09.51: I wake with a start: my supo is in exactly nine minutes.

09.56: For how long is it physically possible to lie here and still arrive on time? I pause over my complexion in the mirror. There’s still glitter on my face (spot the legend) and so I remember the fun had at my first ARCSOC function yesterday evening.  To those faithful few who have been regularly tuning in, I hope you appreciate that the ARCSOC box from column one has well and truly been ticked.

10.01: I scurry along the corridors. Characteristic of Girton, even within college, everywhere takes fucking ages to get to.

10.03: I compose myself before turning the corner to my supervisor’s study. Thankfully, Mr. Supervisor is late. My supo partner waits outside, looking chirpy, well-rested, and alarmingly, carries a couple of leather-bound books in hand. I, with nothing but a biro and a sorry trail of glitter left behind me, am the obvious mess.

My weak smile to him says ‘hello and good morning’. It essentially means: ‘Have fun taking the load of all the factual recall questions today, Christopher*.’

(*His name isn’t Christopher.)

10.04: "God, this week’s essay was especially bad!" I blurt, hoping for a similar defence mechanism from my peer. One can understand my horror, therefore, when he smiles gingerly, before muttering, "Haha, yeah".

I’m instantly suspicious by this noncommittal response. Snake.

With that, I make a mental note to direct a few ‘What do you think?’s his way as the supervision progresses.

"My essay from last week is just as lacklustre as before, and I am greeted by a shiny new essay deadline with a side-serving of disappointed grimaces from both supervisor and supervision partner"

10.06: Supervisor arrives. We all sit. I consider which seat would make me least visible. There’s a prematurely awkward silence, and so I pretend to be engrossed by the blank piece of lined paper in front of me.

I scrawl ‘Pls don’t hate me’ in increasingly flamboyant fonts.

It gets so bad, that I have to start wheeling out the avoidance tactics early.

‘How are the children?’; ‘Gosh, the aisles in the Girton village Co-op don’t get any wider and conducive to mobility, do they?’; ‘The cycle into town is… far’; ‘Why was the sky so yellow earlier?’

All these are met with monosyllabic replies. And just as I’m asking for details of the internal dynamics of his childhood relationship with his father, Mr Supervisor decides enough is enough, and clears his throat.

What follows can be summed up as a selection box of: equivocation; my biro running out and yet still pretending to write; piggy-backing onto my partner’s answers with occasional ‘mm’s and ‘I agree’s of support. I even contemplate an attempt at flirting with Mr. Supervisor, but then I check myself. It’s only week 2, and am I really prepared to stoop so low this early on?

10.12: Mr. Supervisor asks me to chart a brief history of the European Enlightenment, for which he gives me an allotted 5 minutes. I smile, and say ‘Of course’.

After I’ve cleared my throat three times and dropped in some inventive buzzwords, he stops me after exactly 27 seconds.

10.35: Finally, I manage to shoehorn gender in there somewhere. Here we go: I’m getting more animated, words tumble thick and fast, I’m drawing upon actual relevant literature, and I even introduce a joke every so often. All the while, my supervisor’s nodding along to everything I say.

A pause. He then sips his tea and proceeds with something completely separate from anything I’ve just said. Life is sweet?

c.10.40: With my academic integrity seemingly shot to shit, I instead decide to analyse the clothes of my supo partner. His overly-tight mustard chinos look as though they’re straight out of a Gap for Kids 2003 advertisement; his North Face mac is completely unnecessary for the warm weather and ages him about 30 years; the shoes are plain, clunky, and worst of all, velcro.

I stop my snide internal monologue. Maybe this would be my Cady Heron à la Mean Girls moment, (see ‘Miss Caroline Krafft seriously needed to pluck her eyebrows… and that’s when I realised, making fun of Carolyn Krafft wouldn’t stop her from beating me in the contest.’)

The only difference is that I don’t end up being crowned one of the Maths, and later, Spring Fling, champions for my commitment to academia and social justice. Instead, my essay from last week is just as lacklustre as before, and I am greeted by a shiny new essay deadline with a side-serving of disappointed grimaces from both supervisor and supervision partner.

I smile, and wonder what academic fruit next week’s supervision will bear