A Week in the Life: Cambridge edition

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RageC

Sooo mathmoths what sort of hours are you putting in daily in term/in the 3 holidays?

There was a very detailed thread about this in the Oxbridge forum a few weeks ago with many students contributing, so scroll down and back a page or two.

Reply 81

soria

Craghyrax

Spoiler

Social and Political Sciences - Part I (first year)

For the purpose of this 'typical week' we shall assume that I have one supervision on the Thursday, and one supervision on the Monday after this week.

Monday: Wake up at 10. Go to Psychology lecture at 12. Drop by library and collect 4 books for essay deadline on Thursday. Go to room. Make lunch and mooch on TSR for 2hrs. Read from 3 to 6. Go to Hall with housemates. Take my reading to college husband's room, with laptop. Read, with intermittent conversation and some TSR go home at 5.

Tuesday: Wake up at 10. Psychology lecture at 12. Go to Sainsburys. Get home and panic realising that essay deadline is noon on Wednesday. Read all afternoon. Briefly eat at Hall at 6. Take my laptop and books to college library. Read till close at midnight. Go home, carry on reading till 2. Start writing essay. (coffee and 2 red bulls involved) Collapse at 4am, setting alarm for 6.

Wednesday: Wake up at 6, carry on writing essay after more coffee. Finish essay at 11:30. Fling on clothes, print essay, put on sunglasses and iPod and leg-it to Christ's to drop essay in DoS's pigeon hole by noon. Take roundabout route and drop off Psychology books at SPS library, and pick up 4 or 5 Soc Anth books. Get home. Collapse and sleep till 6, having missed an 11 Politics lecture and a 2-4 Sociology lecture. Go out somewhere for dinner with a friend. Go home and read till 4 (checking facebook and TSR at intervals).

Thursday: Wake up at 9.30. Soc Anth lecture at 10. Psychology supervision with my DoS at 12. Make lunch and TSR a bit. Read all afternoon. Take laundry to Fen Court. Read some more. Retrieve washing. Go out for dinner with a friend. Come back and take books to friend's room and read all evening. Go home round 6.

Friday: Wake up at 9.30. Politics lecture at 10. Go home and read. Catch train to London and climb with a friend. Get back to Cambridge at 7:30. File into Yippie's Noodle Bar. Get home at 9. Read till 4.

Saturday: Wake up at about 12. Panic about essay deadline on Sunday. Gradually get up and drag things to library at 2:30. Read till 6. Go to hall. Go back to library and read till 12. Go to friend's room and carry on reading. Go home at 3. Start essay and keep going....

Sunday:....keep writing. Finish essay round 11. Email it to Soc Anth supervisor. Collapse and sleep till 6. Eat out with a friend. Go to Clowns afterwards. Watch a DVD. Chat till 5. Go to sleep in preparation of early start for 10am Soc Anth Supervision.

Apologies to those who read the first draft. Had to edit it because a friend moaned it wasn't accurate :p:

The above accurately portrays what a typical week looks like. Below describes a term.

Usually within a term I will go to about two formals, and all the superhalls (two or three). There are also occasionally subject-specific dinners, and college society drinks evenings. The Dean occasionally emails the freshers and invites them to mingle and partake of free sherry in his parlour. The Chapel occasionally has good choral services with nice food. At the end of every Lent the Chapel has a retreat (free for all Petreans) which this year entailed a weekend of good food and a visit to very pretty places in East Sussex. The Peterhouse Politics and History Societies have about two or three meetings a term with famous politicians or academics speaking. These usually involve dressing up and chatting over champagne before settling into comfy old armchairs for the talk, followed by discussion. A string quintet performed in our theatre this term. My college 'family' has remained roughly intact, and I occasionally meet for coffee with my 'mother' or go out for a 'family meal'. My house has 8 freshers, a second and a third year. Those of us living in the bottom half will often take our reading and sit in the corridor drinking tea round mid-term when the work pressure gets oppressive. Also at 6pm they will knock on my door and ask if I'm going to hall so that we can walk over together. Mid-term when work gets too much, I might see some plays or a concert with a friend. Sometimes I get on well with supervision partners from other colleges, and we go out together to brainstorm/swap essays/revise together. I occasionally meet up with Tablander TSRers, either at a meet, or in smaller groups. Clearly TSR squeezes into the cracks as a procrastination tool, as do facebook and MSN at times.

