Oxford is Older but Cambridge is Better

There are five term papers, due in just a few weeks, that have yet to get themselves written, so you’d think I’d be in a knuckle-down buckle-down panic, but you’d be wrong. In fact, I was so unconcerned about my term papers that I decided to hitch a ride to Cambridge. I suppose I should explain my academic philosophy so as to put my parents’ minds at rest. It takes a special kind of fool to diligently research areas of study and work out multiple drafts for a term paper. Paper topics should be slowly and methodically thought through before meaningful research begins, a critical percolation if you will, and there’s no better facility for this erudite pursuit than the subconscious. So I prefer to travel Britain and Continental Europe while keeping the term papers on my cognitive backburner. Later, under successive waves of gale-force stress, my subconscious will be forced to regurgitate the fruits of its learned endeavor, and five brilliant, if not borderline-genius, term papers will be birthed. I can rest confidently in this phenomenon because “Matt of the Future” has never let me down and I know that under sufficient fear and duress, he’ll do me proud. Of course, I have a sneaking suspicion that should “Matt of the Future” ever discover a way to time travel, he’ll ignore the rather awkward Space-Time repercussions and beat me senseless. The train ride to Cambridge was absolutely beautiful since the normally pastoral English countryside was blanketed by snow and ice. Once in the college town of Cambridge, it became obvious that the temperature would remain below freezing, so I finally relented and purchased my first ever scarf and pair of gloves. We joined a walking tour led by the most archetypal British woman I have ever met (above photo). Apart from enrapturing us with the history of this 795 year-old institution, our guide provided the driest deadpan humor imaginable, with scattered jabs at Europeans and bits of praise for Lady Margaret Thatcher. In the above photo, we’re posing in the courtyard of King’s College, not on the grass mind you, since only proper ‘fellows’ of the college are allowed to traverse the green.



Cambridge University is composed of myriad colleges where students eat, sleep, socialize, and worship – these colleges maintain a strict self-identity and University centralization isn’t nearly as prominent as it is in the States. In the above photo you can see the chapel at King’s College, which looks very much like a grand cathedral. The building is classified as a ‘chapel’ simply because its stewardship rests with private interests, and not with any ecclesiastical body. King Henry VI began construction of the chapel in 1441, and despite various assassinations and the War of the Roses, the chapel was eventually finished under the patronage of Henry VIII almost one hundred years later. The building contains the largest gothic fan vault in the world, and the stained glass and intricately carved stonework are really breath taking. There are two large towers dominating the entrance to the chapel, and our guide told us of one of the more clever pranks played by students recently. One night a student climbed the eastern tower and placed a traffic cone on the highest point, which maintenance workers couldn’t seem to reach. The dean decided to have workmen erect expensive scaffolding for the removal of this blaring anachronism, but just as they had nearly finished erecting the massive bulwark, again in the middle of the night, the same student climbed the tower, removed the cone, and placed it on the western tower instead. Cambridge students pride themselves on their reputation as pranksters and they seldom disappoint.



We visited the Wren-designed reading library at Trinity College and viewed the handwritten edits of Isaac Newton to his 1686 manuscript entitled “Pricipia Mathematica”, which single-handedly created the field of physics, until then only a disrespected subset of mathematics. In the colonnade below the library Newton famously clapped his hands and timed the echo interval for the first-ever measurement of the speed of sound. Nearby at Cavendish laboratories, the electron and the phenomenon of radiation were discovered. The masonry stones in the laboratory still contain elevated levels of radiation, since early researchers were ignorant of radioactive dangers – Madam Curie shipped some of her radium mojo here in a paper box! In more recent times, Watson and Crick sat in the nearby Eagle Pub where they first revealed to the world the molecular structure of DNA. In total, the colleges of Cambridge have boasted no less than 80 Nobel Prize winners. In the above photo you can see the courtyard of Trinity College, home to 31 of those Nobel scholars, where students try running the perimeter of the quad in the time it takes the bell tower to ring in the noontime. You may remember seeing a famous scene in “Chariots of Fire” that reenacts this tradition.



Lord Byron, a famous graduate of Trinity College and accomplished Victorian poet, was so frustrated by the college’s policy forbidding the ownership of dogs that he acquired a bear instead. After all, the policy was completely silent concerning the ownership of bears. I love this guy. In the above photo you can see a seedling from Newton’s famous apple tree (the one that jogged his noggin and sparked the discovery of gravity). While the original tree was blown down in a storm hundreds of years ago, some botanist had the presence of mind to extract the roots from the tree and nurse them into saplings. With no other apple trees nearby, this poor loner doesn’t get any cross-pollination and there aren’t any apples to speak of. True to form, Cambridge students attach apples to the tree by bits of string each year to commemorate Newton’s discovery.





No visit to Cam-bridge would be complete without visiting the Cam. This sleepy river meanders through the campus and provides some of the more scenic views of Cambridge. We traversed the river on a ‘punt’ by means of a ‘punter’ who agreed to ‘punt’ for us; basically, punters provide the means for locomotion by pressing against the riverbed with a huge stick. Blake will understand why I wasn’t terribly excited to meet swans along the way (first photo above) – they may be beautiful, but I know how ill tempered they can be. Mom complains that I don’t post enough pictures of myself, so I turned the camera around and took a self-portrait on the river (second photo above). After punting we attended an evensong service in the King’s College Chapel and headed for home. After my Cambridge visit, it seems the only thing I can think of is how to get myself enrolled there… there has to be some postgraduate degree I could stomach. Maybe it’s just an irrational craving for a college town, but I really miss the collegial atmosphere (something that’s been lacking from law school). Of course, the longer I stay in school the more I come to realize how little I know, so I should probably cut my losses and get out before I’m brain-dead. Grace & Peace.