Mid-Year Dispatch from England Part I – Life at Churchill College

February 9th, 2012 · 4 Comments · Cambridge, Travelogues

Before I arrived in England, I had arranged the purchase of a bicycle from a student who was graduating. Feeling particularly savvy, I mentioned this to Churchill’s graduate student administrator as she led me to my new home at Churchill. “Good!” she replied. “A bike is a great way to get around Cambridge. Just be sure not to ride on the pavement.” I was immediately crestfallen, as I imagined the difficulty of navigating my bike along narrow patches of grass and stopping to walk it across streets and sidewalks. What a waste of nearly £100! She noticed my apparently very worried expression and asked what was the matter. I explained to her my shattered dreams of riding a bike to work each day and she laughed. As it turns out, “pavement” means “sidewalk” in British English. It was this moment I first appreciated that England was indeed a foreign country.

I live in college accommodations known as the “Pepperpots” – 10-bedroom homes with a shared kitchen, living room, and laundry facilities, so named for their alleged resemblance to a pepper shaker (falsely accused, in my opinion). In particular, I live in Pepperpot 63… if you ask the college. Or 40a Storey’s Way if you ask the postal service. Or Broer’s House if you ask the wealthy man who ostensibly paid for its construction. In typical Cambridge fashion, my house has three names, depending on the particularly bureaucracy involved. Whatever you choose to call them, the Pepperpots are undoubtedly among the most luxurious of Cambridge college housing. My room is large enough that, if it so pleased me, I could make snow angels on the floor and not injure myself. I have more storage space than I know what to do with, massive windows, a private heater, and my own bathroom (with a heated towel rack!). The only drawback of the latter is that I must clean it (eventually). Although the single washer and dryer we share among the ten of us tends to get backed up on weekends, the convenience of not needing to leave the house to do laundry is appreciated. The enormous kitchen and living room are wonderful for hosting dinners and parties. With two ovens, three fridges, six burners, and acres of counter space, it is quite possible for half of the house to make dinner simultaneously. Perhaps our best use of the space yet was to host about 25 people for a DIY pizza baking night, during which almost 40 pizzas were baked.

Such an event would not have been possible at most colleges. Churchill has the distinction of being one of the furthest colleges from downtown Cambridge. Although the 15-minute schlep (by Cambridge standards) to my office at the engineering department is a slight inconvenience, Churchill’s remote location gives it something most colleges seriously lack – space. Churchill’s vast sporting fields and tennis courts are a luxury other colleges can only dream of. Our distance from town also helps to deter the hordes of tourists that plague the other college grounds.¹

A major surprise for me about college life is how often I eat at the dining hall. Mind you, this is definitely not due to the quality of food. The English have yet to discover any spices beyond salt and pepper (and even these they seem reluctant to use), seemingly too preoccupied with inventing new ways to wrap sausages in bread (and oh how many ways they have found). The main draw of the college dining hall is the opportunity to meet other members of the college. Undergrads, grad students, faculty, and sometimes even staff gather thrice daily, sharing tables and good conversation.² I regularly dine with a linguist, several lawyers, a German scholar, the son of Nobel Prize winning physicist Ernest Walton, and a cadre of scientists and engineers that dominate the Churchill population.³ This spontaneous interaction across disciplines and between students and faculty is one of the great benefits of the Cambridge college system.⁴ In addition to being a convenient way to meet others outside your discipline, the dining hall is also surprisingly more economical than making dinner at home, at least for vegetarians. A large plateful of hot vegetables and cold selections from the salad bar runs between £2 and £3. Moreover, the salad bar always includes an array of protein options (beans and meat daily, hard boiled eggs and tuna often, and salmon all too infrequently).

Three times a week, the College also hosts a “formal hall.” This is essentially an opportunity to dress up in formal ware, pay three times as much for the same food that was served at the normal dinner, and be restricted to not leaving your seat for approximately two hours. Needless to say, I am not terribly enthusiastic about this tradition, however it is certainly worth indulging in on occasion and provides a reasonable excuse to meet friends for dinner.⁵ Although I have not participated in it, attempting to attend one formal hall at every college (there are 31) is a popular Cambridge sport.⁶

Another highlight of the Cambridge college system is the social life. The student body, especially the graduate student body, is among the most international groups I have been a part of. Among the ten people living in my house, for example, we have four Americans, a Greek, a Thai, three Chinese, and a Sudanese. This diversity has had three main effects on my life at Cambridge. First, on any given day, there is a significant probability that someone’s country is celebrating a holiday, providing ample excuses to throw a party or go out for drinks (I am writing this on a stomach still full from an “Australia Day” barbecue). Second, the diversity in our culinary backgrounds not only encourages us to collectively host several dinner parties per week, but the results are almost unerringly delicious.⁷ Third, I have found myself acting more obnoxiously American than I did when living in the States. While I am not quite ready to don cowboy boots and overalls, I do find myself talking about the joys of American national parks, highways, and football more often than I ever was tempted to do in the past.

