What's it like?

It’s five minutes past five in the morning. You’re woken up by your alarm clock, The Lion King soundtrack. Something cheerful. Your right hand is throbbing a little. You haven’t had quite enough sleep and there are three books and a journal article at your desk that you hold responsible. You don’t even have to think through your actions. Take a banana, weigh out 50g of porridge oats, add water and a dash of milk, microwave for 3 minutes and 30 seconds, go to the loo, weigh yourself – subtract 100g because your pyjamas weigh 300g and your unisuit would only weigh 200, chop up the banana, mix into the porridge. You take the porridge back to your room, add some cinnamon, leave on the desk for a moment as you scrabble around for a sports bra, unisuit, leggings, long sleeve, gillet, splash jacket in bag, snack in the side pouch. You should have sorted this out the night before, you tell yourself for the twentieth time. Eat the porridge, allow yourself a moment to enjoy it. Leave the bowl, you can wash it up later. Check your emails, facebook, phone messages. Throw a large ski jacket on, make sure your water bottle is in your bag, visor clipped to the strap. Check the time. Thirty two minutes past five. Brush your teeth, locate your keys, gloves, woolly hat, purse and bike lights, most of which you can only hope you left in the normal place. 

Finally, you make it out of the door, down the stone spiral staircase, down the dark wooden stairs leading to hall you once found grand and intimidating. The stairs are painful, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. A light jog through the courts, walking again through the porter’s lodge, where you greet the night porter with a good morning that sounds far more enthusiastic than you feel. Out on the street it’s colder than in the relatively sheltered college. Street lights glow through the mist as you unlock your bike, silently thanking the lock for not freezing.

The streets are not as deserted as you might have imagined. You pass a woman walking to work. A man running. A delivery lorry outside Marks and Spencer. You adjust your cuff so that you can read your watch. Forty minutes past five. Perhaps you’ll be late. What if you miss the train? Click the bike up a gear. Your legs protest as you insist they push harder. The cold wind is numbing your face, but at least you remembered gloves today.

Stop at the traffic lights, pull up next to a team mate.

“Hey,”

“Hi,”

"Nice hat,"

The lights turn green. You reach the station, lock up your bike and check the time again. Five forty seven. Fine. Loads of time.

You could almost operate the fast service ticket machines with your eyes shut. Take the ticket, keep the receipt, make a mental note to hand in your tickets so you can get a refund. Accept that you’ll probably forget.

“Morning,”

“Alright?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah,” a pause, “I really need a coffee,”

“I just need something warm,”

“It’s got really cold out, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,”

The train pulls into the station, as always, a few minutes early. The train at platform four is the five fifty five to Birmingham New Street, calling at Ely, March, Manea, Whittlesea…  You know the rest.

Walk along to the far carriage. It means you’ll be closer to the exit once you get to Ely. Those extra few metres are worth it. You take a seat around a table with a few other members of your crew for that morning. The temptation to grab a few more minutes sleep is too much for some. As you start to close your eyes you remember your right hand. The skin has cracked on the spot where a callous used to be. It’s red and raw. You reach into your bag. Damn. Must have left the first aid kit in your other bag.

“Does anyone have some tape I can borrow?”  

Someone always will. You were sure that your hands had toughened up, but the cold has clearly got to them. You tell yourself that you need to moisturise more. Your lips are cracking too. Luckily you’ve got a tin of Vaseline in your coat pocket. You need it. Of all things, it shouldn't hurt to smile.

The train is now approaching Ely. It’s still pitch black outside, and for all you can tell, you could be anywhere, but let's be honest, you're never going to be anywhere but here. You switch your coat for your splash jacket, secure your visor, make sure your bag is zipped up and the strap is done up tightly. The time is nine minutes past six.

A few commuters litter the platform at Ely. The regulars barely give a second glance to a group of thirty lycra-clad young women piling out of the train, speed-walking across the platform and breaking into a jog. There are patches of frost on the grass, but the road surfaces haven’t frozen. No risk of slipping over and injuring yourself, good. The dash across the A142 has become more measured in recent months. Two extra minutes at the boathouse isn’t going to be of any use if you run in front of a car. You wait for the green man.

