, involving as many students and staff members as possible, about how to improve the state of pastoral care in Cambridge.

"Cambridge might be one of the most demanding universities in the country, but it also as one of the biggest safety nets"

But it could be a lot worse – I have friends at other universities who have waited four weeks to see a member of the pastoral care team to arrange counselling, or who have disappeared in their rooms, hiding from the world, only for this to be noted by anyone a fortnight later.

Cambridge might be one of the most demanding universities in the country, but it also as one of the biggest safety nets. Maybe we need to stop writing articles about how ‘Cambridge University almost killed me’ and start talking about where the system is going right, and point out how to fix the points that don’t work. Because Cambridge can be, and in my case was, a place that doesn’t kill you, but a place that makes you grow stronger