Intro

When townsfolk ask me what I do for a living and they find out I’m a student, they seem a wee bit shocked that I'm out of college grounds and then pay me the complement of Seeming Normal. However, I feel no more at home with the college-folk: on learning that I visit my college just once or twice a term, I get tarred with the not-a-proper-student brush. That is until I reveal that my term-time and vacation-time addresses are one and the same and that I married a local Cambridge man who has never set foot inside any of the University’s colleges. I then emerge as something of an exotic bird: the Cambridge student who spends most of her out-of-hours life with The Locals.

I can name most of our 31 colleges and our surrounding villages with reasonable accuracy. I know what plodges and bedders are, as well as the U’s and the Romsey Sessions, I walk the hallowed arches of lecture theatres Monday to Friday and then the dog with my father-in-law at weekends. I know my way around a punt just as well as the guest ale lists of Mill Road’s finest drinking establishments. I celebrate Christmas at Kings’, and New Year at the Empress.
These privileges are not meant as idle boasts, but merely to illustrate my status as a double-agent: a townie student, best of both worlds and master of none. Checkpoint this blog for the exotic bird’s-eye-view of Cambridge.

work vs. work

Now, as I’m a fairly old bird as students go, I’ve done a few years previous as a member of The Workforce. During my time down't mill, I've been inspired by a few bosses (and argued with a few more), paid a few taxes, received a few paycheques, and chased a few promotions. And suddenly I find myself on the other side of the desk (yes, I was a teacher), and the contrasts between the two lifestyles could not be sharper.

English doesn’t easily make the distinction between working for money and working to expand the mind / deplete the bank balance. It’s all just work, work, work. Other languages, such as Greek distinguishes between slogging to get money and plain old slogging for free.

Even with my terribly British terrible foreign language skills, I now make a firm distinction, and I know which I prefer. Student life doesn’t allow much in the way of lobster and cashmere , but the freedom is pretty tasty. The buzz from being in control of your own routine and decisions is hard to beat too, even though you might not be the most popular kid with the locals.

The work ethic between paid employment and paying pupil crosses alien frontiers too. I’ve recently discovered that students, aside from their courses, work for free. The write for free, organise for free, do tedious admin for free, all in the name of fun, socialising and gaining experience. It’s a weird one. There I am, coiled to strike a tough negotiation on the terms and conditions for a wee bit of graft, and alongside me are half a dozen students willing to do the very same work for nowt more than their name on the committee and an their rank on a hoodie. Time to shrug of my cynicism and ramp up the enthusiasm for new challenges, and get used to never clocking off…