“I’m definitely feeling that weights session,”

“I know!”   

You reach the boathouse, too warm from your many layers, legs aching, unsurprised to find that, yet again, the boiler has failed to turn on. You join the queue for the toilets, check your heart rate monitor is working and stretch your hamstrings while you wait. No point in wasting time.

Once you get into the main part of the boathouse you check the board for the session. At the top, a brutal reminder of why you’re doing this. 75 days to go. You look at your crew. It’s twenty eight minutes past six and we’ve got a boat race to win.

Week Five

Week five. The third 500m of the 2K test that is a Cambridge term. The point at which all hope is lost, student unions start dishing out biscuits in the hope that it will stop people crying alone in their rooms and some people disappear into the library never to be seen again. This is my seventh week five and they haven't all been that bad. I admit that things didn't start all that well when I lost my voice during my first week five and had to hoarsely croak at my mum down the phone, asking for moral support and wondering if I could go home. My fifth week five also hit a low when I burst into tears after my supervisor asked me whether my essay actually had an argument (it didn't). My sixth week five involved abandoning the library halfway through a practise exam paper and jumping on the next train home, and I can't really remember my fourth week five, but I suspect that's because it was spent napping almost continuously to avoid confronting reality.

But all that's in the past. To combat the doom and gloom message perpetuated by much of the student body, I set myself a challenge to find five positive things about each day of week five.

This is the result. It could be a contender for one of the dullest accounts of a week ever, far too many of the points are food related, and, to be honest, I started to get a bit desperate from day 1. However, each bullet point serves to reinforce the fact that everything is actually okay, no matter what people say.

Thursday

• Finished an essay many hours before the deadline 
• Had a really healthy lunch including spinach, tuna, soup, carrots, hummus and rice cakes
• Noticed that a toilet cubicle had run out of paper before sitting down (don't underestimate the sense of achievement that I got from this)
• Spent an hour and a half in a class discussing the differences between 'modernity', 'modernism', 'modernisation' and 'modern' and felt as though I'd reached the pinnacle of intellectual silliness.
• Read a good chunk of The Boys in The Boat (an incredible book that combines history and rowing - perfectly catering to my interests)  

Friday

• Sold a box of poppies, and temporarily experienced being a tourist attraction.
• Went on a mad shopping spree in superdrug to replenish makeup that had gone so far beyond its use by date it might as well have been breeding ground for bacteria.
• Had a gentle supervision in which my supervisor spent ten minutes chatting about how his dad had worked at Bletchly Park, another 10 minutes showing me pictures of flags and about 5 minutes digressing about the history of the kilt. 
• Managed to finish training at 18:55, jump in the shower, and get to hall for 19:10, setting new records for efficiency
• Painted my toenails Cambridge blue 

Saturday

• Lovely weather in the morning (even if it didn't quite hold until the second outing)
• Managed to read some historical sources in the minibus to and from Ely
• Lightweight brunch with some wonderful lightweights 
• Found out that my boat made it into the background of a photo in Rowing and Regatta 
• Remembered to take some tupperware into Caf Hall, so extra food for the next day.

Sunday

• Took part in a moving Remembrance Sunday Parade - felt very honoured to be part of the UAS
• Had a free buffet lunch in the Guildhall
• Successful five hour library stint in which genuine work was done 
• Pigs in blankets at formal
• Got to sleep nice and early

Monday

• Didn't have to get out of bed after waking up naturally at 5:30 (thanks body clock)
• Had a productive morning combining an Aldi shop, laundry and a lecture
• Made myself a lovely salmon and avocado salad for lunch (from my very reasonably priced Aldi shop) 
• Took a trip to Bassingbourne to give a presentation to some air cadets, escaping the Cambridge Bubble
• Earned 50p worth of nectar points through online procrastination 

Tuesday

• Woke up feeling alert and wide awake at 5am 
• Saw a gorgeous sunrise over Ely
• Integrated a quick Tesco's banana-milk run (credit to Ella for the terminology) into my morning and still caught the 8:39 train - then got a seat on the train
• Rediscovered the power nap 
• Stayed in the library until welfare tea (free food is always a positive)

Wednesday 

• Had blueberries, raspberries, banana and sunflower seeds in my porridge this morning. 
• Our weights coach brought his dog into the morning session, so cute!
• Made a lovely winter warmer desert like thing in the microwave:
• Take a plum or two, destone and cut in halves or quarters 
• Place plum slices in a microwavable dish 
• Sprinkle with cinnamon or mixed spice and drizzle with honey
• Microwave for 1-2 minutes 
• Shorter erg meant there was time to go back to my room to get changed before going out again. 
• Started browsing for Christmas gifts online and felt slightly Christmassy already. 

