It’s Tuesday 24th August, 2010. I’m awake at 5am,
refreshing my painfully slow internet on my Samsung Genio touch, trying to
access the Edexcel online results from a room in RAF Valley. The page loads,
and I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
When you’re predicted 10A*s, anything less is a failure.
When you’ve already set your sights on studying history at a top university,
coming away with an A at GCSE level is inconceivable. Until it happened. Now, I
find it laughable, but back then? I just cried.
I don’t think I’ve ever over-reacted quite as much (apart from that time someone in hall refused to pass me the potatoes whilst I
was dieting, but that’s another story…)
I was upset because I somehow thought that my worth was inextricably
linked to my academic performance. More importantly, I was upset because I knew
that I wanted to go to a mythologised version of Cambridge, and this was a sure
sign that I wasn’t clever enough. They’d never lower their standards to let in
someone who only got an A at GCSE in the subject they were applying for.
I suppose that for some people, Cambridge is just a place
you end up at on the way to somewhere else. It’s a place where a lot of people
go, it’s a route into investment banking, into stand-up comedy, a chance to be
accepted by the rest of your family. I know that I’m not alone in taking a
different approach. I created a ‘Cambridge’ in my head. ‘Cambridge students’
were a class apart – they appeared as omniscient beings on University Challenge,
or rowed down the Thames, or became famous comedians and actors. I’d look up
famous people on Wikipedia and have a funny little list in my head ‘he went to
Cambridge’, ‘she went to Cambridge’, ‘he was at Cambridge and studied history’... it’s embarrassing to admit it, but it has
left me with the ability to match celebrities to their college – something that’s
come in handy in a surprising number of conversations over the past couple of
years.
I just really wanted to go to Cambridge. I knew it was a
stupid product of my over-active imagination, and I was painfully aware just
how hard and how fragile a dream it was, but it was my dream and I let it grow
to the point where anywhere else would be a failure. This was in 2010. By the
time I got round to applying for universities, I was a lot more sensible and
could envision a happy future at any of my five choices.
My Cambridge was not a means to a well-paying job in the City, or a road
into further academic study, my Cambridge was an end in itself. What an end
it’s been so far.
When I watched the boat race in the year I got my offer, it
crossed my mind that I would be living in the same city as these people, not
that I would be training in the same facilities, rowing with the same colour
blades. I know people who have done
things like University Challenge, or been in Footlights productions.
Occasionally (like, a couple of times in two years), a renowned academic even says something nice about my essays.
It’s time to refuse to define myself by a
number attached to a couple of hours’ worth of frenzied essay writing. I cared
so much about my GCSEs and my A levels because they were what would allow me to
get into Cambridge. And now? Like I said, I’m not here because I want to walk
away with BA (cantab) at the end of my name. I’m here because this is where I
want to be. Right here, right now, with the crazy intelligent people, and the
inspiring rowing people, and the eccentric supervisors, and the beautiful
architecture, and the libraries, and just… the fact that it’s Cambridge.
Yes, I’ve been working for my exams, but now it's only insofar as I
enjoy studying the past. There’s a very real possibility that I’m going to walk
into a couple of my exams without having an awful lot to say, but that’s
because my study is not a means to an end. I’m going to learn about the
Jacobite uprisings because they’re interesting, not because it will get me a
2:1 (which, funnily enough, I don’t think it will – Jacobites haven’t appeared
on any past paper that I’ve seen. Oops.)
I’ve been considering this position for a couple of weeks
now, but this is the first time that I’ve properly attempted to articulate it.
I don’t care about my exams, but the root cause of this is not apathy, rather a
kind of transcendence whereby I can no longer justify psychological investment
in fifteen hours of on-the-spot essay writing.
Now I just need to find a way to let my DoS know…
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