The Cambridge drinking scene may be as vigorous, intellectually orientated and diverse as the admissions process itself. Unlike American frat parties, we have ‘swaps’; instead of mere soirées we get sloshed on candlelit three-course dinners and pub trips become pub crawls.

This is without even mentioning May Week: the notoriously newspaper-slammed days of champagne spilling and raucous behaviour. To some, getting into Cambridge is not enough to satisfy their sense of ‘privilege’ and another kind of initiation is needed to admit them further into the depths of the ‘depravity’ the papers drink up.

Whether it’s pennying at formal or fines at society swaps, we drink in the same manner that, as bright-eyed freshers, we viewed this institution: a challenge. But first you have to understand the rules of the game. It’s in our DNA.
Family formal breaks the seal. Parents are proud of their children’s abilities, especially if that includes good conversation and the ability to down enough wine and stay upright. Our parents have taught us well and when subject dinners roll around (Classics’ ones are as riotous as they come) we have learnt the art of using alcohol as an instrument of learning. Wine in supervisions, formals with academics: by graduation, the art of drunken conversation has become our forte and we can small talk even when downing vodka with our professors.

This thirst-fuelled intellect is not only limited to occasion, but has affected the methods we use to make our alcoholic experiments. The Cambridge gallon challenge stands as the epitome of Cambridge drinking etiquette. One gallon i.e. eight pints, is consumed inside the vicinity of eight specified pubs in Cambridge. It becomes a kind of maths question: “If Harry must drink 8 drinks at 8 different pubs all at 10 minutes distance apart from each other, how much time will it take him and how many units of alcohol will he have consumed by pub 8?”

Fines on swaps resemble a game of bingo; highest ‘lad’ points for the person who has not only had a threesome in the law library but got into the pants of a Blues rower. Pennying, originating amongst students and dons at Oxford in the 13th-14th century, has been adapted and revised: not only do we have engineers’ pennies, but we have our stealthy alternatives with the ‘spoon of doom’, ‘the knife of strife’. Creativity is not limited to the way we structure our essays and pose our arguments, but an inherent part of all aspects of the Cambridge lifestyle.

Wine is the blood of Cambridge, integral to the functioning of departments and colleges, the secret solace of the academics and for some, the essay-escape or the conclusion-congratulator. Yet like all aspects of the Cambridge lifestyle, drinking is not restricted to normal limitations. When we drink, we will drink for that First. One may think this is extreme, but extremism is embedded in the culture of Cambridge itself. After all, no one told off Watson and Crick for ‘experimenting’ in the Eagle.