Pembroke Street Michaelmas 2017 Issue 6 - The Autumn Edition by Pembroke Street

The Autumn Edition

2017, Issue 6

CONTENTS Study Spots 4 Where is home for you? 10 Pembroke Visits Peterhouse 16 Pembroke Plants 20 Productive Procrastination 22 Behind Closed Doors 24 Pembroke Street Throwback 30

welcome to issue 6 the autumn edition Since the relaunch in February, we’ve been experimenting with how each issue is formulated, with some following the old format of being reliant on themed submissions, and others coming entirely from the ever-wonderful Pembroke Street team. Throughout this process, we’ve found that the best method is an amalgamation of the two. Accepting submissions on a theme often resulted in having multiple pieces on the same particular topic, with the end product perhaps being something more like an anthology of writing. First and foremost, we want the magazine to be entertaining for Pembroke students. We all love poetry as much as the next person, but that’s not what Pembroke Street is for. Instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel for content, we try to produce articles which students actually want to read, as well as being in tune with the values and spirit of our college. And hopefully that’s what you’ll find in this issue! Disa has picked out some lovely study spots around college, and there’s a retrospective investigation into 2007’s controversial Halloween Hall. There’s some fresh faces appearing too, including our new Plant Columnist, Anki Deo, and a touching comment piece from Dan Wakefield. If you’d like to get involved with the next issue, then keep an eye on your emails and like the Pembroke Street Facebook page for updates! And if you’re interested in applying to be the next Editor then go to the website for more information.

Pembroke is a wholesome, nearlytopping-the-Tompkins-Table, scholarsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ballot-alive-and-kicking college... so what could be more appropriate for Pembroke Street than a custom selection of potential study spots, from our very own Disa Greaves?

a s

The first few weeks Valencian, the wor environments, but so here are a few op chan

a selection of study spots:

work

where to

this Michaelmas

s of term have flown by, and whether you are a fresh-eyed first year or a seasoned rk has undoubtedly started to pile up. We all have our own tried-and-tested work ometimes these can start to feel stale and concentration levels begin to waneâ&#x20AC;Ś So ptions for those days when you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to venture far from college, but need a nge of scenery to boost those much sought after productivity levels.

If you want to physically leave Pembroke, which can sometimes be a necessity if the draw of napping in your room (which can sometimes be too great to resist) then there are a plethora of great options just a stoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s throw away.

The SPS Library Right next to college, on Free School Lane. It is the Sociology and Land Economy library but is open for all students to use. It has large desks on the first floor with sockets for laptops and a smaller quiet study room. There are also comfy chairs between stacks if you just need a quiet spot to read. The librarians are very accommodating, giving biscuits out twice a day during exam term, as well as sprigs of rosemary, that well-known revision essential (apparently the smell is good for the memory or something along those linesâ&#x20AC;Ś)

Fitzbillies A classic. And right next door! It is often quite busy, but if you secure a spot you can enjoy the Instragram opportunities of the blue crockery, the overpriced Chelsea buns, AND work on that whole degree-thing. This could even be a potential opportunity to become an Instafamous Cantab, securing a degree and a career, two birds, one duck egg blue stone. See @georginatwong, Pem alum and former resident â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;grammer for serious inspo.

Waterstones On Sidney Street and has a lovely cafe on one of the top floors, with big tables perfect for communal working. You can go with friends or alone and find a place to set up camp for a few hours. Conveniently, being a cafe, the fuel to keep you pushing through work, FOOD, is right there! This can be perfect as you can easily transition from working to breaks, but beware the temptation for it to become one long break...

Fitzwilliam Museum So close, and free! And has a wonderful cafe with skylights giving that perfect natural lighting we all crave. Again, food and drink is at your disposal along with all the art and antiquities you could desire, so you could make your breaks an opportunity to become a more cultured, Better You.