Despite the diversity of the student body, Churchill is certainly guilty of hosting the largest contingent of Americans at Cambridge, likely due in part both to the Churchill Scholars program (and the requirement that all applicants specify Churchill as their preferred college) as well as Winston Churchill’s fame in the States. One entertaining manifestation of this infestation is that Churchill College is, to my knowledge, the only college which attempts to host an annual Thanksgiving dinner. I say “attempt” because our dinner was notably lacking in pumpkin pie, stuffing, and several other key components of Thanksgiving, but we could not help but be flattered at this gesture.⁸

A final important staple of social life at the Colleges are the “common rooms”, including the “junior common room” (JCR) for undergrads, the “middle common room” (MCR) for graduate students, and the “senior common room” (SCR) for the imminently deceased (ok, for faculty). The Churchill MCR includes both a TV/game room, as well as a bar/lounge with beautiful views of the Churchill fields and unprofitable drink prices (e.g. £1.25 for a glass of wine). The bar is run by grad students on a volunteer basis and seems to be open most nights of the week. The MCR also hosts several parties (e.g. welcome, Christmas, Super Bowl), trips to London (e.g. British Museum, National Gallery), dinners, pub quizzes, pub crawls, and other events, all free or heavily subsidized. These events are yet another great excuse to meet people outside of your discipline.

One of the more disappointing features of Cambridge in general and Churchill in particular are the gyms (or lack thereof). Since the colleges operate as their own fiefdoms, there is no motivation to build a large, central university fitness center. Instead, each college operates its own woefully underequipped facility. Although Churchill’s is considered among the best, the existence of just one treadmill, one bench press, and no more than one of anything else leads to a complicated strategy game to find a time when no one else in the college wants to use the same equipment as you.⁹

This post is part one of a six-part series on my first four months in Cambridge adapted from a mid-year report I submitted to the Churchill Foundation – the sponsor whose generosity is allowing me to spend one year at the University of Cambridge. It was written in January 2012.

Photo gallery: click the “i” in the upper right for captions, the “SL” in the bottom right for slideshow mode, and the “FS” in the bottom right for full screen mode.

Life at Churchill

my first four months at Churchill College

[img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1621.jpg]3870Pepperpot 63
Pepperpot 63 - what she lacks in outer beauty, she makes up for with a massive kitchen + dining + living room. [img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1667-1.jpg]430Churchill fields
Churchill College - what we lack in quality, we make up for in quantity. Built in the 1960s, Churchill does not exactly have the charm or location of Trinity or King's, but it does have more open space than any other college in Cambridge (another benefit of being ugly and far away is that we don't wake up to tourists peeking in our bathrooms). [img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1630.jpg]360The sculpture
Legend has it that Churchill College once had the opportunity to buy this sculpture or a swimming pool. It was decided that swimming pools were much too fun for the English. [img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1675-1.jpg]340First formal hall
Our first formal hall at Churchill College. I had fantasies of running and diving across the table like a slip n slide. [img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1699-1.jpg]390Churchill Scholars
The Churchill Scholars posing with our sugar daddy. [img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1857-1.jpg]300DIY test pizza
The "test pizza" for DIY pizza night two days before the real deal - kale, butternut squash, sweet potato, red onions, peppers and pine nuts on a homemade wholewheat flax crust. [img src=http://djstrouse.com/wp-content/flagallery/life-at-churchill/thumbs/thumbs_imgp1898-1.jpg]320DIY pizza night
DIY pizza night - "Nice choices on ingredients, but do you think you could have bought more mushrooms?"

This is at least the PC explanation. I suspect that Churchill’s 1960s, Soviet factory-inspired architecture plays the primary role in repelling tourists. ↩
Churchill is unique in this respect. At most colleges, faculty sit at their own “high table” to avoid the painful difficulties of communicating with non-Nobel Prize winners. ↩
According to its charter, Churchill College is to maintain a population of about 70% scientists and engineers. While this can make for great discussion and easy communication of one’s own research, it has the inevitable effect of strongly skewing the (undergraduate) population towards the male end of the spectrum. ↩
Its drawbacks include terrifyingly intricate bureaucracies, perpetual funding problems, and a notable lack of a respectable fitness center. But who’s counting? ↩
My anti-formal hall stance has softened since I originally wrote this, particularly after attending formals at other colleges (Sidney Sussex and Queens) with large groups of friends. I am now pro-formal hall. ↩
It is rumored that King’s is the toughest hall to bag, as their once-a-week formal halls consistently sell out in minutes. ↩
To maintain standards, we of course do not allow the native British to host such things. ↩
I cannot wait for the 4th of July this year. ↩
I have shamefully stooped to spreading rumors that the gym is either closed or occupied for rugby practice during the time at which I want to use it. ↩

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4 Comments so far ↓

Clinton Burks // Apr 27, 2012 at 1:46 pm

Dear DJ,

Your Churchill chronicle is eminently worthy of comment, and I apparently am the first to do so. Good job.

