Picture this: you’re in the takeaway queue for Aromi pasta. As you go to Apple Pay your way to £8 pasta absolution, you see the dreaded Outlook notification, subject line “Application for Admission – Decision”. You turn to Nick who, however much he might not want to be written as such, is your friend and fellow Aromi frequenter. You mention the email, pay for your pasta, and wait beside the to-go wall of shame.
“Oh, thank fuck, you’d have been miserable”
“Are you going to open it?” For some inexplicable reason, my response was a resounding “no”. In my heart, I already knew and had resigned myself to the reality of the situation. I told Nick how there was not only a fear of what it would mean to not receive an offer, but a murkier, more intrusive one: what would it mean if I did? I didn’t want to stay here for another year – that it was prolonging the inevitable, and seeking validation that would come with the adage of something more destructive in the long-term. Nick, rightfully so, asked why I had bothered going through the fuss of applying in the first place.
The truth is that the University of Cambridge has been a foundational part of my identity since 17. So much of my self-perception was rooted in the idea of being an Oxbridge candidate, and before that, of being someone who excelled enough for that to be something worth fussing over. And as much as I would love to say that, a foray into adulthood and plenty of disillusionment with the institutions that run this place later, I no longer associate myself so deeply with being here, that being a Cambridge student is not something that underpins a lot of my academic self-esteem as well as my LinkedIn posts, I can’t. I feel it walking down King’s Parade, past my college, down through the City Centre, up Regent’s Street, over the bridge to Sidge. These movements have become a daily meditation to my academic worthiness. There are tangible symbols in Medieval architecture; symbols that, no matter how much I am given reason to complain about my college or the University, I am at Cambridge. Now, this email was about to test that; about to be the thing that imploded the present and nudged forward the urgence of answering the future. “I don’t think I can open it.”
Nick and I had a lovely conversation as we walked back, ending with the words, “and besides, there’s always tutoring!” Not wanting to be entirely alone, I knocked sheepishly on my darling wife Erika’s door down the hall, and asked her to sit with me. “Thank you for sending your application for admission. The University has given it careful consideration and, [sic] I am sorry to tell you that they have decided that they are not able to offer you a place.” Immediately, I was irritated by the rogue comma after “and”; this feeling was soon eclipsed by the words “Well thank fuck for that,” tumbling out of my mouth. Erika looked at me for a moment before and echoed the sentiment: “Oh, thank fuck, you’d have been miserable.” I waited for the existential dread to sink in, for my bones to be pumped full of something cold and leaden and unemployable, for the tears to arrive, but they never came.
Suddenly, I was walking down the same streets as before, squinting with scepticism at everyone I passed donning a college puffer with san-serif initials. There were MPhil offer-holders beneath some of those shells, and so I decided to start treating everyone as if they were members of the Cantab Illuminati. I started walking around this city, with its irritating familiarity, turning my eyes upward trying to cram how many floors every building had into my long-term memory. It’s morphed, like most things, into something to mentally scrapbook: keepsakes of a city that, for the first time, is temporal.
There is, no matter how much I would love to pledge otherwise, an embarrassment that comes with writing this article. A small voice in my head wonders if I really want my name attached to this, cast into the public domain with my shortcomings visible to future employers (assuming they exist at this point). But then I remind myself: I have spent the last three years earning a Cambridge degree. One less year, one less hoop jumped, doesn’t diminish that. I can grieve what this place has been for me, I can push the rose-tinted glasses of romanticisation as far up my nose as I can and sigh heavily in Caius lib at how few midnight study sessions we have left together. I can see with a newfound clarity, that the aspects I will miss are the sum of things worked for rather than the things themselves. I will carry the growth that Cambridge has bludgeoned out of me beyond it, appreciating how no longer suffering for success does not mean no longer being successful.
“It’s been comforting to know that the people I love and revere were also not quite the right fit”
There is an odd relief in having the decision made for me. And now, here I am, grappling with the unexpected lightness of reopened possibilities. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t panic-googled “Consulting graduate placement intern early careers vac scheme.” So what else, a law conversion when the market is more saturated than ever? Cutting my losses and committing to a master’s elsewhere?
So, for the time being, I don’t know. I have no clue what could provide the justification and purpose that I’m itching for. I’d also, Scrooge McDuck as it sounds, rather start making my own money than be reaching my hand back into the punitive piggy bank of Student Finance England. What I do know is that I will enjoy these last few months of my studies without the pressure of getting a solid first, and finally feeling the fulfilment of settling into academic progress and lasting friendships. I am going to stop acting like I am owed something. Speaking of friends, I’m grateful to have people who care about my academic fate, and I am grateful for the people who don’t care even a little bit. Just because I am unable to detach myself from being a student of this place first, pretentious arsehole second, doesn’t mean that others are. More people in my life than I suspected crept out of the woodwork to share similar feelings, and this miserable solidarity – a short parade of mutually pitying hugs – has been nice. It’s been comforting to know that the people I love and revere were also not quite the right fit. It makes the prospect of confronting it in myself a lot less intimidating.
“You’re allowed to be upset and you’re allowed to move on for all the right and wrong reasonsYou’re allowed to be upset and you’re allowed to move on for all the right and wrong reasons”
I write all this mostly to hold myself accountable to it. But I have this small hope that someone else might find some comfort in it. You’re allowed to be upset and you’re allowed to move on for all the right and wrong reasons. At the end of the day, courses like this, in Universities like this, are competitive: you’re more likely to be rejected than not, no matter how capable you are. It’s okay to take time not knowing. You don’t have to keep punishing yourself academically.
But, even as the prospect of casting one’s soul out as bait for the Canary Wharf sharks looks less absurd, you don’t have to be in work for things to work out. The weather always gets better, and spring always arrives. There is comfort in this, as there is comfort in the assuredness of the seasons. In this same breath, this city will always be part of me; the tulips that I see budding as I embark on my last dozen walks through King’s are temporary, but will return to me annually.
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