graduation weekend dispatches

Grantchester revisited. Among the items on the Cambridge tourist to-do list that we missed when my family visited in January is the walk to Grantchester. This may sound familiar to longtime readers with sharp memories. Grantchester is a tiny village a few miles up the River Cam where the poet Rupert Brooke once hosted future members of the Bloomsbury Group—including John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Bertrand Russell—for tea and civilized conversation. Today Brooke’s old home and orchard are a teahouse that preserves some of the memory of that group.

After my parents and I arrived back in Cambridge for graduation weekend, the Grantchester walk was first on the agenda, but unfortunately the appointed day did not turn out quite the way I might have hoped. Contradicting an observation I had made earlier in the trip that thunder and lightning are rare in Britain, the afternoon was spotted with thunderstorms and pouring rain, with spells of cold drizzle in between. Dispirited by the weather and feeling a touch of pre-departure depression, I felt like calling off the walk, but my parents were game to face the storms, mud, and cows. The teahouse and surrounding orchard would usually be jammed with people on a summer afternoon, but for at least part of the time we were the only people sitting outside. In the end I was glad we went—the hot tea, conversation, and visiting a fun old place helped to restore my mojo for the festivities to come that evening.

Latin lessons. After changing into some dry clothes, we headed to Emma, where I had organized a graduation-eve formal dinner for Development Studies classmates and their families. The countries represented included China, India, Japan, Brazil, the U.S., Canada, Austria, Germany, and Greece. We had pre-dinner drinks in the cloisters by the college chapel and then moved on to a cozy upstairs room with lots of portraits of dead white men in wigs. I was incredibly grateful that Dave, a member of the catering staff who we always prayed would be the one quarterbacking our MCR dinners, was overseeing things. Dave did throw me one surprise, though: shortly after we were all seated, he came over to me and asked if I wanted to recite the College grace. I think my initial response was on the lines of, “uhhhh… I don’t speak Latin, Dave.” He showed me where both pre- and post-dinner graces were printed in the program and we had a 30-second dress rehearsal. I remember exactly two things from the third of a year of Latin I had in seventh grade (and any Latin scholars in the audience are welcome to correct me on this). First, the letters more or less always make the same sounds, unlike in English; second, it’s pronounced more or less the way a native English speaker would expect. With that slender bit of background knowledge and Dave’s confidence, I read out the grace without any obvious stumbles. I don’t know if the same could be said for my pronunciation, but I doubt anyone in the room had the slightest idea what I was saying. If you're curious you can check out the graces, with translations, here.

Pull my finger. Graduation, like so many other things in Cambridge, is steeped in formality and 800 years of tradition and takes little note of the way the rest of the world prefers to do things. There are lots of graduation ceremonies on different throughout the year, and the timing of any particular student’s graduation depends a lot on the idiosyncrasies of his or her course. There are no go-out-and-get-‘em speeches. Graduates shuffle through their small piece of the all-day ceremony by college, so I wasn’t even with my Development Studies classmates. My required outfit included a tuxedo, a white bow tie and bands (which made me feel like I should be trying somebody for witchcraft in 1690s Salem), a black gown, and a big black hood lined with blue silk draped over my back. I knew little about the ceremony going in and warned my parents not to expect much.

What I did know was that I was going to have to hold some guy’s finger. (Eight hundred years of solemn tradition, building up to… a fart joke?) Each college appoints one of its fellows as Praelector, and from what I can tell that role involves presenting the graduating students and enforcing the dress code. Rumor has it that if one of us students commits a wardrobe infraction, our college Praelector is fined… in bottles of port. Anyway, the graduates from each College march into a fancy old building known as the Senate House, and their Praelector extends a hand to the first four graduates in the phalanx. As each graduate holds onto one of those fingers, the Praelector leads the group forward and gives a brief testimonial, in Latin, to their learning and morals and their fitness to proceed to the degrees which they are to be awarded.

Now comes the really weird part. Picture, at the center of this grand assembly, a fairly senior man or woman sitting in a fancy chair and dressed in a bright red cape lined with white fur. This is (rarely) the Chancellor, Prince Philip; or (less rarely) the Vice Chancellor; or (usually) a deputy of hers, often the Master or President of a college. Our caped MC was the Master of Magdalene College, and the outfit combined with his kind face and round glasses gave him the appearance of a clean-shaven Santa Claus. After the Praelector’s testimonial, each individual graduate’s name is called, and each in turn kneels on a cushion in front of the big chair and extends his or her joined hands as if in prayer. It looked a bit like we were being knighted, minus the part with the sword. The presiding officer then clasps the graduate’s hands and formally confers the degree, in Latin. The new graduate rises, taking extreme care not to trip over the gown in the process, and gives a bow before exiting stage right.

Amazingly, the least ceremonious part was the paper diploma. After all of these traditional flourishes, I was expecting a huge piece of parchment with Latin calligraphy and perhaps a wax seal. Instead, what I got was a piece of 7x10 paper that looks like something I could have easily printed out on a home laser printer. It certifies, in English, that I attended the Congregation of 18 July 2009 and only later gets around to mentioning that I was awarded a Master of Philosophy degree. The mode of presentation was no more dramatic: we received our diplomas inside a plastic sleeve from an usher as we exited the Senate House. Like most of my friends, I opted to get a wooden University of Cambridge frame—partly because I fear that no one will believe it’s a diploma otherwise, and partly because I fear that one day I might accidentally toss it out with some old bank statements.

This has probably sounded a bit snarky, and there certainly was plenty of joking all around about the sillier aspects of the ceremony. But like many other things here, I think Cambridge’s odd approach to graduation is best approached with an open mind, a sense of humor, and a healthy dose of respect for eight centuries of history. And most importantly, after the red capes and Latin incantations we all get to walk away as Cambridge alumni—which is really, really cool in any language.

quintessential cambridge experience #4: may week

The pinnacle of the social year at Cambridge is May Week-- which, as you should expect by now, is not in May and lasts considerably longer than a week. I've discussed the Cambridge institution of May Balls before, but here's a quick refresher, which I have lazily copied from my February 15 blog entry and pasted here:

"If you thought formal hall sounded decadent, you ain't seen nothing yet. May Balls are all-night parties put on by most of the colleges... and they are nothing if not celebrations of excess. Think of them as a cross between prom and Project Graduation, marinated in booze. Ticket prices vary widely, but a middle-of-the-road May Ball starts around £100 (about $145). The more prestigious balls are very hard to get into; the ball at St. John's College once made a Time magazine list of the 10 best parties in the world."

I attended two May Balls this year, one at my own Emmanuel College and the other at Jesus College, which I chose because lots of my Development Studies classmates are there. The timing was less than ideal, as they fell on back-to-back nights, but I know many May Ball warriors with far more exacting schedules than mine. To get a sense of what's involved in one of these bacchanals, pour yourself a glass of champagne and enjoy this photographic tour of the Emma May Ball, with the appoximate time each picture was taken.


7:45 pm: Dinner. Many balls offer "dining tickets," which allow you to start off your evening with a multi-course meal a la Formal Hall, for about £30 extra. Despite the general consensus that dining tickets are not worth it, given the copious quantities of food at no extra charge for the rest of the night, I decided to indulge just for the Emma ball.



