A Blog at Bedtime

Yikes! Once again there has been quite the hiatus in my blogging. Being back in Cambridge I'm now a little snowed under with work, and these sort of gaps will probably continue until I'm done with my exams a week into June. C'est la vie, so ist das Leben, and that's the way the cookie crumbles.

What's been going on in the world? Mostly work, as I said, but some other interesting things have happened. At Christ's right now we are holding our very own referendum on whether or not to keep these weird Scholar's Ballot things. Essentially, the current system is that if you get a 1st in your exams then you get an older, better room; some people see this as grossly unfair, others an acceptable reward or incentive. I haven't made up my mind yet, but I suppose I have a few thoughts:
  • I must admit I'm sceptical about the incentive thing. Surely people here want to do well anyway without the offer of a room! I think the 'Oh yeah the room thing incentivises me' is something people say rather than something with much actual grounding in truth. I highly doubt there's much demonstrable correlation between colleges that offer scholars rooms and higher grades (though I'm happy to be proved wrong!).
  • The college seems unlikely to acquiesce to the change whichever way the vote goes at the moment!
  • Given that it's been demonstrated that grade distribution is to some degree biased in all sorts of nasty, socially unequal directions - it's more common for men to get firsts in history than women, for instance, which surely is a sign of pretty damning structural inequality - you could certainly argue that assigning rooms on 1sts is a little dodgy (does it institutionalise inequality?). On the other hand, there are certain counter-points:
    • As someone today said to me: isn't the real issue there the fundamental structural inequality rather than the Scholar's Ballot per se?
    • What would opponents of the Scholar's Ballot's perspective be were these inequalities not to exist? Would they still be against? Is it simply demeaning to prevent certain people from getting great rooms because of their grades?
Student opinion at the moment seems mixed and indifferent, so I have no real idea how the vote will go. It should certainly be very interesting!

In other news: tickets went on sale for Imaginary today: you can buy them here!! https://www.theotherpalace.co.uk/whats-on/imaginary
Our poster features an extremely cute picture of our wonderful leading boys, whose names I am too afraid to reveal because I genuinely don't know how aggressive child protection laws are. Let's call them Balthazar and Golgothor. They are 10 and 13 respectively. 10!! And a lead in an off-west-end show!! What I would give - and I hope I don't sound too old saying this - to be that age and involved in such an amazing experience. It must all feel so exciting in an otherworldly and ecstatically colourful way, like childhood is. It's exciting enough for me.


I worry about childhood a lot, because I don't remember mine very well (and I'm hardly far off it!!). I couldn't tell you what I did in a typical day when I was 9, for instance - definitely a lot of sonic the hedgehog playing, and I rode a bike then, so probably a bit of that, but this was the pre-MT, pre-history (NOT literally), pre-running, pre-Facebook era. I obviously was not me then, but I was obviously me a bit.

Everyone is always longing for the simplicity of childhood. It has an extraordinary captivating power: Maggie Thatcher's politics was practically about recreating what she felt to be the world of her childhood, or her father the grocer, of a simpler time. But nothing is simple in life, and if political careers always end in failure then I suppose childhood always does too. Pessimistic? Yes. Adulthood isn't all bad, and I can't shake the feeling that childhood was probably a much duller affair than it seems in retrospect. But if you don't necessarily lose something special when you grow up, growing up is at least partly a fight to keep that something special alive. Childhood's matter, and I'll keep trying to remember mine.

I've no idea what is bringing on this nonsense about childhood. Time to bed I think.

RJLF

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Revision and No Cats Makes Bob a Dull Boy

Image
BBC News informs me today that the Marshall Library in Cambridge has adopted a three-legged cat in order to relieve exam stress (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-39526457). Because it finds it quite hard to stay upright on three legs, it apparently only ever moves around very, very quickly, which undoubtedly must make for a single ray of light in the otherwise hellish lives of economics students. I for one think that this cat policy should be extended to all libraries in Cambridge, although perhaps they ought to vary up the animals a bit (a Polar Bear for the Scott Polar Research Institute? A Yale for the library at Christ's? A Sloth for the English library? etc.). Christ's does, in fact, have a college cat, who I'm told migrated from her old home at Jesus. Her name is Rocket, and she seems to have become less timid over time, for where once she would flee whenever she saw me she know invites me out to tea, formal and walks to Grantchester. My friend Be
Read more

Where You Can See My Sky - Justifying Writing

I've wanted to write a blog for years. Lots of my friends keep diaries, something I've always shied away from, partly because they seem too introspective for someone as unashamedly performative as myself and partly because they take so long to write - and, as my friend James observed to me the other day, there's not much romanticism in typing up a diary! Blogs are different, but I've never bothered to actually set one up until now. Why the change of heart? 1) It's a Monday out of term, and I am both bored and anxious about my inability to relax constructively. 2) Several of my friends write excellent blogs, and I am obviously jealous of this. 3) Cynicism about writing is a bad thing. When I was doing research for my coursework (I am a nerd, and proud) I came across this quite encouraging passage from The Worst Journey in the World , a brilliant account of polar exploration coming ever closer to its 100th birthday and written by a man with the silliest name ev
Read more

Franklin goes to China(town)

Image
I initially planned to write this blog every other day rather than every day, and that might still happen, but for now it seems to have become a daily affair. Ellie asked if I actually did interesting things every single day, which offended me deeply, but I suppose you can tell if I've had a fairly boring day if I just copy and paste one of my history essays in here, or if I start raving about Honeymoon in Vegas . Yesterday was not a boring day because we were all getting together to celebrate me mam. I'm a slightly biased source, but after years of reflection I have decided that my mum is *objectively* one of the best mums in the world. She is certainly one of the kindest and most approachable: fingers and toes are not enough to count the number of people I know who have relied on my mum for help, or who have thought of her as a dear and close friend. She did a brilliant job with all of us growing up (right now she has just refused my help with the washing, which speaks for
Read more