Remembering Cambridge

Remembering Cambridge

I’m really struggling to find words to describe my Cambridge experience. Superlatives seem to work well—

Random person: “How was Cambridge?”

Me: “It was brilliant, wonderful, superb, amazing, fabulous, all that and two dozen chocolate digestives…”

But there’s so much more I wish I could say.

So this is my attempt at the so much more. Well, some of it anyway.

When I think of Cambridge, I picture the English faculty—maybe because I spent a lot of time there.

I think I was drawn by the radiating brain waves of the English professors—like a moth to a bug zapper.

At Cambridge, as I’ve mentioned before, you can attend as many lectures as you want and have time for. I became something of a lecture junkie second term.

My favorite lecturer was of the Marxist persuasion. Now—I am not a Marxist, theoretically speaking. I would also like to specify: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party.

But I tried to go to all his lectures. Why? Because they were freakin’ brilliant, that’s why.

(I secretly think it’s possible to determine a professor’s personality type by what period of literature he/she teaches, but that would be gross stereotyping and beyond the scope of this blog.)

Also, I now consider myself something of a Renaissance woman—not because I’m multi-faceted, but because I’ve hit upon an interest in early modern literature. This owes much, I believe, to the professors at Cambridge who teach this period.

There were so many different lecturers—some funny, some profound, some aesthetically pleasing—all thought provoking.

Once, I was sitting in a lecture on medieval literature when I realized that—wow, this professor has been studying and teaching this book for longer than I’ve been alive—and yet he still radiates an intense pleasure in the text.

I think that’s one of the definitions of great teaching.

What’s my point?

Find the best professors you can and take their classes, attend their lectures—heck, get to know them on your own time. It’s not the subject. It’s who teaches it.