11:oo pm: Texas hold 'em. Casino games are a May Ball staple. There's no real money at stake; instead, everyone gets an allotment of chips at the door, and those who are successful at poker, routlette or blackjack can cash in their chips for chances to win prizes like plasma TVs or plane tickets. Our poker game coincided with a port tasting in the same room, and James (to my right in this picture) was close enough to the port table that he could refill our glasses simply by swiveling around, not even needing to stand up. Needless to say, the decline in my poker performance was steep and severe-- no plasma screen TV for me!



12:30 am: Cornershop. Any May Ball worth its salt has a main stage with bands playing throughout the night, plus performances elsewhere on the college grounds by comedians, hypnotists, a cappella groups, and dancers. As I discovered at Williams and in Anchorage, these smallish venues tend to bring in bands that are either struggling to make it or washed up. Headlining the Emma ball was a British-Indian group called Cornershop, who are well past their prime and still coasting on the strength of their 1997 hit "Brimful of Asha." These one-hit wonders made the mistake of not saving their one hit for the end of their set, so shortly after the "Asha" was empty, the tent where they were playing nearly was too.



1:15 am: Dodge 'ems. Another essential part of the May Ball experience is carnival games and rides, which range from bumper cars (called dodge 'ems in Britain) to strength tests to ferris wheels. I had a car to myself, and after a full-speed collision with a car containing two of my friends, my butt got enough air that even the dodge 'em guy looked impressed. During the round after us, a piece of the ceiling came off and landed on some poor fellow's head, bringing back memories of that awful Boston tunnel accident. Fortunately this guy was fine- he needed some help out of the car, but I'm pretty sure it was because was blotto before he got in, not because of a concussion.



2:30 am: Hookah. The Ball brought in our friendly neighborhood purveyors of hookah and created a magical little space to chill under the branches of an ancient tree. For the uninitiated, a hookah (often used interchangeably with shisha) is a Middle Eastern water pipe used to smoke flavored tobacco. You can't see most of the pipe in this picture, but Ev (on the left) has the stem in his hand, and in the foreground you can see the blocks of charcoal that heat up the tobacco. At this point in the night, having somewhere to sit and relax was crucial, and I think the key to a successful May Ball is having lots of activities for different energy levels.



4:00 am: Silent Disco. I can't say I fully understand the appeal of Silent Disco, but apparently it's all the rage in Europe. Instead of grooving to the tunes supplied by a DJ, you get a personal set of headphones, which provide a small selection of channels with different types of dance music. When a particularly catchy song played on one of the channels, I would lift my headphones for a moment and could hear scattered people singing along amidst the sound of shuffling bodies and shoes.



5:50 am: Assembling for the "Survivors' Picture." Every May Ball has a "Survivors' Picture" for those who make it all the way to the end. There is also usually some modest breakfast food; Emma had gooey chocolate croissants from the Italian cafe across the street. After the picture was taken I walked home, slept for a few hours, and got ready to do it all again the following night at Jesus College's May Ball. What a life!

quintessential cambridge experience #3: bumps

This time of year is heavy with ritual in Cambridge, and among the finest of those rituals is May Bumps, a multi-day series of boat races on the River Cam. Every college at the University fields boat crews, as do the medical, veterinary and theological schools and Anglia Ruskin University. Both terms, “May” and “Bumps,” need some clarification. They “May” part is easier to explain: as in the case of May Balls, it’s a relic of an earlier time when the academic year was structured differently.

“Bumps” refers to the way in which boats—each with eight rowers plus a coxswain, who steers and yells out commands—advance in the rankings over other boats. The races are not timed, and as will be explained momentarily, many of the boats in a given division will not even race the entire course. In the Bumps, success is only about rank, and the way you improve your standing is to overtake (“bump”) the boat ahead of you. Roughly 18 boats race at a time, and prior to the starting cannon they line up in the order determined by the previous day’s rankings (or previous year’s, if it’s the first day), with about 1½ boat lengths of space between each one. If one boat bumps another, their race is over; both pull over to the banks to let the rest of their division go by, and on the next day’s race they swap places in the order. It’s also possible to “overbump”—if the 2nd boat bumps the 3rd, and then the 4th boat bumps the 1st, the latter two will swap places during the next go-around. At the end of several days of racing, the top boats in the top men’s and women’s divisions are crowned as “Heads of the River.” However, any boat can earn a bit of glory by winning “oars,” awarded to crews that bump other boats on four consecutive days.

The official May Bumps program claims that 15% of the University participates. It sounded unrealistically high at first blush, but then again it seems plausible that 15% of my friends and classmates are rowers. Though it is a great Cambridge experience, I never felt especially tempted to join a boat crew, perhaps because it’s famously demanding on participants’ schedules and sleep-wake cycles. I really enjoyed watching the races, though—a lot of people come out, and it’s a nice atmosphere. Here are a couple of the Emma boat crews with MCR members:


The Men's II boat- MCR friends Kevin and Pat are the two rowers on the far left.


The 4th-ranked Women's I boat. Fellow Ephs Catherine and Maggie are 2nd and 4th from right.

easter term dispatches

I meet Bill Gates Sr. Bill Gates père made his annual trip to Cambridge this week and addressed 140+ Gates Scholars following (surprise!) a big dinner at Wolfson College. He’s on the left in the slightly blurry shot above, along with the president of the Gates Scholars Society and the Vice-Chancellor of the University. (As an aside, the “Vice” part of her title is just a technicality; the official Chancellor is Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband, who has little involvement with the day-to-day administration of the University.)

The members of the Scholars Council were also invited to a luncheon with Mr. Gates and the other Trustees, but the seating arrangement and the late arrival of the VIPs conspired to prevent me from actually talking to him. Fortunately, he also attended a symposium in the Gates Room where a few scholars presented their research, and I managed to snag about 45 seconds of conversation during one of the breaks. It was about enough time to thank him for the note he sent me back in November and ask him a question about the Gates Foundation’s advocacy work in DC. We were standing, somewhat awkwardly, near one of the Gates Room’s two Macs. If it ever bothered him, he must be over it by now. He’s a giant of a man—I had to tilt my head upward at a pretty significant angle to make conversation—and at 83, he shows no sign of slowing down his activities with his son’s philanthropies.

The formal hall scoreboard. Following the brouhaha over my post about Cameroonian English, it was nice to see one of my blog entries get picked up in a friendlier environment. I just discovered that my “Ode to Formal Hall” was excerpted several months back on this website, which advocates for greater adoption of Oxbridge-style college systems at universities.

At the time I wrote that ode I had six college formals under my belt, and though I never had a numeral target, I’m proud (??) to report that I now have 18 conquests: Emmanuel, Peterhouse, Churchill, Christ’s, Trinity, Newnham, Homerton, Hughes Hall, Pembroke, Queen’s, Robinson, Magdalene, St. John’s, Gonville and Caius, Jesus, Darwin, Corpus Christi, and Selwyn. An MBA friend of mine is close to hitting up all 31 this year, but I don't know of anyone else who's in the same range.