I was a post-grad American inmate (Affiliated Student, classics, Berkeley) at Churchill 1978-1980. Most of your observations are incisive and accurate even for my stretch a few decades ago.

At Cambridge, I observed about four major things that seemed to depress American students there the most. Philosophically rise above the following, and living in Cambridge is a snap, with scores of once-in-a-lifetime great things and people:

1. FOOD

Before Churchill, I was used to San Francisco and Berkeley. About twenty years after Churchill, one of my friends from there, who has been living the academic life all over the world, told me Berkeley people were notoriously food snobs in any post-graduate, post-doc or tenured positions at top universities where people from all over the world are thrown together. Then he spent the summer in Berkeley in some academic capacity…”Now I know why,” he said. He made the phone call from Berkeley especially to tell me it was true about the food there. It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.

My first evening in Cambridge before Michaelmas term, I went looking for a place to eat. The only place open I could find in Cambridge was in the market square at an establishment with the optimistic monicker, “Pizza House.” On the wall inside they advertised two sizes of pizza, small and large, with corresponding prices, but no indication of their sizes — not like in the U.S. where they have the pizza pans hanging on the wall to portray size. I asked the waiter and after much bewilderment on his part, I finally coaxed him to understand that I wanted to know the size of the pizza before I ordered — “No one’s ever done that before!”

When he finally understood, he went to the kitchen and unabashedly carried out the two pizzas, one in each hand. They were frozen Sainsbury pizzas, still in their clear plastic wrappers! Talk about truth in advertising!

The only place in the world with worse pizza is my town, Manhattan, N.Y. I’m not saying the pizza is bad here, but do you know how long it takes to get the rancid taste of garlic salt out of your mouth?

My point to you about food in Cambridge is that it’s not worth being depressed over it. It was so absurd I just laughed. You can eat anything you want as long as it’s boiled Brussels sprouts.

The restaurant where I ate the most in Cambridge was Curry Centre, and I notice from Google street view that it’s still there. I hope its shrimp Vindaloo is still good. I liked walking there from Churchill on dark nights on the shortcut through St. Edmund’s College. First time I saw the Pleides in the Taurus Constellation — pointed out to me by a fellow Churchillian, an astronomer doing his doctorate, of course.

2. WEATHER

Fortunately, I actually love English weather. Manhattan where I’ve been living for exactly thirty years is Siberia in the winter and Sahara in summer. I grew up in Bremerton, Washington, a few miles across the Puget Sound from Seattle, and the moist and mild maritime climate is my favorite. It rains harder and more randomly in England, but the climate is similar. I think my positive view towards the English climate eased the depression it caused many American friends. They started calling rainy days, “Clint weather.”

I don’t think it’s that hard to get used to English weather if you relax about it. One of my friends at Trinity College had never been outside of Southern California till Cambridge, and he joined the boat club. He said he didn’t know what would happen if he were caught on the river in an 8-man shell, and it started raining. He said he thought he would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. Then the inevitable happened. One morning it rained when he was rowing. He was surprised that not only did he not die, it wasn’t that bad of an experience.

3. DAFT BRITISH INEFFICIENCY (you call it “bureaucracy”)

Just watch Monty Python sketches, like “The Cheese Shop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3KBuQHHKx0).” In America if we set out running, say, six errands, and one of them fails to materialize, and although we have a 83% success rate, we cry and moan, “Oh what a day I had!”

In England, you’re going to have only about a 20% success rate in any endeavours you attempt. If you queue up in front of the counter, and there are three clerks feverishly manning it from the other side, looking busy as can be, merely two fellow customers ahead of you will be a prohibitively long wait. Bolt immediately and live to queue another day unless there is no more than one person ahead of you.

4. LACK OF WOMEN

It was said the ratio for the entire university at that time was 6:1, men:women. You would think, “lucky women!”, but it doesn’t work out that way. What’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander, and everyone’s miserable.

Believe it or not, I was lucky there. I’m male and had been used to sheer hatred directed at me from East Bay lesbians, and Churchill was a real upgrade for my love life.

