There’s a double meaning to perfectionism in Cambridge. The first is what we often hear about: incessant academic perfectionism. We rarely hear about the second.

It isn’t difficult to notice a homogeneity in some aspects of Cambridge student culture. A lot of us talk, dress, text and take pictures in the same way, feeding into a pervasive aestheticism.

Part of the aestheticism stems from trying to rid ourselves of the parts of Cambridge culture we may feel embarrassed about. In trying to reject the academic perfectionism that many of us come here with, for example, we may reach for images of nonchalance, and curated weariness.

I often get a nagging sense that my time here has got to be better or more beautiful than how I’m experiencing it

It’s also shaped in part by a subtler form of imposter syndrome. Coming to Cambridge feels slightly unreal, like it’s a dream that we’re continually trying to process. Because of that, there’s a compulsion to try to live a grander life. I don’t know what being a student in Cambridge should be like. It doesn’t feel at all like I’ve been told or imagined it would. Even after two years of living a starkly different reality, I often get a nagging sense that my time here has got to be better or more beautiful than how I’m experiencing it.

During my two years here I’ve discovered worlds of similarity with the people I’m closest to, who have sensed too that we subconsciously partake in a Cambridge culture uniform in several ways, because we feel a pressure to feel accepted from the get-go, as if our identities are fixed. As if we aren’t 19, or 20.

In ten, fifteen years from now I know I’ll remember the warm light in a best friend’s room; people, gorgeous and vivid; and Cambridge in the summer. I hope I remember too that for most of my time here I haven’t been at ease with the person I am, and that I’m still confused, but I was growing. I hope I remember to celebrate that.

There’s a pressure here to fit ourselves into the existing culture, to live a life that feels perfect, instead of carving out spaces for ourselves

We’re still trying to be perfect on our own terms. There’s a pressure here to fit ourselves into the existing culture, to live a life that feels perfect, instead of carving out spaces for ourselves.

When I stepped into Cambridge I found a culture deeply at odds with places I’d lived in before, and a compulsion to shape myself to fit it. I was uncertain and afraid of not having a rightful space, of being odd and out of place when home in Singapore was an ocean away.

Sometimes I still lapse into doubt about which parts of me people will accept, and my instinct is often to grow quiet for stretches of time. I’ve found I often feel like I can’t be fully present in the spaces around me, like I’d rather just observe, because I feel out of place, a little like a glitch. In Cambridge I’ve been confronted more than ever before with pressures yanking me in different, sometimes contradictory, directions. I often feel I have to overcompensate, and live more like the person I wish I was.

The past two years have also been a gradual process of navigating my insecurities, feeling things click into place. There’s another, louder part of me now that has a better grasp of what feels real to me and what clearly doesn’t, and believes that takes priority.

The pressures for perfection in this sense are less visible but equally, if not more, unrelenting. They’re subtler too, seeping into how we live our lives and responding to our insecurities in ways we haven’t fully confronted.

How many people have come before us; how many have walked these streets and felt out of place?

How many people have come before us; how many have walked these streets and felt out of place?

As I start my last year here this week, I’m feeling, more than ever before, the tide of time. I’m thinking more about the place I’m going to leave behind and how I hope it evolves. A big part of that is hoping we collectively become a little less relentless in scrubbing, and scrubbing, at ourselves in the hopes of reaching a self we like, and demanding that we make perfect sense, always.

This week a group of freshers will arrive to discover Cambridge for themselves. Freshers, reach for what feels real. Be wary of the network of pressures we create from our insecurity. Imagine what Cambridge could be if we stopped demanding that we make ourselves relentlessly better. Finally, liberated.