During the above-mentioned luncheon with Bill Gates Sr., I was seated next to the provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust, who is basically the Cambridge-based CEO of the Trust. He also happens to be the president of Wolfson College, where the larger dinner with Bill Gates Sr. was held. He’s retiring next year and told me that “you have no idea how disconcerting it is to see your job advertised in the newspaper.” At one point during lunch the topic of my proclivity for formal halls came up, and I mentioned that I wasn’t sure if the Wolfson dinner should count, as it wasn’t technically a college formal. He told me, with a chuckle, that he didn’t think it should count and that I would have to come back another time. So I guess I have to take a ruling from the president of the college concerned as definitive, and the scoreboard remains at 18.

how they learn us at cambridge

Way back in early October, 54 bright-eyed Development Studies grad students packed into a seminar room to meet and mingle with our new professors and classmates. I don't remember much of what the profs said during their remarks, but I do distinctly remember an acerbic lecturer warning us not to expect any "spoon-feeding." I doubt anyone was expecting to be spoon-fed, and his comment might put a harsher spin on the teaching system here than it deserves. However, I've come to realize that the spirit of his remark runs through many of the things that make Cambridge different from my experience of higher education in the U.S. It would be an exaggeration to say there's a "sink or swim" mentality, and the atmosphere is collegial, but it's true that you're on your own here to a much larger extent than I've seen back on my side of the pond.

Back-loading. There's tons of variation among courses--as I will discuss later--but in most cases it's possible to go an alarmingly long time in Cambridge without doing any work. Most of the Development Studies classes here are year-long, and I didn't submit a single thing that counted for a grade until January. One of my classes is evaluated solely by means of a 3-hour exam later this month. (No pressure or anything!)

The philosophy seems to be that as a student, you're responsible for disciplining yourself to work even when deadlines are very distant. This has suited me just fine, as I can generally keep my procrastination under control, but for the undisciplined it poses major problems. Largely gone are concepts like midterms or problem sets, which provide incentives to study consistently and, if needed, a signal that one needs to ratchet things up before it's too late. We do have unassessed essays for some classes, with "supervisions" conducted by PhD students, but these do not necessarily resemble the work on which we'll later be evaluated. During a recent round of gathering student opinions in my capacity as student rep, the lack of feedback was the new #1 complaint, especially among non-native English speakers. To be fair, though, I'm not sure how much of this is a function of Cambridge vs. the U.S. and how much is a function of grad school vs. undergrad.

Resources. One of the starkest differences between small, uber-friendly Williams and big, impersonal Cambridge is the availability and ease of access of academic resources. It takes a certain amount of forethought, savvy, and competitive instinct to get the books you need here. At Williams I remember getting reading lists for my classes, buying the appropriate books at the bookstore, and receiving chapter- or article-length readings bundled together in course packets. Nobody seems to buy their books here--it would break the bank if I tried--and we don't get those handily photocopied course packets. You get the reading list, which often contains more readings than any human being could possibly digest in a year, and then it's you and the library.

Or should I say, libraries. This year I have used the Mill Lane library (Development Studies and a few related fields are housed there), my college library, my friends' college libraries (thanks guys!), the economics library, the geography library, the law library, and (cue dread-inspiring music) the University Library. The absurd monstrosity-- or is it a monstrous absurdity?-- that is the UL probably deserves an entry of its own sometime, so I won't get into detail now, but let's just say that any day in which I learn that a needed book is only at the UL and can only be used in the UL reading room is a sad, sad day.

I should probably mention at this point that there is little to no communication between the professors assigning the readings and the librarians selecting, buying, and stocking the books. The Mill Lane Library by now has many copies of the most sought-after Development Studies books, and usually one copy is not allowed to be checked out, so if you come after the stampede you're not completely screwed. Cambridge is huge enough that the risk of a book on a reading list being completely unavailable are practically nil. But you might have to bike across town to an obscure departmental library, or get your bud to check it out from his college.

Of course, there are mitigating factors and coping strategies. Nobody does all the reading, and for essay-based classes you can do well by intensively reading on your essay topics and getting a glancing familiarity with the other pockets of literature. For exam-based classes, any sane person gets in a reading group to benefit from some division of labor.

Anonymity, Accountability, and Feedback. My experience in the U.S. was that professors generally know the identity of the students whose essays and exams they were grading, and professors have a huge amount of discretion in assigning grades. The system could hardly be more different here. We submit all of our work anonymously, marked only with an individual student number; each exam or paper is graded (or "marked" as they say) by the instructor and a second "reader" whose identity we never know. All marking happens at the end of the year, so in many cases several months elapse between submission deadlines and marking. Somewhat irritatingly, we don't even get marks on individual exams or essays--students receive only an average mark for each class. And to top all of that off, all of the exam and essay questions, student responses, and marks for the entire year get shipped off to be scrutinized by an "external examiner" at a peer institution, such as a Development Studies program at Oxford or Sussex.

I can see the merits of this system: more objective evaluation of student work, greater uniformity of standards, external accountability for the department. Because this system severs the link between the professor-student relationship and grading, I imagine there's less grade inflation here, though I've never really been persuaded that grade inflation is such a big problem. Yet I think there's probably too little mercy mixed in with the justice. Sometimes a professor might have knowledge of mitigating circumstances, and I don't know that the occasional bit of accommodation for that is always a bad thing. The system also seems to suffer from a gaping lack of transparency--which is a troubling hallmark of this university at every level.

Variation among courses. There are huge differences in work routine and lifestyle between PhD students (who often have something that approximates a 9-to-5 job) and MPhil students such as yours truly. There is also tremendous variation between MPhil courses. Some require dissertations; some don't. Some treat the dissertation like a year-long class; others block off a few months at the end just for dissertation writing. Some are wrapped up by June; others go to September. Some have year-long classes; others have different modules each term.

The upshot is that there is much less of a shared academic experience across different programs. There have been times when I've been crazed with deadlines and some of my friends have been sitting pretty, and vice versa. On balance, I think this kind of variation is probably a good thing--let a thousand flowers bloom. I do think it militates against a broader community spirit, though. It's one of the reasons why Cambridge occasionally makes me think of the way some of my friends who have lived there describe New York City: vibrant and active, with limitless social activities, but with a strong undertow of isolation.

I don't know how all of this sounds to outsiders, and I'm sure a lot of what I've described seems crazy. Now that I've been here for a while, I realize more and more that in a multilayered, complicated and crusty place like Cambridge, there is often a strange rationality to the absurdity. If you bang your head against the wall enough, you can reach a point of acceptance and even appreciation for the odd ways of Cambridge.

mid-lent term dispatches

The atmosphere in Cambridge has been noticeably different during Lent Term, the middle third of the academic year. It seems like everyone is hunkering down and working much harder, yours truly included. Certain Michaelmas Term luxuries, such as attending lectures for classes I am not taking for credit, are now largely a thing of the past. At least eastern England at this time of year is damp, cold, and gross, so it doesn't feel like we're missing anything.

An unpleasant class. One of the changes in format in our program during Lent Term has been semiweekly student-led seminars. Last week a classmate from Sudan conducted a seminar that was supposed to be about NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and civil society in Sudan. As many of you know, I was an activist with Save Darfur while I was in Alaska. My Sudanese classmate is a very pleasant guy, but occasionally he has made comments that have made me bristle. During his presentation, he spent relatively little time on the topic and mostly tried to debunk what everybody knows is going on in the Western part of Sudan.

