Posted 12 February 2020

On the 9^th of January nine fortunate students from our school (including myself) went on a one night, 2-day, residential trip to one of the worlds most rated universities, Cambridge. Also joining us on this NCOP funded trip were students from three other schools in the Wakefield area. Despite having to meet at school for 6:45am there was no rest for us as a busy day was ahead. Upon our arrival at Selwyn College we were greeted by our guide for the next 2 days, Chloe Cupid. She guided us through the ‘streets of Selwyn’ so we knew where to go and assisted us on every venture outside of The Diamond.

 

First on the agenda after our arrival at the University was an introduction presentation to Cambridge. In this we were shown things such as how long Cambridge had been running since and the different types of collages there before going to lunch at 12:30. This was the first time we were outside of the diamond and I think it is fair to say that we were all amazed at the sight surrounding the lawn.

 

 

The buildings here were miraculously different to the diamond room, they were the typical image of ‘Cambridge University’. Kane Morrans first thoughts on entering the dining hall were “this is really big, old, ancient and brown”. However, in Erin’s opinion the best description would be the dining hall from Harry Potter. After our delicious, and payed for, three course meal it was time for an in-depth tour of the Selwyn campus guided by an undergraduate, Hendrik, who had moved from Germany to Cambridge for a three-year course in biology and natural sciences. He showed us around the old court at Selwyn and took us into places such as the chapel and the library.

 

 

 

 

 

He also took us around some of the newer and renovated places and explained systems such as the way different dorm rooms work and the different types of special events that are hosted in the Selwyn area. Once our tour of Selwyn was finished, we had a taster session with one of the professors at the college on whether or not Darwin just got lucky, he took us on a tour of the Galapagos islands and showed us different animals and life forms that lived there. After a long day we finally got our keys to our own rooms and were allowed to put our things away and freshen up before the night ahead with an extra surprise waiting for us in the rooms in the form of Selwyn college toiletries (oh and free Wi-Fi of course).

After a quick outfit change for some we headed off to the dining hall once again before heading out to bowling. Once at tenpin we played a round of bowling together in which Kane and Daniel paired together won and I failed miserably. Afterwards we all played a bit of pool and had a go on some of the arcade machines where honey managed to win on a grabber machine first try, before heading back to Selwyn for a quiz in which Daniel and Kane, once again as a pair, came a close second on the quiz before curfew at 10:30. The next morning we all met downstairs at 8:00 to walk over to breakfast and check out of our rooms. Or at least we were supposed to if it weren’t for Kane waking up and then falling back asleep again, leaving poor Zoe to walk up 4 flights of stairs to see why he wasn’t downstairs with the rest of us. Once Kane got in order, we headed off to breakfast and then leave all our bags In the diamond room before taking a walk through the beautiful king’s college with some free time around the chapel. The chapel was a lot different to Selwyn, but they were both beautiful in their own separate ways. After our look around King’s college we went into the city centre with about an hour to walk around by ourselves and shop which was super fun. Once our shopping trip was over, we took a different route back to Selwyn and saw some more amazing sights, which was perfect for me with my camera. On our return we had one final meal in the story like dinner hall and then after one final concluding Q&A session with Chloe we left, assuring we got the back of the bus by having a little chat with Chloe beforehand using our st Wilfrid’s charm. Then the 3-hour journey began once again on our way back home.