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broke Library

thrive in quiet spaces and the centration going on all around you.

obvious, it is a beautiful building, uthentic ‘Cambridge student’ vibe, ded windows, wooden ‘everything’ ooks. (Although seemingly never

I actually need...)

d by Alfred Waterhouse, who was the Natural History Museum!

puter Room

ble all-nighters. Unlike the library, until midnight, the comp room is

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ver you find it best to work -- if you (or the floor?), this is the place for efficient as you don’t have to go e food and any other necessary

ps. Here, there is no-one around to long you might start to feel a little

stir crazy.

“ Where is home for you? ” words and photography by Dan Wakefield If I’m being completely honest, I can’t actually remember why I ever decided that I wanted to study at Cambridge. I certainly don’t remember when exactly it was that I first became aware of the University; it just sort of found its way into my psyche of its own accord.

10.

For the past few years of my life, studying at Cambridge has never really been much more than some abstract idea. At fourteen years old, you tell people you want to go to Cambridge almost as a brag. Clever people go to Cambridge, I’m kind of clever, ergo I must go to Cambridge. At sixteen years old, you somehow sit your GCSEs “without doing that much revision tbh” and realise that you probably have a shot at this inconceivable goal after all. You spend the next two years fitting in a surfeit of A Levels around all-too-frequent existential crises and then by eighteen you’re sending in your application just because it all seemed inevitable... and also because by this point you kind-of-just-want-to-go-to-art-school, but deep down you know that in this post-capitalist  dead-end of an economy it’s unlikely that your quote-unquote artistic vision could ever sustain an agreeable standard of living without the contingency of some sort of proper qualification, so you“may as well give it a go”. (By eighteen, you’ve also discovered irony.) At this point, life is suddenly so much bigger in every single way. Driving becomes a thing. Politics takes over your entire existence. You discover that having a social life is actually kind of rewarding. You feel like the world is yours for the taking because you’re young and that’s how you’re supposed to feel, and surely life owes you one by now. And then summer arrives. And summer is good. And you can’t put your summer into words because it’s divine and it’s carefree and it’s yours . And, oh yeah... you get into Cambridge. But then September arrives. And September is strange. The first thing that separates you from everyone else as a Cambridge student is that everyone else goes off to university before you do.   For those last two weeks of the month, you feel like you’re living on borrowed time. You wait and you wait and you watch and you wait. You haven’t even left home yet and already old friends have new friends and you too are wishing for something to change. You feel like the world is yours for the taking because you’re young and that’s how you’re supposed to feel, except now the race is about to start and you haven’t even made it into the stadium.

sending in your application just because it all seemed inevitable... and also because by this point you kind-of-just-

want-to-go-to-artschool, but deep down you know that in this post-capitalist

dead-end of an economy it’s unlikely that your quoteunquote artistic

vision could ever sustain an agreeable standard of living without the contingency of some sort of proper qualification, so you“may as well give it a go”. (By eighteen, you’ve also discovered irony.)

11.

Meanwhile, your hometown is boring. It’s the hometown that you’ll inevitably spend half of the next term explaining to other students when you casually drop into conversation that back home the clubs are free-entry and the shots are £1.50 and... oh yeah so it’s kind of “in the North”? Yeah, like idk maybe a hundred miles above here...? But it is still, nevertheless, crushingly dull. And then, at nineteen, you’re moving out. Quite literally in my case, I spent my nineteenth birthday travelling “up” (but, in actual fact, “down”) to Cambridge, as I prepared to help move my twin brother into his accommodation at Queens’ College, the day before I was due to move into my own. Of the nineteen birthdays that I have had in my life so far, that one was the first I had spent separated from my brother. (For logistical reasons, we had even travelled to college in different cars.) In a sense, this was the premature beginning of my Freshers’ experience; a vital re-adjustment in the way I experienced my day-to-day life. Somehow, waving Alex off as we finally departed Queens’ wasn’t exactly a momentous occasion. It’s just Cambridge; it’s inevitable. And yet, for me, it all still felt so far away. From my school, there are seven of us this year who made it all the way to Oxbridge: one Oxford; six Cambridge. Sending seven people to Oxbridge in one year wasn’t something that had happened in my school (I am told) “probably since the nineties” and so even now, in an environment where many people may come from schools that will regularly send thirty or fifty students from each year to Cambridge alone, this comparatively humble achievement is still something that sits very close to my heart. Nevertheless, it somehow ended up that, from these seven people, I was the very last one to actually move in to university. More so, out of all of my friends, I was the very last one. It felt significant somehow. That final day of vacation was the longest. I think it’s similar to how time slows down when you get very near to a black hole: it’s the pull and the excitement, and I guess in some ways the danger, of finally getting to Cambridge that just makes the lead up drag on for so very, very long. And, oh yeah... it was still actually my birthday. Easy thing to forget amongst all the excitement. The next morning, I arrived in college. I had visited Pembroke only twice before: the first time at an Open Day last year and then subsequently at interview in December. I walked into the Porters’ Lodge with all the confidence of a Cambridge student. Yeah, this could be home.