He used many of the tropes that the Sudanese government uses to defend itself, including:
(1) referring to Darfuris are "rebels" and never once using the word "civilians";
(2) asserting, without evidence, that the Janjaweed militias are a "myth";
(3) cataloguing crimes and abuses perpetrated by employees of international organizations working in Darfur--which undoubtedly have happened--while never mentioning the hundreds of thousands of murders and rapes in Darfur, the millions of refugees streaming out of the country, or the burned villages;
(4) suggesting that the Darfur atrocities have been fabricated by some kind of Western activist-government-media conspiracy against Sudan.

As far off the mark as I think he was, I didn't know if challenging him directly on the facts during class would be the right approach. Perhaps fortunately, I didn't really have a chance, because he went on long enough that there was very little time for Q and A. From talking to some other classmates afterward, I got the sense that everybody knew the score. One recommended that I look at it as an "anthropological experience." I don't know if I will try talking to him about it in a less public setting, or even if it's worth doing so. If my German classmate were a Holocaust denier, I don't think I would bother trying to reason with her. The best approach I can think of for now would be to say something like, "that's not how I understand the situation in your country at all-- I'm just interested to hear more about where you're coming from?"

Cambridge has balls. Luckily even in the middle of Lent Term it isn't all work and no play. On Friday I attended the somewhat misnamed Springball at Churchill College. Springball is a very early preview of Cambridge's famous May Balls. If you thought formal hall sounded decadent, you ain't seen nothing yet. May Balls are all-night parties put on by most of the colleges, mostly during one week in mid-June (they were in May a long time ago, hence the name), and they are nothing if not celebrations of excess. Think of them as a cross between prom and Project Graduation, marinated in booze. Ticket prices vary widely, but a middle-of-the-road May Ball starts around £100 (about $145). The more prestigious balls are very hard to get into; the ball at St. John's College once made a Time magazine list of the 10 best parties in the world.

Churchill's Springball is nowhere near that level, but it's a pretty crazy party nonetheless. I went with a large posse of Gates people, many of whom are at Churchill, and we stayed from 8 pm until the bitter end at 3 am- which is very early by Cambridge ball standards. The food was generally pretty bad (surprise!), though I was a big fan of the donut stand. Activities included multiple concerts and dance floors, sumo wrestling in big padded suits, massages, an inflatable obstacle course, karaoke, and laser tag. I lost one of my cufflinks in the ball pit, and one of my friends -- who worked the second half of the ball in exchange for attending the first half for free -- miraculously found it at the end of the night and got it back to me.

You will surely be hearing more about May Balls, as I'm going to be attending two. One is an Oz-themed ball at Jesus College, which is where many of my Development Studies classmates are. The other is, obviously, Emma's ball. Fortunately I have no part in the planning of our ball, which got some bad publicity recently for a poorly chosen and subsequently withdrawn theme: "Empire." I didn't find the theme all that upsetting, and I do believe the intent was to "reflect the style and fashions of both Britain at the end of the nineteenth century and the diverse countries and cultures with which Britain was then entwined," but I'm irritated that the committee was so politically tone-deaf.

The contrast in subject matter above is not lost on me, and on Saturday I talked on the phone with my friend Kate, whom I'll be visiting at her Peace Corps post in Cameroon in late March. We shared a laugh over how a sentence like "I lost my cufflink in the ball pit" could be so completely foreign to her day-to-day life. Though I'm completely immersed in it right now, I am sure that Lent Term in Cambridge will seem alien to me too when I'm where she is.

keynes' cambridge

I'm not usually prone to thinking that it might have been cool to be alive for another era of history. I know that my brother Casey (yes, the one recently pictured with the giant bee) considers himself to have been born a couple centuries past the time that might have suited him best. I guess I just like 80-year life expectancies, affordable long-distance travel, and instantaneous communication too much.

Yet being here occasionally makes me pine a little bit for the Cambridge of the first half of the 20th century. To be sure, lots of nasty stuff was happening in the world -- wars, the Great Depression, etc. -- and this university town, while somewhat removed from the real world, has never been completely insulated from it. I probably would have eaten at the soup kitchens that served the students of the day, and I certainly would have seen lots of my classmates forced to interrupt their studies and never come back. Still, I have gotten a few tantalizing glimpes into the kind of ferment that was going on here in that era, when the intellectual giants of the day rubbed shoulders and students followed their preferred gurus around to pubs and fireside seminars. Cambridge just isn't like that anymore, and I'll get to why I think that is in a minute.

The figure I most associate with that era is John Maynard Keynes, the economist I mentioned in my post about walking to Grantchester. In case you aren't familiar with Keynes, he's best known for the view that an increase in government spending is sometimes needed to get national economies unstuck from a self-reinforcing trap of high unemployment and low demand for goods and services. It sounds like common sense today (witness a Republican president's declaration that "we're all Keynesians now"), but it was revolutionary at the time, when it was believed that the appropriate government response to a depression was to balance the budget by cutting spending and/or raising taxes. You can also see why Keynes, who has always been controversial and a source of deranged anger on the political right, is suddenly a very popular thinker again.

What I'm thinking about here, though, is less the content of Keynes' theories than the kind of intellectual he was. Here was an economist who associated with philosophers and novelists and biologists, who concerned himself with the big issues of the time. He was a bon vivant, married a Russian ballerina, and was compared to God with some regularity with colleagues. (Interestingly, Keynes himself regarded the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as "God.") It seems to me that academia was both more personal and more connected with the real world then. I am always struck when I hear lectures from some of the older economists at Cambridge, who are not old enough to have known Keynes (he died in 1946), but who did know many of the people in his circle early in their academic careers. I get the sense that they are talking about old friends; there is a spirit of collaboration, camaraderie, and purpose that comes though the nostalgia of these old Cambridge dons.

Don't get me wrong -- there is still plenty of that at Cambridge today. For a lot of reasons, though, this no longer feels like the place for heroic intellectual inquiry followed by a trip to the pub with friends. For one thing, Cambridge has seen the same kind of explosion in clubs, activities, sports, and whatnot that most campuses have seen in the last few decades, combined with the parallel entertainment explosion in TVs, computer and video games, movies, iPods, etc. All very, very good things in and of themselves, but as a byproduct we seem to have developed a variant of the "Bowling Alone" problem. Life here is fragmented. I heard one of those old Keynesians observe, a little wistfully, that "it's hard to get people to come to evening seminars these days." Why talk about the pressing issues of the day when movie theaters, salsa dancing, and Nintendo Wii beckon? Again, I would rather have my technology than not have it, thank you very much-- but all of this progress is not cost-free.

But there's another reason why I think there are no more Bloomsbury Groups, and it also has to do with fragmentation of a different kind. My perception of academia is a long-term trend toward hyperspecialization: the rewards and prestige accrue to people who make their name in smaller and smaller slices of human knowledge. Whether or not a particular line of inquiry has any relevance in the real world doesn't necessarily matter. Interdisciplinary programs like Development Studies are chronically under-resourced, and often have to fight for survival, in this kind of environment.