Mundane positivity - 1, Week 5 - 0


Finally, the common complaints about week five; the stress of getting bogged down in work and extra-curricular tend to embody the way in which the students become absorbed in the infamous Cambridge Bubble, unable to look much further than their own impending essay crisis and rapidly vanishing social life. We all know the outside world exists, that there are millions, if not billions of people who live their lives in far more stressful conditions and we're mostly all aware of just how lucky we are to be here. The way I see it, week five marks the point at which any real sense of objectivity and perspective are shoved to one side in favour of self-imposed academic expectations and an almost claustrophobic sense of being trapped in Cambridge. Week five itself really isn't that bad, but perhaps our inability to see that is part of the problem.    

One year on / Why? (part 2)

I've officially been procrastinating through sporadic blog posts for a year now. I think I've got a little bit closer to working out why I row, which was the subject of my initial post, so I thought I'd revisit the question with all the added experience of the intervening 365.

The other day, I was sitting in a 9am lecture having been awake for 4 hours, dressed in slightly damp Lycra, struggling to keep my eyes open and nursing some raw open blisters. In that moment, I wished for a normal student life. I would have given anything to turn up to that lecture with a thumping hangover, moisturised hands, wearing normal clothes and maybe a bit of last nights make up. I want to be able to stay up later than 9pm without getting unbearably tired and not have to say no all the time whenever anyone asks me if I'm drinking, or want to go out for a meal, or go to someone's birthday and eat cake without the significant side portion of guilt. I wish I could eat what I wanted and not worry about arbitrary weight guidelines or have to constantly make sure that I'm eating the right stuff so my muscles can repair themselves and I won't burn out on a long erg. I hate the way I'm in competition with my friends, how my year is going to be defined by which eight 59kg women can make a bit of fibreglass/plastic/metal go the fastest backwards through water using a big stick. 

This is normally the point where someone else asks me why I don't just stop. The same people who ask whether I can 'just skip a session' or don't see the problem with turning up to an outing hungover and sleep deprived. These people are my friends but they will never really understand and it's unfair to expect them to. It's taken a while for me to understand myself. 

If, for one moment, we forget the moments when rowing is genuinely enjoyable in and of itself (and believe me, there are plenty of these moments) to get to the root of the matter I have to ask what it is that makes us turn up for the 5:55 train when all we want to do is sleep, and most of us are falling behind with work. There are two main reasons:

• Winning
• Everyone else will be there 

These are so self-explanatory and simple that I wonder how it took so long to figure out.

And sometimes, I just have to remind myself that if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing. 

Education, Education, Education

I've been going through some of my draft posts and rediscovered this:
I wrote an essay about education in twentieth century Britain a while ago, got quite angry and ending up writing some more things.This deals with a topic that is far more serious than the majority of my other posts, and doesn't even mention rowing or food.

The following is based on a couple of assumptions:

• The quality of education offered at a private school is generally of a higher standard than that of a state school.
• The better education a child receives, the more likely they are to progress in the career of their choice.
• Education is a right, not a commodity.
• Minimalisation of class based inequality of opportunity is a desirable goal for any developed society.

The premise is simple:

In a society striving for national equality of opportunity, private education is indefensible. 

Say to yourself, All parents have the right to choose how their children are educated. There's nothing wrong with that. It seems like a good argument.

Now try saying, Every child has the right to equal educational opportunities, unless their parents are rich, and see how that makes you feel.

Alternatively, I understand that private education is not financially feasible for the majority of parents in the UK, therefore when I emphasise parental choice, what I really mean is that wealthy parents should be able to choose to have their children educated separately from the majority of children in Britain. 

