‘Static-Sword’ grows old, ‘Static-Sword’ grows old; she shall wear the bottoms of her trousers rolled.
The maximum age difference that I believe realistically exists currently in Trinity’s undergraduate cohort is that between a returning year abroad (larking about) student, who took a prior (larking about) gap year, potentially born in early September, and the youngest fresher, the youngest being an August baby, who matriculated just a few days ago. That would place the age difference at five years. That’s the maximum. The average, even those who do humanities can work this one out, is a typical two years. Why then do I feel like I have aged multiple decades with the arrival of this year’s new batch of fresh-faced matriculators? It’s actually ridiculous!
I want people to know that 21 is not old. That’s all I want. In fact, I think it’s now a need. I need the freshers to know that third years also like to go out and let off some steam at Wash (Wednesday Mash now that we have laid Wevs to rest, RIP). We too can drink until the very early hours of the morning. We may suffer ever so slightly more the next day. But be assured we are made of tough stuff and will drag ourselves out of bed the next day to study studiously for our upcoming supervisions, labs, and classes. Best believe they get no less difficult and intimidating the longer you’re here.
However, in case I’m scaring our naïve new college family members, you get better at them, and they appear slightly less daunting. That is of course if you have done all the work you were supposed to do. In those cases where you haven’t, you just have to hope that signing up to that poker society at freshers’ fair can teach you how to maintain a poker face in front of academics, who genuinely seem to be able to ask the exact question you didn’t look at whilst poring over every text you could get your hands on.
Look at this! This was supposed to be a piece complaining about feeling old and yet I’ve immediately fallen into the trap of offering advice. Perhaps it is a sign that we third years should all accept that we are now (brace yourselves) role models for these newbies.
I propose, however, that we try and be the worst role models possible and encourage this next Trin-eration to sod their degrees and go and enjoy life at university. Go and see how much chaos you can sow in our dear city of Cambridge. Because let me ask you this, have you ever heard a ‘uni story’ that was about lectures? About classes? About exams? I bet your answer is no and that instead they are stories of when Tony tried to climb a wall and tore his trousers. Or maybe Jack snuck out of a guy’s room one night to find that they’d left behind most of their clothes. Or maybe a prank on the lecturer went so far that Joanne ended up at dinner with his wife and kids! I don’t know. But this tells you that the memories that stay with you will be important, not because they got you the grade, or the job, but because they got you the friends and the stories that make you you, and a more entertaining version at that.
So, I may be entering ‘unc’ status but I shall not let it slow me down. Here’s to going out with a bang!
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