Cambridge and Oxford - ongoing chat for those with a student currently studying there

[DadDadDad]

Some of us have found these threads helpful, so I'm starting a new one to take us through

...end-of-year exams (and parties)

...homecoming for the vacation (and hibernation aestivation for this thread?)

...return in the autumn (and more normal college life?)

Posters old and new welcome to join the discussion. Any tips for finding a summer job?

Oh, and for reference, I have a DS just completing his first year in a small humanity in a tiny college.

Sorry MJB, I can't keep up with all these amazing children and what they do!

Hi. Can I join you? DS is a 3rd year (4 year course) and hopefully DD next year.

DS is really glad to be back. All of his house are back now so they had a few weeks of fun before having to knuckle down for exams.

Earlier in the thread people were talking about stuff to do in the summer. DS had a placement at the end of year 2 and another one starting in July.

If anyone is interested he found out about them in the Oxford careers service.

DS (C) is another fresher staying on at the end of term to enjoy some downtime. His fifth and final exam is next week. He loves his course and college and has made good friends. He has a summer job coaching tennis back at home and an online finance internship.
DD (O) finished exams (finals) a week ago and will be staying in Oxford until mid-August for an internship in the Zoology Dept and to collect data for her Master’s project. She has been lucky to secure a couple of travel awards (despite her travel plans being scuppered for a second year due to COVID) and a scholarship to cover her living costs this summer. She is then on a climbing expedition in Dartmoor and helping to oversee two DofE Gold expeditions in the Lakes.

I mostly lurk. S1 is a Y3 engineer (C) currently concentrating on a project (apparently - his brother dropped into the conversation earlier this week that exams were over but I've heard nothing). No idea when he'll be back - depends on the choir.

Last I heard they were still expected to have 6 weeks work under their belts by the time next year starts - but as noted in previous paragraph I'm not kept strictly up to date! Hoping he'll be able to find something this summer because so far he only has the 2 weeks in Kenya organised by the department: his choral scholarship meant that he couldn't consider most of the internships on offer because they spent half of July on the other side of the world. Goodness that all does seem a long time ago.

S2 hopes to be joining the neighbouring college in September. In the meantime he's playing D&D and other games and avoiding tuba practice.

Any of the lonely mathematicians want to take up bellringing? It's usually a fairly friendly bunch who'd rather ring a quarter-peal than go out clubbing - and even when they aren't needing to stay quasi-sober they don't have any problem with teetotallers (S1 doesn't like the taste of alcohol).

Non-mathematicians also welcome

Just wondering if anyone else with a DC Fresher at a C college hasn't had a Matriculation photo done this year?

As the year speedily starts to end, it looks like DS1 will never get a Matric. photo of his year group and I don't know of any other college at O or C where the college didn't at least find a way of photo-shopping socially distanced Freshers into some kind of group photo, except DS1's college.

When he asked the JCR about it last term and in the first term, all they said was that it wouldn't be fair for those students who couldn't be there in person but surely most years, even pre-pandemic - there'll be some who miss out. It seems sad that his college therefore won't be doing one at all.

@mutterphore

Just wondering if anyone else with a DC Fresher at a C college hasn't had a Matriculation photo done this year?

As the year speedily starts to end, it looks like DS1 will never get a Matric. photo of his year group and I don't know of any other college at O or C where the college didn't at least find a way of photo-shopping socially distanced Freshers into some kind of group photo, except DS1's college.

When he asked the JCR about it last term and in the first term, all they said was that it wouldn't be fair for those students who couldn't be there in person but surely most years, even pre-pandemic - there'll be some who miss out. It seems sad that his college therefore won't be doing one at all.

Good question. I don't think my daughter's college has done a photo. Not getting much convo or info from her during exams, but I definitely want to check on this. Thanks.

From other things you've said, I don't think they're in the same college, by the way.

DD's college definitely did one @mutterphore because I saw it on social media. I think your C DS has really drawn the short straw with his college as his experiences are so different from DD's this year.

DD ( C, Humanities, small central old college). Thanks for new thread. Hello to delurkers!! We had fun spotting the photoshop fails on DDs photo with legs behind the bars on chairs etc , identikit legs but at least there is one at it’s pretty good really.Sadly at least of the isolating overseas student missed out; I don’t whether they asked/ declined. Agree that mutterphore’s DT1 really does seem to have been unfortunate. DD taking similar carpe diem view to CJB’s DD.. almost a third of her time done already.

DS was fortunate enough to have a (socially distanced, seated by households) formal for matriculation, but didn't have the ceremony or photo. We did take a photo of him in a suit and his gown in our garden the day before he left.