This trend plays out differently in different disciplines, but I think economics is one of the worst affected. Economics seems to be on a one-way track toward increasing levels of abstraction and mathematization. Methodology trumps content, conceptual innovation trumps social value. I enjoyed Freakonomics, but I think it has helped unleash a monster. The decision procedure for economics grad students is no longer "think of an important/interesting thing to study --> figure out how to gather and process data," now it's "find some data --> think of something sexy to do with it." Keynes pondered how to end the Great Depression; a Freakonomist thinks about how to spot cheaters from sumo wrestling scores.

So there aren't many Keyneses anymore; Amartya Sen might be the best we have today. (I have mentioned him before in my description of formal hall at Trinity College and hopefully will write more about him at another time.) I have all but ruled out an academic career for myself, and the thought of getting a PhD fills me with consternation. It wouldn't have been such a hard question in Keynes' Cambridge.

ode to mill road

When I have occasion to explain to somebody how far from the center of Cambridge I live, I usually give them this metaphor: if Cambridge is the solar system, and you take King's Chapel as the sun, I live a little bit past Saturn. There are plenty of people who live farther out in the sticks than I do, but I still have a pretty hefty commute to most places. That's the downside of my living situation.

The upside is that I get to live half a block off Mill Road, which is Cambridge at its most multicultural and bohemian. Mill Road is roughly two miles of nonstop restaurants, shops, bakeries, cafes, pubs, and small ethnic grocery stores of every variety. It has banks, hookah bars, a thrift store, churches, a mosque, and a cemetery. Here is a true story from Mill Road: after purchasing Filipino beer at the Chinese grocery, I walked past the Polish grocery to a French-themed, Moroccan-owned cafe, where a cute Lithuanian barista serves me Costa Rican coffee. It's the kind of place that would make Thomas Friedman pass out with excitement. A friend suggested I should send him this anecdote and perhaps it could be the basis of a new book. The World Is Mill Road?

My favorite Mill Road haunts include Carlos' Kebab King, where a garrulous Turk serves up delicious £3 falafel, and CB1, which claims to be the world's oldest internet cafe. (The name comes from the first three characters in the postal code that covers this part of Cambridge.) CB1 started mixing coffee and e-mail in 1995, and during the Mill Road Winter Fair this weekend they displayed some of their original computers in the window. The one on the far right is the original Apple Macintosh, which I remember from my elementary school days:


The above-mentioned Winter Fair was a great way for Mill Road to strut its stuff, and the chronically busy sidewalks were even more jammed with humanity than usual. During the fair, as I walked over the railroad bridge that roughly bisects Mill Road, I happened on a scene that captures the spirit of the neighborhood beautifully. There was a band of about 50 or so t-shirt clad people of all shapes, sizes, and ages playing drums and other percussive instruments. There was a small crowd gathered around, with hippies and church ladies and little kids boogeying to the music, and bubbles floating through the air. It sounds ridiculous as I type it out, but I loved it. Mr. Friedman: the Mill Road theory of world peace?

ode to formal hall

I have complained about bureaucracy and kvetched about overcommitment, but as Michaelmas Term '08 draws to a close I thought I'd focus on the positive and pay tribute to some of the things that make Cambridge special. The first installment of a multi-part series: an ode to formal hall.

Each and every one of Cambridge's 31 colleges have some version of formal hall, which is a regular, highly ritualized multi-course dinner. I've already described formal hall for you once, but at the time I didn't appreciate what a central feature of Cambridge life it is. No joke: I eat an extravagant, sumptuous, Thanksgiving-sized meal here at least once per week. Every college does it a little differently, and the character of formal hall is a little window into the soul of a college. Some colleges hold formal hall quite often, others quite rarely; some require academic gowns, others do not; some seat the fellows (i.e. teaching faculty) of the college at an elevated "high table," others are more egalitarian; some have their own port and a cheese course after dinner, other's don't; some have multiple elaborate graces in Latin, others have a pithy two-word blessing. Most colleges have pre-dinner drinks and post-dinner parties in other spaces on the college grounds.

I would guess that the majority of Cambridge grads go to formal hall at their own college with some regularity, and it's also possible to attend other college's formal halls either by getting a friend to bring you as a guest, or through "formal hall exchanges" between colleges. Some M.Phil students set the ambitious goal of dining at all 31 colleges during their year. I haven't adopted that goal for myself, but I have been to six so far, so I'm on track to hit up more than half of the total by the end of the year. Here's a photographic tour of five of them:

Newnham is one of three all-women's colleges at Cambridge, but they sure seem to import a lot of guys for formal hall. There was much fodder for stereotyping: the hall itself reminded me of a wedding cake, and after the final grace the head of the college delivered an unusual pep rally-style speech about what a great term it's been. I went with four of my Development Studies classmates, two of whom are members of Newnham.

Trinity is among the oldest, wealthiest, most prestigious, and most traditional of the Cambridge colleges. I ate my dinner with a large group of fellow Gates Scholars under a looming portrait of Amartya Sen. Sen is a former master of Trinity College and Nobel Prize-winning economist/philosopher whose thought is the basis for one of the courses I've been taking this term. Some of his most pathbreaking work has been in the area of famine, and the obvious irony did complicate my feelings about our opulent feast. I suspect that's just how Professor Sen would like it.

Churchill is a relative newcomer, founded in 1958. Named for the former prime minister and styled as England's MIT, Churchill has a large male majority, but only because of its emphasis on engineering and other high-tech fields. Churchill is also one of the more secular colleges. The pre-dinner grace is just two words: benedictus benedictat. ("May the blessed one give a blessing" or something like that.) After dinner, the students traditionally raise a rather sedate toast "to the Queen," followed by a rambunctious toast "TO SIR WINSTON!"

Peterhouse is the oldest college in Cambridge, and the fact that they've had eight centuries of practice doesn't mean the food was good-- in fact, it was pretty awful. The hall is entirely candle-lit and reminds one of a medieval castle, which I suppose is pretty close to the truth. As the fellows were filing out at the end of the meal -- a ritual obliging the students to stand in silence -- somebody knocked their long bench over, sending it tumbling to the stone floor with a tremendous thud. As soon as the door closed behind the last fellow, the hall erupted in repressed laughter.

And last but not least, the best college, Emmanuel! We have "MCR formals" every other Monday, which means that we pack the hall with grad students and have some kind of theme dinner and after-party. I really do feel that Emma has some of the best food around, and the formal dinners always conclude with a cheese course and a glass of Emmanuel College port. (Yep, someone bottles it just for the college.) As one of the new MCR social secretaries, I'm now the one responsible for coordinating the MCR formals. But that's a tale for another post.

my second expat thanksgiving

My second Thanksgiving outside of the U.S. of A. certainly lacked the ambassadorial zeal of my first. I was in the Philippines for Turkey Day '05, and I took it as an opportunity to share a bit of American culture with my coworkers. The biggest challenge, as some of my dear readers may recall, was finding a turkey. Filipinos don't have much use for the bird, so I had to travel to a supermarket in a well-heeled part of Manila where the Americans tend to congregate.

