How I learned to stop worrying and love the Easter Vacation

Two weeks away from Cambridge and deleting any form of social media account is becoming oh-so tempting.  Instagram has become a billboard of handwritten notes and piles of books, Twitter is dominated by revision tweets that prove that yes, you do go mad if you don’t see sunlight, and Facebook is still haunted by the ghost of #nomakeupselfies taken in early-morning library sessions.

These pretentious tweets, snaps and status updates are concrete truth that the Easter Vac is well and truly underway, and everyone, apart from yours truly, appears to be making headway into the snowdrifts of work we’ve accumulated over the past year.  Sitting beneath mountains of work, the Easter vac looks like a  torturous way of delaying the inevitable exams looming over us, and making the ray of hope that is May Week appear like a mirage on a non-existent horizon.

#nomakeupselfie in the library: the most self righteous thing ever?

But, and it’s a ‘but’ that even Beyoncé would approve of, settle into the humdrum routine of feeling inadequate compared to all of your friends and the Easter vac really isn’t all that bad.  Just compare it to Christmas or summer.

The Christmas vac is cold, grey and swamped in darkness for twenty-three hours of the day.  During November, most home-towns sprout Christmas lights and pine-trees in inconceivable places so that by the time you return home, you can’t possibly remember the place before you, now disguised beneath wreaths of holly, trails of tinsel and more fake snowflakes than a primary school classroom.  Of course, the holiday is momentarily redeemed by the shining beacon that is Christmas when you stir out of your post-Michaelmas hibernation, open presents and stuff yourself with food, but otherwise, you spend the rest of the time exhausted and debating whether or not you could tolerate your friends even for a few hours after eight-weeks of feeling unable to avoid them.

Summer isn’t much better.  Going to Cambridge, you didn’t expect to feel as if your employment prospects have barely progressed from the summer when you were three years old and wanted to be a princess (Harry, I’m still waiting for you to dump Cressie).  But come June, and all of a sudden, fellow students you’d previously put in the box marked “definitely-going-to-be-unemployed” are interning for proper companies and earning proper money.

My grad scheme of choice.

Easter is great.  It’s practically free from annoying interns and safe from the irritating Hallmark-happiness that pervades Christmas.  It’s not (that) cold, and if you’re lucky, as we have been this holiday, you even get a bit of sunshine.  By now, chances are, you’ve managed to adapt to real life hours and have recovered from your post-term ennui.  Fresh-faced and bushy-tailed, or just slightly-less-exhausted-than-your-Cambridge-zombie-state, you can now take advantage of some of the wonderful things Easter has to offer.

The first of these is obviously everyone’s favourite…rowing.  Tomorrow, the men’s Blues and Goldie take on Oxford on the Tideway in the 160^th Boat Race.  Expect Jack Wills-clad teenage girls and Oxbridge alike to line the Thames, cheering on their University’s crews to victory.

Yeh, this is as good as it is going to get. Sorry.

There’s also another lesser-known Oxbridge tradition.  While the men’s crews storm to victory on the Thames, Cambridge’s more bestial competitor will be looking to leave Oxford behind in this year’s “Goat Race”.  Raising money for Spitalfields Farm, this will be the race’s fifth year.  Currently, all sources suggest that Cambridge has definitely ‘goat’ this.

Finally, if Oxbridge competition just isn’t your thing and you’re stuck suffocating in some forgotten Cambridge library, the Easter vac is the perfect opportunity to enjoy Cambridge while the rest of us annoying students have buggered off home.  Make the most of the student-free river by getting out of the library and having a punt race, or take your revision away from the library for a day and sit in one of Cambridge’s many cafés, safe in the knowledge that you’re not going to be disturbed by some minor acquaintance.

So whatever floats your boat (or goat), try to enjoy the holiday, and if you get really desperate, just write for the Tab.