December 3, 2024
This post is part of my 30in30 challenge, where I write 30 minutes every day for 30 working days. Due to my limited time for this challenge, the content will be only very lightly researched and edited. The idea is to just write. Find my voice, and find the courage to publish. To follow my curiosity wherever it may take me.
I live in Cambridge, UK. I've lived here for the past 18 years, and it has become my home. I never thought I'd get attached to a place until I moved to Cambridge.
But it wasn't always like this.
I came to Cambridge on a rainy November afternoon in 2006. I was dropped off in the center and told to have a little wander, look around the colleges, and see the famous sights before meeting my husband after he finished his work.
I hated it. Oh, how much I hated it. It was grey, wet, cold, and windy. Everyone was rushing around—Cantabrigians, students, tourists—hunched over, sheltering from the wind and drizzle. I couldn't see what people liked about Cambridge. I saw no beauty, just dark old buildings.
I don't remember much from the rest of the weekend, but it's safe to say that my first impressions weren't good. And it wasn't just about the city of Cambridge. The countryside around Cambridge wasn't much better. It is very flat—a giant green and brown grid of farmland with no hill or mountain to be seen anywhere. That's the Fens for you, once a large, low-lying wetland formed by ancient floodplains, rivers, and tidal estuaries. I grew up near a mountainous region with big forests and tall mountains. Living in a flatland wasn't exactly enticing to me.
I don't know when it changed for me. It may be that once I got over my dislike of Cambridge and its surroundings, I opened my eyes and heart to what it does have: the University and the wealth of knowledge and innovation.
The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and is one of the world's oldest universities. It was established by scholars leaving Oxford after a dispute, a story worth getting into one day. There is no shortage of famous Cambridge alumni, including Isaac Newton, Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, and many more.
Now, let's see—can you guess which one of these alumni is the odd one out?
Virginia Woolf, as you may have guessed.
Virginia didn't study at the University of Cambridge in the formal sense. That's because the University didn't award degrees to women until 1948, long after Virginia's time there in the early 1900s. Female students could attend lectures and take exams from 1869, but they were not awarded degrees. Virginia was part of an intellectual circle and had access to the University through her brother, Thoby Stephen. She could attend lectures at Cambridge, and she was heavily influenced by its intellectual environment, which influenced her writing later on, but she did not earn any degrees.
I feel this is a stain on the University's reputation. Yes, Cambridge wasn't the only institution that didn't award degrees to women, but it was undoubtedly one of the later ones to do so. The University of Bologna in Italy was among the first to grant degrees to women. In 1678, Elena Cornaro Piscopia, also known as Helen Cornaro, became the first woman in the world to earn a PhD in Philosophy. The University of Zurich in Switzerland opened to women in 1864, and even the University of London admitted women in 1878, granting them degrees much earlier than Cambridge.
So, yes, not great! Thankfully, it's better now. The latest reports show the male-to-female student ratio is nearly 50:50.
But back to my story. Seeing Cambridge in better weather helped. The old, grey buildings turn out to be quite stunning when the sun shines. But what also helped was learning about the people that have gone through the University—their lives, their adventures, the books they wrote, the careers they ended up having. I can't quite believe that I'm walking down the same streets as Virginia once did. Or Issac Newton. Or Sir David Attenborough. I can almost feel the spirit of those who were here before me, as if they had left some of their genius behind for me to taste. It made me excited to study again, to better myself, and to move forward. I even started to appreciate the flatland - I still miss mountains and big forests, but I have to admit the flat countryside is quite good when it comes to running, so I no longer complain.
Despite the rocky start and bad first impression, I stayed and am grateful for that. Living in Cambridge was instrumental in my attending university (not Cambridge, though) in my late 20s. And in thinking it was possible to change my career in my mid-30s. I never thought a place could have such an effect on me. But I'll take it.