No such heroics this time, perhaps because Americans are a dime a dozen in Cambridge and my raison d'être here isn't primarily about bridging cultures (though I suppose that can be part of it too). I was thankful to be invited to a party that someone else was organizing, and thankful that for the first time in four years I was not the one responsible for the turkey. I shared Thanksgiving with about fifteen Americans and a couple of curious non-Americans. We were mostly Williams and Harvard kids, and we space in which we convened is one those delectable Cambridge oddities: John Harvard's room. The founding benefactor of Harvard University was an Emma guy, and each year some lucky Harvard grad gets chosen through an elaborate selection process to live in what was allegedly his room.* Actually it's more like a suite, with a large wood-paneled living room, a kitchenette, a bedroom, and a guest room. The only drawback is that there's no bathroom... in fact, you have to go down the stairs and across the courtyard to get to one, just like in the good old days. But the big perk of being the "Harvard Scholar" is getting an entertaining budget for the year, and ours has been particularly good about spending hers on entertaining.

I volunteered to bring mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup, and I committed a small act of blasphemy by purchasing Canadian maple syrup, which was all that was available at Tesco. (I wonder if Big Maple has some kind of protectionist racket going....) I tried to atone by buying a bottle of California red to bring for the festivities. The food was great and the conversation lively, though somehow it felt a lot less like Thanksgiving than any other Thanksgiving I've had... including the one in Southeast Asia. We put a little bit of a Cambridge twist on it by having a glass of port with our pie at the end of the night.

While we're on the subject of thanks, I'd like to thank all of you for reading! While I like to tell myself that this blog would still be worth doing even if nobody was really reading it-- since in that case it would basically function as a journal, which isn't a bad thing to keep-- getting the occasional posted comment or mention of the blog in an e-mail or phone conversation helps me to stay motivated. Hope you all had a lovely holiday!

*There's reason to believe the provenance of the Harvard room, like so many other cool stories around here, is bunk. Like the story about the undergrad who demanded "cakes and ale" from an astonished proctor during an exam and cited an obscure, 400-year-old, never-revised university statute saying that gentlemen who sat for exams in excess of three hours were entitled to request cakes and ale. I wish that one were true!

more election updates

Alaska voters, in the end, opt for accountability. Good on 'em, or should I say us. My personal contact with Mayor Begich was pretty limited, since most of our advocacy was on federal and state-level policy, but I count myself as an admirer and I think he will do a great job.

And on the less-important elections front, I ended up winning the development studies student rep position after all, in spite of my efforts not to advance my own candidacy. The other new rep is a Brit and is also 26 years old, which I think puts us a couple years past the median age of the group. (Probably not the mean, though-- there are a few 30-somethings in the mix.) In any event, I was sorry not to see any developing country representation, but I'm flattered by the election and will give it my best shot. So my trifecta of positions is complete, and one of them is already giving me serious headaches. As my dad pointed out, I've had many models of professional and civic overcommitment, including Dad himself and my former boss from Alaska, so I'm proud to carry on the tradition.

from the less-important elections desk

Elections are in the air in Cambridge, and it's not just because of the latest round of regime change in the U.S. (and New Zealand!) After a not-so-suspenseful election, I am the new treasurer of the Gates Scholars Council, which organizes all of the social events, speaker series, publications, and other services provided to and by Gates scholars. I won this post through a Soviet-style election in which I was the only candidate, which was true of about half the Council positions. However, I did win convincingly over RON ("re-open nominations"), who is an option for every office. In my case, RON went down 95 to 1. RON got at least one vote in every race, leading me to believe that either (A) each of the new Council members has at least one archenemy or (B) somebody is making a statement for electoral competition.

After another, only-slightly-more-suspenseful election, I am also one of three Social Secretaries for the Emmanuel College MCR this year. I say only slightly more suspenseful because although there were four candidates for the three slots, one of them chose not to submit a "manifesto" (Cambridgespeak for a candidate's statement), which is tantamount to running for president and not campaigning. The planks of my platform included an Emma community service day, an Iron Chef-style cooking contest between graduate houses, and more opportunities to interact with Master Richard Thomas James Wilson of Dinton and other college muckymucks.

A third election is underway for two student reps to the Development Studies committee. I'm not really interested in this one and did not nominate myself, but someone put my name in. There are ten candidates, and unfortunately only one of the ten represents a developing country. The rest are mostly from the North America, the UK, and the Netherlands. Not to be ungrateful to whatever kind soul(s) nominated me, but I did not vote for myself and am hoping that I will lose. As an aside, I have a colorful tradition of occasionally not voting for myself... there is one particularly embarrassing story from my childhood that my mom likes to bring out if she feels that some embarrassment is in order.

In other news: I'm going to Paris! I'm taking the high-speed train to the City of Lights tomorrow night with a small posse of Gates people. Updates on our très excellente adventure to come soon.

scoundrels!

i. Guy Fawkes -- The night after the election was Guy Fawkes night in England. If you've seen V for Vendetta, you may recall that the character "V" wore a mask modeled after Guy Fawkes, and you may also recall a little rhyme that starts out like this: "Remember, remember, the fifth of November / The Gunpowder Treason and plot / I can think of no reason the Gunpowder Treason / Should ever be forgot."

The objective of the plot in question was to assassinate King James I and blow up the Houses of Parliament in London, in response to the anti-Catholism of the Crown and the government. It failed, and the conspirators were executed. Fawkes was not the ringleader of this band of 17th-century Catholic terrorists, but he was the one caught with the explosives, so it is his name that has gone down in history.

Naturally, Fawkes is remembered here as the villain, not the hero, of 5 November. Today Guy Fawkes night is marked with fireworks, bonfires, and burning effigies of Fawkes. By now the night has lost most of its original political content and is basically an excuse for pyrotechnics and merrymaking. I attended the festivities in Cambridge, still in an exhausted stupor from the election all-nighter. It's a pretty big production here, with roughly 20,000 people crammed onto Midsummer Common and all manner of carnival rides, games, and booths. When you're so engrossed in university life, it's easy to forget that people actually live in Cambridge, so I was glad to share in a local and national tradition.

ii. Oliver Cromwell -- Craving some solitude on Saturday afternoon, I hopped a train for a short trip to Ely (EE-lee), a small town two stops from Cambridge on the northbound line. (The intermediate stop is a conspicuously landlocked placed called Waterbeach.) Ely is famous primarily for its magnificent cathedral, which I did visit, and slightly less famous for being the home of Oliver Cromwell when he launched his political career. If you're not familiar with Cromwell -- and I believe most Americans are not -- he's thought to be part of the reason why the Founders of the U.S. initially avoided a strong executive under the Articles of Confederation.

A half-century after the Gunpowder Plot, Cromwell and his associates actually did succeed in killing the King--this time for being too Catholic. He was a member of Parliament and a devout Puritan who thought King Charles I was introducing a little too much pope-ish stuff into the liturgy and suppressing religious liberty. Cromwell became a leader of Parliament's army during the English Civil War and was one of the signers of Charles' death warrant. The country had a brief period of commonwealth government under an ineffectual Parliament, which Cromwell eventually dissolved, making himself "Lord Protector." He wielded near-absolute power for five years until his death. His son Richard took over before a brief spell before England reverted to the old monarchy under Charles II.