12.

it’s kind

of “in the

North”? Yeah, like idk maybe a hundred miles above here...? But it is still, nevertheless,

crushingly dull.

13.

Despite the needlessly-confusing way in which staircase rooms are numbered in college, I found my own with little

difficulty. I kept my door open while I unpacked and before long introduced myself to the other occupants of my floor. I filled my shelves with books, records and birthday cards. Yeah, this could be home. Lately, I’ve been thinking about home a lot. You meet a lot of people in your first weeks at Cambridge and as a consequence spend a lot of time talking about where you’re from. It’s small talk; polite conversation. A meme. In my case, it didn’t take long to realise that very few people know where my hometown actually is. With good reason. It is unremarkable, and it is in that mysterious place The North ... if only just. This is, however, also one of the most striking things about Cambridge. For someone like me who has spent the past twelve years living in a village with little more than a crossroads, even a small city such as this one is very busy and very diverse and very, very new. “Where is home for you?” is a genuine question I was asked within my first few days of living at Pembroke and the phrasing of it stuck with me for some reason. The question is slightly different, in my opinion, to a simple “where are you from?” . It’s a question of feeling, of belonging; of roots and growth and all those other, clichéd things. At the time, I thought nothing of it and answered as I would always do: with my hometown, but with every new day here, I can feel the truer answer shifting slightly. For the record, Freshers’ Week passed as quickly as it was always going to. Now term is beginning to pass similarly quickly and yet somehow it has only been (as of writing) three weeks. Life is intense . When first considering how best to write up my experiences of life as a fresher at Cambridge, I came up with a long list of words to make clear my many and varied

14.

thoughts on the subject. These range from vaguely universal words like enjoyment or expectation to more oblique terms, such as rushing , bubble , or evident truths . In full, the list reads almost like a poem. It’s a structure I like to use in times when I need to note down my thoughts without necessarily knowing exactly what it is that I’m trying to express. Call it a cop-out if you like, but that’s sort of how I feel about life at Cambridge so far. I’m still in a liminal period. Still settling in. Still smoothing out.

The question is slightly different, in my opinion, to a simple “where are you from?” . It’s a question of feeling, of belonging; of roots and growth and all those other, clichéd things. At the time, I thought nothing of it and answered as I would always do: with my hometown, but with every new day here, I can feel the truer

answer shifting

slightly. At this point, life is suddenly so much bigger in every single way. Latin becomes a thing. Societies, supervisions, studio days, and so many other activities take over your entire existence. You discover that taking time out for self-care is actually kind of rewarding. You feel like the world is yours for the taking because you’re young and that’s how you’re supposed to feel and y ou’ve made it to Cambridge, baby! But you’re likely exhausted, or hungover, or just woefully short on time, so it’ll have to wait for some other day. And then, at last, autumn arrives. And autumn is the season of change. And you can’t put this change into words because it’s terrifying and it’s unpredictable, but hey... that’s Cambridge for you.

15.

