cambridge

yep cambridge rocks

or alternatively get a 45 min train to london which isd also a nice place to visit

definitely check out mill road; some good 2nd hand book shops and oh loads of other things.

drink coffee in indigo's on st edmund's passage which is my favourite coffeeshop in the world. although it is tiny and might well be packed on weekends.

go to the arts cinema and then on to clowns (king st) which serves coffee etc until at least midnight. have a hot chocolate with whipped cream and a slice of baklava because, well, i always did and it's ace.

parrot records on king st used to have loads of cds at around £6 and maybe still does.

GO PUNTING! only don't get a tour, do it yrself. i suspect trinity punts are prob still the cheapest (£6/hour to the public, i think). but make sure you have a change of clothes in case you fall in.

wander round some of the colleges. but don't bother paying - just stride in confidently, and if anyone asks say that you are a memeber of college. check out trinity cos it's where i went and clearly the best, but i guess kings/johns etc are worth a look, too.

pubs: i still like the maypole best. avoid the huge wetherspoons/the eagle/the anchor. out of the city centre the cambridge blue is ace; no smoking/mobiles which i guess will put you off, but loads of lovely ales.

i love cambridge.

haahah im to godamn cute to fall out with

we are leaving cambridge soon - moving a few miles out but it is like losing a kidney and finding a tiny village with nowt in it to replace it with - oh well

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/b/bf/Cambridge2395.jpg

it's not a big college town

lol my mum works in one of those buildings.

The spaceship on the right?

Cantabulous

"Frolicking ... students partied with midgets"

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2213124.ece

source:

http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/1223/1/

"By Caedmon Tunstall-Behrens", lol.

but they didn't have the pics? oompa loompa shot makes the story imo.

LOL I know that name, he was 2 years below me at school :D

:(

Humiliating initiation ceremonies - search and destroy

Those initiation ceremonies strike me as relatively tame, except perhaps the one with the Oompa Loompas.

like the punchline to this one:

This year activities included teabagging, the act of dangling the scrotal sack in someone’s mouth, at every checkpoint, flaming socks being placed on male genitals, the consumption of sweets from various orifices and entire teams giving each other back, sack and crack waxes. The winners received a trip to Canada.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/09/cambridge-university-worlds-best

This will go down well in the ivory towers of what would otherwise be a nondescript Fenland town – it's the kind of publicity that may reinforce the hauteur and arrogance of Cambridge, but also adds to its mystique.

this is maybe the stupidest thing i've read all week. if it weren't for all the tall buildings and bridges and hipsters, new york would just be a bunch of fucking lumps of earth surrounded by water.

good fucking christ would I compose a counterblast to that if I could be arsed

Once in a while, we'd go to Cindy's, the club in town, which was called something else in the real world.

ohhhhh, good choice

actually quite a lot of it is otm, especially towards the end - mostly the negative stuff

I didn't feel chippy or cowed by anything, anyone or any job. Perhaps foolishly, I felt well-educated.

the guy seems extremely chippy to me, despite being plainly middle-class. but that last sentence is appalling.

would take enormous umbrage with his division of forces between poshos, geeks and normals - would argue strongly that the vast majority of students bought into the bubble in their own ways, and developed a strong superiority complex

It may be rightly feted for its research and intellectual achievements, but the fact is that it is an extremely effective conveyor belt into the professions that rule us – and that remains a shameful comment on the rigidity of British society.

im not saying he's all off the money, but this seems very confused. there *is* a problem with the professions that rule us, of course.

presumably he has less of a problem with it, because he feels like he has rightfully risen to his proper place as a ruler?

xxp otm

he doesn't seem to be saying that having an establishment is a bad thing, only that it should recruit from... other universities.

it's a thorny problem.

so this was actually in a major newspaper and not a college alumni magazine?

It's a thin line.

yeah harvard, watch your good will huntings nrq

oh sry meant 'yale' not harvard.

there might as well be a line on the map and beyond it "here be dragons"

ah, the Grafton Centre

hey did you know that there are several hundred universities in Britain, and that they all have good courses?
the extent to which this is true (it's not) is an interesting problem.

― caek, Thursday, September 9, 2010 1:27 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_dropout_factories.php?page=all

this is america, and the american system is structured completely differently (transfers, credits, fees, private institutions, etc.), but i feel like a pretty similar article could be written about the UK.

ah, the Grafton Centre

― acoleuthic, Thursday, September 9, 2010 1:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

built on the ruins of the old student/post-student quarter. there is a waitrose now, but yeah, that's ruskin territory.

xp yeah, and in the uk there's a close correlation between "widening participation" and high drop-outs, which is a bit of a thorny subject.

zackly

there are some nice parts in north-east/east Cambridge, but Cambridge University students only ever HAVE to go there if one of their supervisors lives out there - which is a shame

caek will be on that article - but I am yet to work out my opinions as to whether there should be fewer universities/students or if the whole culture could survive with revision

there are some nice parts in north-east/east Cambridge, but Cambridge University students only ever HAVE to go there if one of their supervisors lives out there - which is a shame

it's really not that nice, dude. it's just a suburb. the park and river is chill as hell, but otherwise it's just a bunch of houses.

