Watching the confetti fall on my UCAS dashboard, lit green with my confirmed Cambridge offer, I found that all the hours I’d spent revising for my final International Baccalaureate exams were suddenly worth it. After months of toiling for an offer that once seemed out of reach – met only with ominous “good luck” messages from friends and disbelieving grimaces – I’d made it. I was coming to Cambridge.

But… Now what? As the adrenaline of acceptance slowly dissipated, I realised there were huge aspects of Cambridge life I’d failed to consider, blinded by the tunnel vision I’d assumed to focus on my exams. Meeting my offer was only the first of many steps towards setting up for university; coming from a very American-leaning school, with our last Cambridge undergraduate matriculant having graduated back in 2016, I knew nobody in Cambridge who could prepare me for the next three years of school.

As I anxiously prepared for my move to university, I received an email from my college’s welfare representatives, inviting me to sign up for a College Family. I quickly typed about my ideal night out (a mix of clubbing and staying in; no board games, please!), distilled my personality to three words (loves to chill), and, of course, my name and subject.

“Since arriving in Cambridge, what started with a ‘Hey guys, welcome to Cambridge! ’ text has blossomed into a tight-knit, four-way friendship”

I sent off the form, not knowing what to expect, and continued to pack my entire life into a few suitcases that would send me off to adulthood.

Since arriving in Cambridge, what started with a “Hey guys, welcome to Cambridge!” text has blossomed into a tight-knit, four-way friendship. Over our first meal in hall, my college parents talked to me and my sister about the tips and tricks essential to university life – the best time to show up to Revs before it gets too sweaty, that sometimes supervision essays simply cannot be of the greatest quality, which rogue societies to sign up for according to our interests, and whether it was worth it to sign up for the Varsity ski trip at the end of Michaelmas. Over elderflower cocktails, we marvelled at my college sister’s (who has now become one of my best friends!) hidden talent for nail art, learned from our Geographer mum that it, in fact, rains less in Cambridge due to weather patterns in East Anglia, debriefed about the overstimulation and nerves of Freshers week, with our cumulative flus taking us all up to our college mum’s room, who had graciously offered us her everlasting stash of cough medicines.

Suffice it to say, having two present and doting college parents gave me and my sister the comfort, guidance, and security to navigate around Cambridge life. Because of our college mum’s suggestion, my friends and I have booked tickets to Tignes this December, and my college sister has taken up life drawing, a hobby that she has passed on to my other friends in college; college parents’ wisdom can even extend beyond a singular family unit!

Yet other freshers aren’t as lucky. One fresher, James W, reports that they’ve only seen their college parents once in term before they were not-so-graciously aired for the rest of term, and another has never yet seen their elusive college mum! With college families such an integral part of the daunting transition into Cambridge life, I wanted to get to the root of separated families to help future parents and current families take steps to reconnect with one another and rediscover the joy in this strange, genealogical Cambridge tradition.

“They don’t suppose themselves to be ‘remotely qualified to be giving advice half the time’”

Another parent, Emilia, tells me that their role is “making sure that my children have a place to turn to if they ever need specific resources or help regarding academics or life more broadly”. Nevertheless, they also cite that they don’t suppose themselves to be “remotely qualified to be giving advice half the time”. This sentiment surrounding qualification is shared by another parent who studies a humanities subject but has exclusively STEM-leaning children. She shares that there is “only so much advice I can give” to children who do not have remotely similar timetables or assessment styles.

This feeling of disconnect can also be expressed by college children – my very own college mum, Abby Liew, tells me that she “didn’t have much in common with my family since we all came from different backgrounds and were studying different subjects” which made “adjusting to college a little tricky […] since there wasn’t much guidance”. Her solution to this detachment was to make her own friends in her course and college, who could share the advice they’d gained from their college parents to compensate for the lack of balanced academic and social guidance typically gained from college family conversations.

As a counterargument to this possible reason for neglect, however – neither of my college parents took HSPS courses in their first year and still managed to get their HSPS friends to send me voice memos and long, written messages regarding my questions on specific papers. Offsetting their experience of parental disconnect in their first years, they made the additional effort to connect us to their friends whenever they couldn’t fully answer our questions; one component of having present college parents, as I’ve come to learn, is the opportunity to make friends in the year above, something us Freshers  have limited opportunity to do outside of societies.

“Seeing everyone around me with a supportive college family when mine was dysfunctional and negligent”

Another fresher, Jeremy, tells me the irrepressible envy he experienced “seeing everyone around me with a supportive college family when mine was dysfunctional and negligent”. Despite studying the same subject as their college dad, he still missed out on the guidance on “how to navigate my first year both in terms of social life and academics” that my college sister and I were so lucky to have received from our parents. He was left with little knowledge of how many hours of independent study were necessary for their degree and how many societies to join outside of classes.

This negligence may be explained by another parent, Isabelle, “not really see[ing] families as a necessarily binding commitment”, especially when the “chemistry just ain’t there”. To this parent, college families were “at best, an optional friend group”. With parents being second and third-year students, where examination grades begin to count towards their degrees, it can be harder to commit time to maintaining college family dynamics and catering to the many, and sometimes naive, Fresher demands. While the intense Cambridge workload is familiar to us all, first-week Freshers included (especially those with Week 0 essays due), it is crucial for college parents to return to their own first few anxiety-laden days stepping into the mysterious, insular world that is Cambridge. Oftentimes, us Freshers do worry about asking silly questions and overburdening our parents—as long as parents make their boundaries clear, we will, more likely than not, do our best to respect them.

Being adopted into a happy and present college family was one of the best things of my time in Cambridge so far, my sister and parents attest. Contributing to a supportive family, which can eventually turn into a friend group, can be extremely fulfilling for all parties involved—to all first-time parents and first-year students (soon-to-be-parents!), keep grounded by remembering your first days in Cambridge, and the guidance you would’ve loved to receive as you navigated campus. And to Freshers: take the initiative to reach out to your parents and siblings and communicate openly with them about your expectations, important questions, and what you want out of your time together in college. Who knows—it might be up to you to end the cycle of generational family trauma and start building honest, clear, and nurturing relationships with the people who might turn out to be some of your closest friends in Cambridge and beyond!

*Some names have been changed