That's kind of restrictive to social mobility, isn't it?

Wait a moment though, Intelligent children from poor backgrounds can apply for scholarships. That makes everything seem a bit better.

Okay. Next one. The highest quality of education for children should only be available to a small minority already demonstrating high aptitude for academic study or the wealthy. All of a sudden those scholarships aren't really doing a great deal for society. Grammar schools have been shown to exacerbate social inequality, since segregating children by their performance in dubious examinations (such as the eleven-plus) benefits a minority to the disadvantage of the vast majority.

Yes, but let's be realistic here, There would be inequality even without private education because of housing prices, familial advantages, private tuition... private schools merely add to the problem.

Imagine you go into hospital after a skiing accident, and the doctor says, You've got a broken leg, two broken arms, mild concussion and a pole impaled into your foot. We've run out of plaster to reset your broken limbs, so we might as well not bother about treating anything else. (let's ignore how far fetched this analogy is for a moment....)

Or, to be less vague, Rich people are going to have an advantage when it comes to their child's education anyway. Let's segregate them and give them an even bigger advantage! Somehow, I don't feel that this is morally defensible standpoint.  

I'm afraid that I can't really provide a workable solution to national educational inequality. However, I can point out that private education is morally indefensible when examining it in the context of equality of opportunity. This isn't to say that you shouldn't send your children to private school if you really want to. From an individualistic perspective, it's becomes a lot easier to justify, especially if you think that there's 'no such thing as society'.

However, I'd personally suggest that there is such a thing as society, and what with me being young and idealistic, private schools are unjustifiable in such a context.

PS I really really don't want to hear any heart rendering 'my parents worked their arses off to get me to my private school so actually it's fair/ I managed to get a bursary, why can't the other hundred thousand kids my age' kind of story because these are exceptions, not rules. Exceptions highlight the norm, and the norm is that most people do not have the chance to attend private schools, so argument from singular personal experience just won't cut it. Also why do we expect exceptional behaviour from the socially disadvantaged? 

PPS I'm coming to the realisation that Oxbridge an extension of the same problem, having a crisis of social conscience and might quit uni to join the revolution. I need to think about it a bit more. 

Dear Freshers

Before I get started, I'm not trying to say that everyone should be a rower. Many people won't want to, some people can't, and others should probably cox instead.  I'm not trying to convince the unwilling that they ought to regularly wake before sunrise to blister their hands and weary their legs. I just want to suggest, in a reasonably polite manner, that those who can should try it once.

Non-rowers and some ex-rowers will eagerly divulge horror stories of waking up at 6am, never having time for studying, becoming a social recluse who can only communicate in boatie chat, and enforced wearing of stash.Admittedly, there's always the odd person who seems to live up to the stereotype, but that's not what you're signing up for when you write your crsID on the novice mailing list at your college fresher's fair. 

Rowing once is not going to be a painful experience. You won't have to wake up in the dark or wear outlandishly coloured lycra. You'll probably sit in a boat and move a big stick through the water a little bit. I can almost guarantee that you won't capsize. You'll learn that rowing boats have seats on wheels (this completely blew my mind as a fresher) and that a rowing stroke is made up of a sequence of 'legs, backs, arms, arms, backs, legs' rather than just tugging your arms back and forth. The part where the oar goes in the water is called the 'catch' and where it comes out the water is called the 'finish'. If you didn't know this before, then your one trip to the boathouse will have been an educational experience. You came to Cambridge to learn, right?

You'll probably see a group of older rowers and realise that this isn't just a sport for the tall, athletic and muscular, although these qualities might help should you wish to pursue rowing to a higher level. Instead, college rowers come in all shapes, sizes and personalities. If you speak to some of these people, you could learn that many were never the 'sporty' type at school. They used to dread PE lessons, yet, as young adults, willingly turn up to training every single day for a sport they only took up for the promise of a free T-shirt.

After all this, you might understand that what you have seen on one day barely scrapes the surface of what rowing at Cambridge can really be. You might go back again, and again. You could work harder than you've ever worked before, and laugh harder too. You'd understand what it means to truly push yourself, to be part of a team, and to know the thrill of rowing in a boat that is more than the sum of its parts. Or you might decide that it's not worth it, ignore the emails, never again return to the river, and have a pleasant, blister free university experience. It's your choice.