I visited Cromwell's house in Ely, which is now a museum. In various rooms you can try on period dress (with helmets!), vote on whether Cromwell was a hero or a villain (roughly 50/50 according to monthly tallies), and view a bizarre replica of Cromwell on his deathbed. Probably the most memorable part of the visit was a book I saw in the gift shop, called Oliver Cromwell's Warts. The double-entendre refers to both the Lord Protector's moral failings and the actual warts that dotted his face. The book jacket provides a wealth of gee-whiz facts about Cromwell, including a claim that he "once attended a party covered in poo." I would love to know that story, but "poo" was not listed in the book's index, and I didn't have time to look the hard way.

One gee-whiz fact about Cromwell that I can verify is the undignified fate of his earthy remains. Since he died before the reinstated monarchy could bring him to justice, Charles II had him exhumed and then posthumously hanged and beheaded. His head eventually came back to Cambridge, his alma mater, where it was reinterred at Sidney Sussex College. This plaque commemorates the occasion. It is said that only the Master of Sidney Sussex and a couple other college bigwigs know the actual location of the head, but I suspect that's a bit of Cambridge lore -- of which there are many -- that might not withstand scrutiny.

quintessential cambridge experience #2: punting on the cam

Punting has to be one of the most preposterous modes of transport ever invented. Among ways of getting from Point A to Point B that are faster and easier than punting are: walking, swimming, somersaulting, and doing that inchworm dance. Punting, one might say, is the ultimate celebration of British inefficiency.

And yet we do it and love it; it's THE activity for tourists in Cambridge. So what is punting, you ask? It consists of guiding a big, awkward wooden boat (a punt) along the river by pushing an enormous pole into the earth at the bottom of the river. It's only possible on an tiny river like the Cam, which can't be more than 20 meters across at its widest and is so calm that standing on the shore it can be hard to tell which way it's flowing. The mighty Mississip it ain't.

Last Sunday I went punting for the first time with Shannon and Christoph from my MCR and Christoph's girlfriend Miriam. I led off as "punter," and it only took a few minutes for me to tell that I was way out of my element. The punter stands precariously on the stern of the boat and tries desperately to maintain forward motion, not crash into the bank, and not fall in the water, while the passengers laugh at his/her misfortune. I did have one scary moment where the pole got momentarily stuck in the mud at the bottom of the Cam and I almost stayed behind with it-- there was a gasp from the rest of the group as I crouched down to steady myself.

Things got better when I had one crucial realization: you need to treat the pole primarily as a rudder, not as a motor. Pushing off the bottom of the riverbed is all well and good and easy enough, but the placement of the pole in between pushes makes the difference between smooth sailing and drunken zigzags. We punted along a famous stretch known as "the backs," a collection of neatly manicured lawns, ancient colleges and chapels, and numerous bridges. Everyone took a turn at the helm, and I'm sorry to report that the two Germans far outshone the two Americans in the punting department. A few pictures of the experience:


Along the Backs.


Christoph and Miriam with the "bridge of sighs."


Shannon and me with King's Chapel, which is Cambridge's most famous landmark.

matriculation

I have a backlog of quintissentially Cantabrigian experiences to report to you on, so I begin tonight with Matriculation. It's one of those wonderfully tradition-encrusted institutions of Cambridge life, and it marks the official beginning of membership in one's College. I've never read any Harry Potter books, but there were lots of elements of the experience that made me think of Harry Potter. (Quick review: Cambridge has 31 colleges, and each grad student is affiliated with one of them, more for housing and social life than for academics. Mine is Emmanuel College.)

The ceremony began with a group photo in the front court of the College, in front of the chapel. We were required to look respectable--dark suits for gents--and wear our academic gowns, which are a must-have unless you're at one of those "modern" and "progressive" colleges. Before the big group photo, I organized a smaller photo of the eight new Williams people at Emma this year. Unfortunately, the chapel is totally washed out in the late afternoon sun, but you can at least see the silly robes they make us wear:

Observant family members may notice that I'm wearing the "Nana tie," which just happens to be the Emmanuel College colors, pink and blue!

So, now the Harry Potter-esque part. The kernel of the Matriculation ceremony is signing your name in a big book as the Master of the College and the Graduate Tutor look on. Before they started calling us upstairs, we received very specific instructions: we were to write our full names, undergraduate institutions, and places of birth. For those born in the British Isles, that meant the "historic county" of birth--which led to puzzlement for those born in London, which has apparently devoured a lot of historic counties around it. Those born in the U.S., Canada, and Australia wrote our birth states or provinces, and everyone else was supposed to just write the country. A Russian student asked if that meant the country as it now exists, or as it existed at the time of birth, and I'm not sure if she got a satisfactory answer.

The head porter called us upstairs in alphabetical groups at five-minute intervals, whereupon we were ushered into an opulently furnished room with lots of portraits of dead Emmanuel fellows on the walls. We signed a bunch of papers that said we would uphold the values of Cambridge, pay "due respect and obedience" to the vice-chancellor and the university, and all that jazz. The Master, Graduate Tutor, and the book were in the next room at the head of a very long table, and the dean of the college called us in there one by one.

Finally it was my turn, and as I started writing in the book, the Master asked how many names I had. I informed him that, regretfully, I only have three, but it was my understanding that his full name is rather impressive. (His wikipedia page identifies him as "Richard Thomas James Wilson, Baron Wilson of Dinton GCB.") We chatted briefly about how I was getting along, and he congratulated me and said, "you are now a member of the College, and will be for the rest of your life." For some reason, I thought of that kid from The Sandlot going "FOR-EV-ER. FOR-EV-ER."

Naturally, when everyone has signed the book, a lavish evening of drinking and eating ensued. The end.

fresher's week dispatches

A financial bailout. So far I have been able to avoid the worst of what Cambridge's bureacracy can dish out, but I had a close call on Thursday. After getting out of my morning lecture, I hustled down to the Language Centre to sign up for a French class. The enrollment hours were brief and deviously inconvenient, and the place was jammed with people when I got there. Finally I made it to the front of the line and explained my dilemma. The class cost £100, payable by cash or cheque, but I couldn't come up with the payment that day. I had signed up for my bank account the previous week, but they hadn't sent me my chequebook yet. I had deposited my Gates stipend at my bank on Monday, but it takes cheques at least four days to clear in the UK, so I couldn't withdraw cash from the ATM. Knowing that my situation was not my fault and that lots of new Cambridge students must be in a similar boat, asked if I could reserve a spot in the almost-full class and pay at one of the later enrollment days, emphasizing all along how committed I was to taking the class.

To paraphrase the response: "not a prayer, buster-- come back when you have the money." Crap. I knew that the class was going to fill up, and it was now or never. A few moments of desperate haggling and attempts at negotiating failed. However, I was in luck-- there was another Gates Scholar in line behind me, whom I've known since we interviewed in Annapolis in February. She spoke up and offered to front me the money; she had gotten to Cambridge long before I had and consequently had a chequebook. I gratefully accepted and paid her back as soon as my cheques arrived, enclosing my repayment in an effusive thank-you note with a promise to buy her a cocktail at next week's Gates dinner cruise on the Thames.

If I had been shut out of the class, it would not at all have been an atypical experience for a Cambridge student. There are just so many uncoordinated moving parts around here, so many offices and institutions that don't talk to each other, so many delays intersecting with deadlines. Most people manage to scrape by, but you do hear the occasional horror story, and my missing out on the class wouldn't have been so bad in comparison to other possibilities.