Practically, Peterhouse is an old, central college. Apparently Darwin lived in my house, which is on a very old, lovely street across the road from college. Peterhouse itself is very pretty, our Hall being the oldest or second oldest college building in Cambridge. Even ordinary meals are eaten in the hall by candlelight. The SPS department and library are on Free School Lane, which is 5 mins away from both Peterhouse and my house. Free School Lane and the department are both very old and pretty. Our lecture theatre - originally built for Physics - is creaky, wooden, and handsome with alot of character. Essentially, I live roughly 5 mins walk away from everywhere I go. Two of my supervisors are 20mins walk away, up near Castle Hill..but the other two see us in our department. So barring Politics and Anthropology supervisions, the furthest I ever strictly need to walk is 8mins to Sainsburys. Bedders empty our bins every day, and vacuum our rooms twice a term. They clean public areas every day. Nonetheless I avoid using our gyp, which is messy. I buy all my lunch and breakfast things from Sainsburys, and eat at Hall for dinner, or go out.

And this post from a thread about supervisions explains what SPS supervisions are like. The lectures are lecture-like - Maxwell Lecture Room already having received tribute in the last paragraph. It may be worth adding that SPS lectures mostly involve brief Q&A time after the lecture ends. In this way I was able to attain year-wide fame to go with my internet fame, by unthinkingly blurting out that another student's answer to the lecturer's question to her was utterly ridiculous, in those exact words :biggrin:

The first part of this post broke down what the workload looks like. However, I sometimes have three instead of two essays in a week. In Michaelmas I had four essays in 8 days in three cycles. I only figured it all out in the third cycle, which ironically coincided with my being very sick. The example week above is more reflective of Lent, as we talked to our DoS and coordinated timetables more efficiently.

Just out of curiosity, what happened to SPS at Peterhouse? I loved the college when I visited and was seriously considering applying, but apparently they don't accept SPS applications anymore...

Reply 82

Craghyrax

soria

Just out of curiosity, what happened to SPS at Peterhouse? I loved the college when I visited and was seriously considering applying, but apparently they don't accept SPS applications anymore...

You don't have to quote my entire entry in your post :p:

We stopped offering it for lots of reasons. Mainly we don't have any SPS fellows, so organising teaching for students is quite a mission.

Reply 83

hyper-little-mushroom-men

I was going to reply to this thread, but confronting my own idleness is just too depressing and shameful! :o:

*resolves to work harder next year* :work:

Though even if I do get my essays in on time and adequately researched, I will still spend Friday evenings and most of Saturday hitting people with foam swords. :p:

Reply 84

mtgsgirl

could someone do a day in the life of a cambridge medical student, preferably undergraduate?

Reply 85

It could be lupus

mtgsgirl

could someone do a day in the life of a cambridge medical student, preferably undergraduate?

I can do a freshers one if you want, though it might be a couple of weeks till I have time to sit down and write one up

Reply 86

mtgsgirl

It could be lupus

I can do a freshers one if you want, though it might be a couple of weeks till I have time to sit down and write one up

sounds great!!
thankyou :smile:

Reply 87

eVeNtInE

Don't suppose there's any for Law? :-)

Reply 88

Katelyn

I have heard that studying at Cambridge leaves little time for anything other than work. Is that true? Do you have a life outside of studies? :rolleyes:

Reply 89

another ib-er

There is lots of work, but it's all about time management. Lots of people manage to do many other things... whether that's going out/extra-curriculars, and lots of us seem to have plenty of time to procrastinate...

Reply 90

Katelyn

thanks, that's encouraging :smile:

Reply 91

around

Basically if you're organized you'll find there's plenty of time to do whatever you like.

and if you're unorganized like me everything's a frantic scramble to get work done in time.

Reply 92

Noble.

You'll be needing to do about 4/5 hours work, every day, outside of lectures/labs, apparently.

Reply 93

phen

Noble.

You'll be needing to do about 4/5 hours work, every day, outside of lectures/labs, apparently.

To my understanding this can vary greatly between two courses, with Art courses being more work outside of lectures than Science courses. I'm not sure how much (if at all) the total amount of work really varies, though.

Reply 94

Noble.

phen

That was for someone studying a science-subject, obviously it does vary, not only from course to course, but from person to person.

Reply 95

SimonM

It varies unimaginably

Reply 96

nuodai

I find myself with quite a bit of free time; if you spend the time you're not socialising (etc) doing supervision work and going over lecture notes [rather than procrastinating on Facebook and TSR {guilty}] you can end up with a lot of free time. This is the case for Maths anyway, and it can vary a lot depending on how hard supervision work is etc. Essay subjects are quite a lot different though; and you'll probably also find that people disappear from daylight the day before a supervision or whatever.

Reply 97

michaelyus

Variable definitely. Dependent on subject / course choice / lecture course / supervisors (definitely depends on supervisors) / other commitments (I am really jealous of those people who seem to do 4/5/6 social activities while maintaining their work standard) / how much reading you think you should do (for essays) etc.