#pity about the book deadlines :') we don't talk about that. the university doesn't need to know

[finnlongman]

Hallo! Current third year PhD student at Cambridge here, with a hopefully reassuring message, it really is very different to undergrad. I've been renting privately the whole time, have barely been inside college in the last couple of years, and don't even own a gown any more. I have as much of a social network outside the uni bubble as inside it now. I feel like as a PhD student you have a chance to renegotiate your relationship with the university and the city a lot, and I have appreciated that. I hope it works out the same for you!

Yeah, I have seen a lot of friends go through PhD there in recent years, and a lot of them seem to have avoided the Cambridge Experience™ elements (others haven't, but haven't been trying).

I do think renting privately makes a massive difference: living in college means you're far more beholden to college rules and paternalism, and it's just so much harder to feel like an independent adult. Having returned to academia after having jobs makes a huge difference as well, rather than going straight through from undergrad. I took two years out before my MA, and two years between MA and PhD, so I've had a lot more time to... I guess consolidate myself as a person, figure out my priorities, etc.

I've also been working for the university for the past year, as a library assistant, which is interesting because it gives you a pretty different experience of university bureaucracy. As staff, there is some relief in being able to go, "Right, well, that's outside my work hours and therefore Not My Problem," and it's a lot harder to do that as a student -- I've already become frustrated with college scheduling compulsory events for weekends, since that disrupts my life significantly. But I think as term gets underway and stuff, it'll be useful to be able to go, "Okay, I know that's important because when I was staff we had to deal with X, but this other thing can wait," in a way that someone who hasn't got that experience might not be able to.

I previously worked in one of the colleges, too, before my MA, so I've got two years of working for the university of the five years since graduating from undergrad. So I've had a chance to experience Cambridge as a non-undergrad (I have not yet spent any time living in Cambridge with zero university connection, though; my other years were spent in London and Cork). But I think that's also why I'm a bit like, "Oh, god, really, you're gonna make me go back to doing this again?" 😅 I'm sure once the induction stuff is out of the way it'll be a different kettle of fish.

(The vibes right now very much seem geared towards people living on site -- lotta last-minute events and timetable changes, lotta induction talks that are 90% irrelevant to me -- and since I live four miles away, this is a bit of a pain, as I don't really want to make an eight-mile round trip if I don't absolutely need to, especially at short notice. But I imagine that will pass after the first week or so.)