But if you go once, at least you'll get a free barbecue out of it. 

How to make a board game

1) Have an idea. If this idea is a rowing related monopoly rip-off, then this is the guide for you. If it's not, then ignore the rest of the instructions and do your own thing.

2) Design the outline of the board electronically. Work out how many squares there ought to be and the correct proportions.

3) Spend a few days thinking up ideas for chance cards and properties. Write them down.

4) Print off a prototype board

5) Look at the prototype. Think about how it could be better. Make those changes. 

6) Print off the chance, community chest and property cards. I created a property card template and then filled in the other details by hand, but you could also type up the individual properties and print them out.

7) Design the money. Decide you don't like it. Redisgn the money. Realise you need coloured paper.

8) Buy a pack of children's activity coloured paper for the money. Print off the money and have a moment of horror as you realise that you have set yourself the monumental task of cutting out somewhere in the region of 250 monopoly notes. Allow a sense of stubborn pride to kick in. Prepare yourself for a night of watching panorama on iplayer. End the evening fully up to date on current affairs and with a set of cut out monopoly money.

So much money

9) Print out the board on A3 sheets. Spend a considerable amount of time working out how best to position the overlaps.

10) Using a powerful combination of Prittstick and Sellotape, create a 45cmx45cm base out of card. Carefully line up the board, and stick down. Trim around the edges if required.

11) Get out all those sharpies you spontaneously purchased earlier that week and start colouring in, writing in place names and property prices. 

12) Print out some counters onto card. Consider drawing them before remembering a lack of artistic talent. 

13) 'Borrow' some dice from a lesser board game. 

14) Print out blades instead of houses and keep self entertained by colouring them in the colours of all the different cambridge colleges.

15) Find a group of willing test subjects (boatie friends) and entice them with the prospect of tea and cake. Play for a tortuous 3 hours by the end of which you never want to see a monopoly board again.

15) Decorate an amazon box as storage and perform the terrifying task of cutting and folding the board so it fits. Watch with dismay as the paper crinkles slightly and then decide that it doesn't matter all that much. 

The reason I dropped art in year 9 has never been more apparent 

16) Consider the possibility of CUWluedo. 

17) Consider your degree. 

18) Be satisfied with monoply.

Don't worry, be HAPpy

Today, I want to talk about the silliest paper in the history tripos.

This blog post started off with me actually doing work (gasp), but quickly descended into a search for the weirdest question the history faculty has devised in the past five years.

For the uninitiated, HAP stands for Historical Argument and Practice. It's an exam taken in the third year of the Cambridge history degree that consists of one essay in three hours. There's a choice of about 30 questions, which, considering how ridiculous some of the questions are, is probably a good thing...

I have a sneaking suspicion that I don't understand many of the questions because I've been rowing rather than studying, but either way, these are my ten favourite:

This is the point where I start to wonder if I've paid enough attention over the last year, but maybe historical explanation is, um, historical?

And I am paranoid about the lack of 'discuss' or other useful instruction at the end of this question. What does it mean? What do you want of me?

This is a totally reasonable question, maybe for a 300 page book.

Again, there is no 'discuss' at the end of this question. I suspect it's just a statement to reassure failed novelists who happen to be sitting the exam.

In great depth? With reference to the numerous historiographical waves? I'm not actually sure, I'm just fishing around for answers here. 

Is this 'Big Question' a question?

Best answers get submitted to the government, and the fellows who wrote the exam paper get their funding back.

I'm not sure if I want to laugh, cry, or stare blankly into the distance. I just... I think I'm missing some vital piece of knowledge about the historiography of objectivity. Or possibly the examiners were drunk.

This is just the historian's version of 'I'd rather be at Oxford than St Johns'

This type of question is designed to confuse and upset.

STOP IT NOW PLEASE


I'm going to go cry, reconsider my work schedule, and make an effort to go to lectures this year.


PS If you looked at any one of these and understood/started to construct an answer in your mind:

• I hate you
• No I don't please enlighten me as to how you gained this knowledge oh wise one