Pembroke Visits a Nearby College:

Peterhouse and a half, because weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not awful people

Prune Corel, Anna Mochar and Cal Hewitt venture across Trumpington Street to explore Peterhouse. Their verdict is not a good one. Peterhouse is not what it seems. In fact, we are inclined to question whether it is actually a college or a great cover-up (more on that later). In the space of a good hour we saw a grand total of six people, one of whom was a strange man in the graveyard. On our quest to discover more, we attempted to accost one of those who did cross our path with maybe a little too much enthusiasm, judging from the fact that he shoved in earphones and promptly ran away. In the absence of any concrete testimony from Peterhouse members we were consequently forced to form our own opinion, which we shall now present. 16.

positive points : symmetry and prettiness

Cal ignoring us because Peterhouse is that pretty

cute hall ! herb garden

oooo magic portal

We were too scared to go any closer to this portal

Strike a pose for symmetry, please

deer 17.

negative point s :

asymmetry and ugliness ?

This is the sign that ruined the illusion for us. As did the ugly carpet.

Feeling empty â&#x20AC;Ś

empty

18.

no ur

Where is everybody ?

spoooooky Funky little graveyard …

y bar

ring, nobody around,

o cafe ghhh

deer-less deer park Based on this evidence we are inclined to believe that the college is as empty as it is because all its members (and the deer) step through the magic portal and into a parallel universe. It seems probable that the ‘college’ was constructed to cover up this fact when the portal was first discovered in 19 . 1284.

Lola’s is not the only slice of tropical paradise in Cambridge – tucked away by the JP, there stands a Japanese fibre banana tree (which actually originates from Southern China rather than Japan), also known as Musa Basjoo. Sadly, the tree is only ornamental: the bananas would be pulpy and seedy and inedible, if they were ever even allowed hot enough circumstances to grow. Another Musa Basjoo plant at Clare flowered and bore fruit in 2006 and 2016 after spates of great weather. Here’s to hoping that the

pass by. The planting of the bed that it’s in is dreamy – both tropical and local plants surround the tree, and it fits in without fading away. It is also well settled into the college atmosphere - like most Pembroke students, it is practically impossible

… like most Pembroke students, it is practically impossible to overfeed and is thirsty all the time… Pembroke plant can catch up soon if the weather permits. Interestingly, the tree is monocarpic, meaning that it dies once it bears fruit, leaving behind smaller ‘pups’ that grow up to become Tree Jr. The banana tree is, for me, one of the most striking and memorable things about Pembroke, and it was the first thing I noticed when I moved in. Something about its exoticism, especially given its surprising East Asian origins, feels oddly satisfying. Even though it is well established as part of the Pembroke scenery, it’s pleasantly surprising every time you

20.

The Pembroke gardens have clearly been planted with such care that is most definitely worth taking a fiveminute walk in them to notice the finer details. See if you can find the bed of succulents and jet-black grass which are particularly lovely. In other plant related news, the Old Court grass is doing well. Gone are the days when it was a slightly lacklustre square of soil. It just keeps going from strength to strength (hopefully inspiring its students to do the same)!

Pembroke Plants #1

The Banana Tree Plant columnist Anki Deo introduces a fruity piece of vegetation, in the first instalment of Pembroke Plantsâ&#x20AC;¨

illustrations by Dan Wakefield

21.

Productive Procrastination day in the life of a History fresher

by Katy Bennett

8.30 am

& Eleanor Turner

wake up.

8.35

contemplate possibility of making 9am lecture.

decision made :

its only Week Three, and therefore too early to start missing lectures …

fifteen minutes of panicked getting ready ensues

hordes of tourists and cyclists make

8.50

walk to Sidgwick

find out lecture is basically useless. Regret getting out of bed, but feel proud for having

actually done something before midday. head back to college. Attempt to read article in which author keeps switching from English to Latin midsentence. Marvel at the notion that this is a

done thing.

weak will to work succumbs to need to eat. Heat up soup in   gyp. Feel like a real adult who cooks for themselves.

1 pm 22.

Site torturous.