The graduation rate dropped to 13 percent in 2008.

Maybe Cambridge truly is a bubble. This shit blows my mind. Great article so far.

at yale you basically had to commit a felony to be kicked out...preserved our 98% graduation rate or w/e it was

Best non-university things about Cambridge are the river, urban green spaces and the peacefulness you find once you get away from the Market Square/Regent Street drag. It's not for everyone, though; I know lots of people who have moved to the biggest busiest city they can find as soon as they finish their degree.

I ended up applying for Oxford when it was my time, but I went to look at Cambridge and it seemed absolutely lovely. Like this pastoral academic paradise. So jealous of the people who got to go..

walking around the place on sunny days was beautiful and I wish I'd found more people who appreciated such joys

while walking through Montmartre with a colleague, he remarked upon our arriving at a certain street that he loved it b/c it reminded him of Cambridge. I thought it odd to love a part of Paris for its resemblance to a part of the UK, but he's written a book on Newton so I reckon he sees things differently.

Also agree about perceived mystique. Whenever someone mentions their Cambridge roots, people's eyes seem to light up. I mean UCL is pretty decently regarded, but I'm not sure its magic, maybe. Perhaps the students or ex-students themselves are as curious of the mystique as the outsiders.

dammit why am I feeling nostalgic

TO HAVE HAD MY TIME AGAIN, with my current mind

ah but that is cheating

to have ur caek & eton

oh lol

these thoughts invariably turn suicidal and should be quashed

lol

Yeah if I meet someone who was at Cambridge we'll talk about pubs we like rather than the glory of the mystical bubble.

xp - darragh wins best educationally themed post ever

xp but would your current mind have reached its state without the Cambridge education? I'm getting the sense that Uni is just a stepping stone to whatever your potential may fulfill, rather than somewhere to fully realise yourself. I may be wrong though heheh..

university is the best stepping stone, most stones after it are on the road to hell tbh

i've been at oxford since the 90s. first world problem i know, but stepping stone, ha!

you're an academic, then?

first world problems doesn't even begin it you jammy git

hence why it is cheating and impossible and (for an arts undergrad) a dream - a big privileged fucking dream xxxxp

some make it their reality - what my reality is, I'll be beggared if I know, but it involves a lot of walking

One day I will take a leaf out of your book and walk from my flat down to Kew Gardens or something.

nah i'm a phd student (and a slow reader i guess, hence the 90s)

do you know when you're submitting nrq?

you come at cambridge from an extremely different perspective - that of a resident. now sure, it's a beautiful city, full of all sorts of nationalities and intellects and what have you. but the university itself is a bubble - it's connected to the real world only insofar as it's connected to the upwardly-mobile world of aspiration and achievement which is pressured into virtually all of its students. do you know how many of my co-students befriended 'townies'? the answer is 'basically none' - they weren't interested in cambridge the town, just cambridge the university with adjunct shopping premises. and the establishment is surely a bubble of its own as well!

simultaneous experience of both viewpoints allows me to say this is otm. also the music scene is surprisingly good for size of city/town.

that is all.

do you know when you're submitting nrq?

― caek, Thursday, September 9, 2010 3:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

no.

i kind of finished over a year ago. had a first draft, anyway.

but then a series of things happened and i turned into kevin shields lol.

i thought you were in germany and had therefore finished?

i could probably finish by the end of october if i concentrated. quitting ilx would help, but not that much.

i got an astronomy quasi-job that didn't require a phd and paid me to work on whatever i want. this took away the incentive to finish and i'm still adding to my thesis, i.e. kevin shields lol. munich job ends dec 31 though, so my viva is ~ jan 1.

Genuinely distressing news.
Fitzbillies has gone out of business

once got a cornish pasty there, fuck tha world

Was more saddened by Galloway and Porter closing last year tbh.

word

You can't eat books.

And it's back.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/nov/11/fitzbillies-tim-hayward-cambridge

I mean, it's been back a while but here's an article^^^ about it...

I will be here for three months starting April (will also be the first time I've been to the UK since 2001). Tips for things to do, places to eat, etc? Do we still FAP?

I meant to reply to this at the time

If there is a cambridge FAP I will def come, and hopefully we can coax seandalai and some of the Londoners too

In terms of things to do: there is a river and some nice buildings and pubs and museums but in terms of active culture/nightlife &c it isn't the best. We have some sick science-based comedy nights tho

sweet! I probably won't be in cambridge the entire time anyway so we can meet in London too if that's easier.

inebriated bonhomie tonight has reminded me to get on this. The couple of times I have met ilxors have been jolly. Are you here? Shall we do Cam/London FAP? I will force louis to come. Everyone who comes to the uk should meet louis

if ever dissolute me is near british isles i may try to cadge drinks (& other drugs) from the lot of you

I will buy you a drink and all I expect in return is a drink

it's a deal

(✿ฺ◕ฺ‿◕ฺ）

ahhhh i just saw your post. YES, I'm here - got in a week ago and just about over the jet lag. will shoot you ILXmail in a bit.