His college hopes to reopen booking for formals later this term, for post-exam celebrations.

Joining the jellybean club with a DC from a bog standard school. Correlation or causation that parents with jellybean as part of their user name have children from average schools that attend Oxbridge!

@jellybeanteaparty

Joining the jellybean club with a DC from a bog standard school. Correlation or causation that parents with jellybean as part of their user name have children from average schools that attend Oxbridge!

That would be an interesting audit, @jellybeanteaparty :) You must be a scientist to have wondered about a causative effect - my academic background is also scientific!

No matriculation photo for my C DS either and I don’t think it’s the same college as @mutterphore ‘s DS.

We had a lovely picnic with him in Grantchester today and I was pleased to hear, among other things, that the college bar is now very much open. He seems a lot happier (not just because of the bar...) although work is still “clapped”.

DD had a belated matriculation ceremony at O this term with trumpets, speeches and photos. We haven't seen the photos yet. I know she enjoyed a glass or two of fizz then had to row straight afterwards. Their boat posted their slowest times as it was full of freshers full of bubbles.

OK, that's weird about the jellybeans.

DD1 C had a photoshopped matriculation photo, single and group

DS’s (C) college organised a striking matriculation photograph followed by a formal dinner at the start of Michelmas term. Feel sad for Mutterphore’s DS whose college doesn’t appear to be coming up with creative solutions to COVID restrictions.

Thanks Heybells :)

My dd is a third year cambridge mathmo. She's going to be kept well occupied this summer with a research placement in her desired field. Hopefully in person... Exams start this week.

@OhYouBadBadKitten - as someone who sat 12 hours of Part II Maths Tripos papers exactly thirty years ago (not quite exact to the day, but it was certainly early June), I salute your daughter and wish her all the best.

Do they still have the tradition of reading out the class list inside the Senate House and then throwing copies from the balcony? I wonder if data privacy (if not Covid) have ended that...

oh that's what dd was talking about when she mentioned throwing lists about!
i think it's unclear this year.
Thanks DadDadDad. This year they have a day in between each exam, so a bit more spread out.

A day between each exam?! I had three hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon, then same again the following day! Kids these days, don't know how lucky they are.

There seems to be little online about the throwing of the class-lists although there is a photo on the Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Tripos
(bonus photo showing the origins of the term "wooden spoon" - and you'll want to see this spoon...).

I still have in a drawer the list of that year's wranglers and optimes that came into my hands 30 years ago...

Thanks for the thread; also a lag.

I have a DD(4) in her first year at Oxford doing Classics from scratch, her next brother up is in his first year doing a science DPhil, and their next brother up is finishing off doing a History MPhil at Cambridge. Their five older siblings have all departed Oxford and are making their way in the world, in more or much, much less lucrative careers, or at least were on the last round of phone calls.

DD4's workload seems heavy but she also seems happy. On the home front I'm making her unhappy by selling the house she was born in in order to try to squeeze out eight tiny, tiny house deposits since the pressure is on with the older DC. But I feel bad that DD4 is sad. She'll get a decent wodge of the summer at home though, given how slowly the solicitors are going.

I have a matriculation photo for DD4, a formal one and only the second one I've ever bought (I also bought one for DS2, who I fondly believed might be 'let go' at some point by the Oxford powers that be, so I reckoned that was £95 well spent as proof that he had actually been there. As it turned out he graduated fine, with a first, despite having to mop the hall floor after bops for a year, for some transgression involving the college roof, or parapets, or something I didn't quite follow).

I hope this thread is as affable as the last one was. They seem good threads, these Oxbridge chatty ones.

On the wooden spoon meets rowing front I have a wooden spoon on my kitchen windowsill, 'won' by DD1 when she competed in the Wadham boat about ten years ago now.

Very best of luck to your DD @OhYouBadBadKitten. Those three years have gone so quickly.

@DadDadDad

A day between each exam?! I had three hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon, then same again the following day! Kids these days, don't know how lucky they are.

There seems to be little online about the throwing of the class-lists although there is a photo on the Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Tripos
(bonus photo showing the origins of the term "wooden spoon" - and you'll want to see this spoon...).

I still have in a drawer the list of that year's wranglers and optimes that came into my hands 30 years ago...

Covid has spread the exams a little further apart. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing, or whether it spreads the torture further.

I'd imagined the wooden spoon to be something out of a kitchen drawer!

Thanks often. Haven't they just! Goodbye does it always go this quickly or has covid accelerated the impression do you think?