Bizarre stories about Cambridge supervisors

To any supervisors who may be reading this, it’s for educational purposes, promise.

League table after league table, proud parent after proud parent, and supervisor after supervisor will tell you that the University of Cambridge offers a world-class level of education.

Though the teaching may be prestigious, Cambridge is no less eccentric, flamboyant, and sometimes outright weird.

So take a peek behind the  college doors, and read about some of the most bizarre (and terrifying) encounters with Cambridge supervisors.

(In the interest of future supervisions being as painless as possible, colleges and supervisors have not been named, only the students – victims – and their subjects. You and your mediocre 2:1 can thank me later.)

Gill – Classics

“I was at Oh-Rama and queuing up to get in and ran into my supervisor in the queue, little awkward but fine as we both seemed fairly equally drunk. Anyhoo, Oh-Rama has gender neutral toilets, so after going into a stall for a discreet wee, I emerged only to find my supervisor with his cock out at the urinals also having a wee. Yes it was awkward, yes there was eye contact, no we have never spoken of it.”

Oh

Hugh – HSPS

“My Director of Studies is terrifying. She once said that “I was feeling down today so I read your dissertation this afternoon to make me laugh.” That probably wasn’t as bad as when she threw a book at me once and sarcastically remarked “try reading it this time.” Although, even that wasn’t as bad as when she said “all of your essays made my want to kill myself, slowly.”

“There’s also a myth that she once threw someone’s essay out of the window.”

Logic got me like

Grace  – Natural Sciences

“Things didn’t get off to a great start when I missed my first ever supervision. I’ve fallen asleep in a few, and have missed around 16 since starting Cambridge. You could say it’s all gone a bit downhill from there. Oh, and when I told my Maths supervisor I thought I was failing, she said she’d been thinking that all term too.

“But to top it off, I bumped into my supervisor in Fez. I couldn’t quite remember how I knew him, so awkwardly gave him a hug. What’s more awkward is that I’d been claiming I’d been to busy to write an essay which was two weeks overdue.”

Future world leaders amirite?

Oliver – English

“I thought it would be a good idea one week to write an essay investigating whether Gretchen Wieners’s rant about Caesar is justified. My supervisor didn’t get the reference, and so for the first 10 minutes, awkwardly angling our heads around her I-Pad, we watched a compilation of the best scenes from Mean Girls. Who knew Shakespeare could be so fetch.”

English Fetcherature.

Jane – Law

“I’m pretty sure I have one of the weirdest supervisors. He once made us all stand in very close proximity to each other for half of a supervision because he though it would ‘help us focus’.

“He’s also brought out a small pistol sized toy-gun and joked that he wouldn’t use it on us, followed by a huge toy-gun which he said he would. He shot himself in the head with it when I asked a stupid question. He used to have a gun that would actually bang and let out smoke when he shot it.

“His methods of helping us remember cases are, credit to him, memorable. He mooed at one student to help him remember a case about Associated Dairies, and squinted in silence for a good three minutes at another student to help her remember a case about a blind claimant. Once he played Lady Gaga’s Alejandro video in a supervision – he said she was singing Ali-Ali-Aliakmon instead.

“What was weirder is when he spent 10 minutes showing us his vacation photos, zooming in on squirrels. Turns out his vacation happened to be the same place a famous case occurred.”

Much relevant, very learning.

Ellie – HSPS

“I went to spoons for a 10am supervision in my first year. My supervisor bought a beer and told us that we could too.”

Maybe not so regal.

This is what sets us apart from the Other Place.