A stroll to Grantchester. On a much happier note, this weekend I rounded up a posse to walk along a footpath on the River Cam to the tiny hamlet of Grantchester. The village is home to a teahouse known as The Orchard, which once played host to a remarkable group of friends. For the half-decade preceding WWI, The Orchard was a hangout for a subset of the Bloomsbury Group-- including the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the novelists E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, the poet Rupert Brooke, and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Amazingly, they became friends before most of them had done their most significant work. Keynes is of greatest personal interest to me, as an economist with whom I have a lot of intellectual sympathy. (Hint: he's pretty much the boogeyman among the "just let the market run its course and everything will be fine" set.) I'll close with a shot of some contemporary Cantabrigians following in their leisurely footsteps:

4 glasses of wine + orientation

After a week in Cambridge I am just beginning to wrap my mind around the innumerable ways in which the whole approach to education here is different from what I am used to in the U.S. It will take several posts to digest and share my thoughts, but I'll start with one of the most interesting features of Cambridge life -- the college system -- including a "not in Kansas anymore" experience from the other night.

This thing called "The University of Cambridge" is basically an administrative shell for an unruly collection of institutions, including 31 self-governing colleges, various academic departments and committees, and a wide assortment of other entities (such as the Gates Cambridge Trust). As our Gatesian elders warned us during the Lake District trip, navigating this often baffling system is one of the primary challenges of our lives here and an excellent education unto itself.

For grad students such as yours truly, the 31 colleges exist primarily as centers of residential and social life. The colleges vary widely in personality, age (ranging from 31 to 724 years) , wealth (£8 million to £700 million), and student body composition (grad vs. undergrad, male vs. female, home vs. international). Reflecting the pious history of the university, six colleges are named after Jesus or God in some form (Christ's, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus, Trinity, and Trinity Hall). Other colleges bear the names of monarchs, clergy, famous alumni (Darwin), and political figures (Churchill).

When I was applying to Cambridge, I had to rank my top two college preferences. At the time I didn't know any of them from Adam -- from Adam's College? -- and frankly didn't feel up to sorting through the morass. Luckily, I had a lazy but defensible way out of making a real decision. For historical reasons I won't bore you with, nearly all Williams alumni at Cambridge are at Emmanuel College. Indeed, "Emma" is a veritable Williams-in-exile, typically with about 20 Ephs in residence at any one time. The current crop consists mostly of 07's and 08's, and I actually knew a few of the former the last time we shared a campus. And Emma just happens to be a great college for lots of other reasons-- it has a rich historical pedigree (founded 1584) without being snooty or overly traditional, it's centrally located, reasonably wealthy, has very pretty grounds, and is neither too big nor too small. Of course, it seems that everyone at Cambridge believes their college to be the best college, so maybe it's just the brainwashing setting in.

Now, say you were a college administrator and you had to put the following activities in a suitable order: (A) dance party, (B) introductory remarks by college bigwigs in an auditorium, (C) multiple-course dinner with multiple courses of wine, and (D) cocktails. In America, surely, the order would be BDCA. Apparently that's not how it's done in Britain, though, because on Monday night we had all consumed at least four servings of alcohol before the bigwigs spoke.

The evening began with the cocktails, followed by the first MCR* formal hall** of Michaelmas Term.*** The food was actually quite good, and we were served a glass of wine with almost every course: white wine with the appetizer, red with the main course, port with dessert. The Master**** of the College said grace in Latin before and after the meal. I was seated next to a very sweet Scottish girl who, sadly, I had a very hard time understanding due to her accent and the horrible acoustics. Her failure to touch her wine led to quizzical comments her friends on the other side of the table, and I watched in amazement as she put away three glasses in rapid succession and then continued our conversation without missing a beat.

Once we were, ummm, warmed up, we proceeded to the auditorium for welcoming remarks from Master Wilson, the Senior Tutor*****, the Head Porter******, and the president of the MCR. All of the speeches were actually quite funny and entertaining... but it could have just been the wine. The Head Porter, who bears a striking resemblance to Terry Bradshaw, was particularly funny. Finally, at the end of the evening, we proceeded to the Old Library (where we started with the cocktails) for a 90s-themed bop******* under the eyes of the dead white guys whose portraits hang on the walls.

And yes, you read that right: all of this happened on Monday night. Apparently the idea that most of one's drinking should be done on the weekend is an American invention too.

Vocab:
*Middle Combination Room (MCR): refers to the social organization for the grad students and the grad students themselves as a unit, in addition to the physical room where they congregate.
**Formal hall: a sumptuous multi-course dinner, eaten by candlelight in formal dress and academic robes.
***Michaelmas Term: October to December.
****Master: like a college president. Ours is a member of the House of Lords who has worked for Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
*****Senior Tutor: an academic who oversees the welfare of grad students in the college. Ours is a chemist, and it seems like an odd feature of the UK system that he has to spend some of his time assigning us rooms, but that's how it works.
******Porter: no equivalent in the US system, porters are responsible for security, locks, mail delivery, and otherwise keeping the gears turning.
*******Bop: dance party. I didn't need a footnote for that, I just wanted to use seven asterisks.

hello goodbye

I made it, and this may be my last chance to post for the remainder of the week, since I'm leaving tomorrow for a Gates Scholar retreat/orientation in the Lake District of northern England. The retreat is a chance for the Gates folk to bond for a few days before the term officially starts, not to mention visit a beautiful corner of the island where Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others went for inspiration.

To make Cambridge any cuter, I think you would have to tear the whole place down and rebuild it out of candy. I arrived by bus -- called a "coach" here if it's a long-distance trip -- to a scene of people lounging and playing football on the lush grass of Parker's Piece. (Parker's Piece, I have since learned, will play a starring role in my daily commute.) The town's winding, narrow, frequently-name-changing streets are packed with shops, restaurants of every ethnic variety, and centuries-old churches and academic buildings. I'm living in a house of eight people on a residential street, a bit of a hike from most of my other buildings of interest, but that should get better once I have a bike. I have met two of the housemates so far, an Italian and a Brit, who by pure coincidence are both studying aerospace engineering.

Unfortunately, I have been thwarted so far in most of my efforts to piece together the logistical elements of my new life. I am still without an e-mail password, a bike, a "mobile", a "chequing" account, an academic gown, a key to most of the buildings at Emmanuel (my college), and various other critical things-- mostly thanks to my having arrived on a weekend, but also in part because of Cambridge bureaurcracy. Trotting off to the Lake District for a few days won't help matters either, but I will at least have Friday and maybe part of Thursday before things really get hectic.

Given my seeming preoccupation with border security, I would be remiss if I didn't discuss my customs/immigration experience. I had a layover in Dublin, and the Irish immigration officer spent a total of about 0.01 second glancing at my passport, remarking that I was moving on to the UK, stamping it, and sending me on my way. At Heathrow, much to my surprise, I didn't pass through immigration or customs at all, presumably because of the EU common travel area. Much different from my '05 experience, when I was doing the opposite-- a layover in Heathrow en route to Dublin-- and I had what felt like a long Q-and-A session at both airports. If I didn't already have a shiny student visa, I might have been disappointed about not having a stamp to commemmorate my official arrival in the UK.

That's all for now... there's been a lot coming at me, so hopefully I will have my head more in order on the far side of the Gates trip. More soon!