I am in my house, but I’m not home. I sit in my bedroom where I’ve been rotting for the past two months, watching BBC Merlin and maintaining my Dutch Duolingo streak. Though I can tell you how to say “I am not an apple” in Dutch, I cannot tell you how I truly feel about being home and away simultaneously. For me, Cambridge is truly where I feel at home, it’s where I feel safest. There are places I can walk alone, favourite outfits I can wear there but not here, space to say my true thoughts on Oliver Cromwell in a cosy supervision room.

For many, the eight-week terms are, as Goldilocks would say, ‘just right’. The repetitive cycle of read, write essay, supervision (repeat) creates a monotonous pattern that a lot of people need a three-month summer to escape from. I understand, I think. But I disagree.

“I sit in my bedroom where I’ve been rotting for the past two months, watching BBC Merlin and maintaining my Dutch Duolingo streak”

There’s something special about Cambridge. Yes, some of this comes from its intimidating list of achievements and accolades, reinforced even by walking among the turrets of Trinity or Johns. To me, the really special thing about Cambridge is the people. During term time, my college transforms into Barbieland. I miss how friendly people are, engaging in conversation about the club night you dragged yourself to, the kindness of the librarians, and the political crises of the JCR. I miss walking into town, down the hill (which is actually more of a slightly inclined bank), and bumping into every single person you met in Freshers’ Week all those years ago. I think I just miss people.

For all my complaints about needing peace in the middle of term, and how packed the central streets are on a weekend, I take it back. Everybody else loves the place, whether they want to admit it or not. As an extrovert whose only friend from home has decided to go away until the middle of August (rude), it’s fairly obvious why I’d miss the social side of Cambridge.

I even miss learning. While this is not the sentiment I cling to as soon as exams are done, I miss discovering new arguments and discourse on obscure events of the seventeenth century. Going through the archives and seeing how looming historical characters were humans once, too. I know this is something I can easily do in summer, with mountains of free time and the world at my feet, but nothing quite matches the energy of sitting on a leather sofa, engaging with a supervisor on why your argument, based on a week of reading on the topic, trumps their arguments, developed through careful exploration of sources in their years of research and experience. I long for winding bookcases, broken plug sockets, and coffee stations, all in the comfort of my own college.

“I dealt with guilt for not longing for the River Tyne as much as I longed for the River Cam”

The joy of returning to Cambridge first hit me in the early weeks of January 2023; sheer relief to get away from a toxic cesspit that was being back up north. I dealt with guilt for not longing for the River Tyne as much as I longed for the River Cam. The bitter feeling of being told “you don’t sound that northern” only exacerbated that guilt and shame for loving the South. Does this change the fact I always miss Cambridge when I’m not there? Not at all. However, I’m not averse to the idea of a few more Greggs in central.

I categorise each month of the vacation like a countdown: June is a write-off; after leaving on the 20-somethingth, these last few days of the month are the resetting back to northern mode after three months in Cambridge. July is ‘the visiting month’, the time of going back to college for open days and summer schools. It’s like the weird stage after the end of a relationship when you’re trying and failing to go no-contact after developing a strange Stockholm syndrome of dependency on the other person.

August is my birthday month, when I will finally reach the age of twenty like the rest of my cohort, which reminds me that soon I will return to my comrades in class ranks. The month when we all tell our friends, ‘let’s meet up’, before seeing a number so large on Trainline it must’ve been conjured by a random generator, then saying ‘we can wait a month or so’. That ‘so’ feels like a century.

September is ‘the nearly-there month’, when I will make my final lists, buy the extra sets of cutlery that will inevitably go missing two weeks into Michaelmas and that I won’t realise are gone until I’ve just finished cooking, and when I start the reading I told myself I’d finish by the end of July.

Though the summer vacation is long and seemingly never-ending, it does end. Green leaves will turn amber. Ivy will start growing on towers of stone. Hot summer nights will begin to cool. I shall return in October.