One of my friends at Churchill said he knew the by-laws of the college, and that there was a rule on the books prohibiting overnight guests in Churchill rooms — unless of the opposite sex. He was serious, and it’s a good story if true.

ASIDES AND CAMBRIDGE PLEASANTRIES

CANADIANS

The Canadians at Churchill were intelligent and personable — no different from the other graduate students and post-docs from around the world who live there. In the U.S. when I’ve met Canadians they often have been illogical, sanctimonious and extremely moralistic in the way they compare the U.S. unfavorably to Canada, which for them is a moral issue, not a logical one. At Churchill they were actually logical. They certainly never said condescendingly that Canada is “more European” than the U.S., as they do here, because it is so palpably false on that side of the Atlantic, in addition to being more of a pejorative than anything else.

“TAKING THE MICKEY OUT”

One thing I really like about the British is their zero-tolerance policy toward boastful, boorish, bullying, passive aggressive and/or annoying people. Notwithstanding it is a tragedy for many American students at Cambridge who are the phony “Hale fellow, well-met, gladhander” type of person that American scholarship committees seem to love. These committees who send these types to Oxbridge are sending lambs to slaughter.

Inspired by Bill Clinton, I call their personality trait “wonderfulness encapsulated.” Instant nausea. They must have murdered him at Oxford — you never hear how that Rhodes Scholarship really worked out for him. I think he left town a year early in a social body bag.

The “buttery bar” at Churchill can be a bloodbath for new American graduate students, who are name-droppers or show-offs. The British grad students go through them like meat grinders with their classic left-handed compliments, irony and subtle insult. It couldn’t happen to better people.

Therefore it is one of those many hidden benefits of Cambridge. It’s like taking social kung fu. It is the ultimate social weapon and never should be used unless absolutely necessary when you are under unprovoked and vicious attack by thoroughly rotten people.

Again, great job on your “rantings of a baby scientist.” You’re not the only “DJ” — I was “Screamin’ Clint Burks” and had a show the first two years of the existence of Cambridge University Radio. (“Mounds of sounds, stacks of wax, and even a smattering of plattering.” I did a lot of screaming in an AM-Radio kitsch act, for which an exaggerated American accent is mandatory.).

Cryings of a caring classicist,

Clinton Burks
Manhattan, NY
djstrouse // May 5, 2012 at 6:02 am

This is perhaps the first time I have ever received a comment for which it might be more appropriate for it to be the post and my post to be the comment… thank you for your thoughts!

Re: FOOD – My opinion of Cambridge restaurants has since improved, not least of all due to the many respectable Indian restaurants. There are still many gaping holes (Ethiopian and Israeli to name a few) but London is less than an hour away by fast train (which might not have been yet built when you were here).

Re: WEATHER – Cambridge is about as mild as it gets in England. The only thing I balked at were the 4pm sunsets in winter, but even those are made up for by the 9pm+ sunsets of spring/summer. Personally, the steady beat of rain is among my favorite sounds.

Re: DAFT BRITISH INEFFICIENCY – I have an American friend who is a professor in London who claims that the single thing he misses most about the US is the service. I suppose when you grow up with an empire, you don’t get much practice.

Re: LACK OF WOMEN – The ratios are more favorable among the graduate students than the undergrads but its still about as dire a situation as on a whaling ship.

Re: CANADIANS – The Canadians and Americans where I work are generally lumped together and considered almost indistinguishable, save that the Americans tend to be a bit louder. I suppose with so many other cultural distinctions to be made, it makes little sense for people to focus on this one.

Re: “TAKING THE MICKEY OUT” – By far my favorite feature of the British – no one does subtle jabs and irony like they do.

Thanks again for your comments!
Nikita // May 20, 2013 at 6:54 am

Heyy DJ,

U dnt knw how relieved im to c ur post…….
I have got my admissions confirmed and all set to make it for the Lent term; i have been alloted with room no :61G in top floor of the pepperpots… !! I hope u must b having some idea regarding this particular room….. and if u have any suggestions or so to give me… please do tell me…..
Once again thanks for this post… keep this good work going…. wherever u r…. !!
djstrouse // May 21, 2013 at 3:54 pm

Congrats Nikita! I don’t know anything about that particular room (except that its on the top floor, as you already know). My only suggestions would be: (1) get to know Rebecca Sawalmeh – she’s a super nice and helpful liaison for grad students at Churchill and (2) introduce yourself to your housemates. There will be about ten people living in your pepperpot and it will be a lot more fun if you all know each other and cook/hang out together. Good luck!

DJ Strouse

the rantings of a baby scientist