Students also complained that results for disciplines such as maths are read out from the Senate House balcony. Ant Bagshaw, Cambridge University Students' Union education officer, said the change was "great news," but he added, "The big stress is other people finding out your exam results before you. There is a lot of student anxiety about it."
Poor dears, I wonder how they will cope in the real world. Obviously the modern Cambridge student has little respect for tradition. Is that progress?
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Sorry Sub R but I think you are wrong here.
I have been through this "hell" a few times and it really is stressful crowding around a notice board, to find that the results are not there or that you have panned the exam.
I have seen people collapse when they read their results.
In the old days the "higher" results were read out to the whole school and you had to pass all the sunjects to get a pass.
Pure Torture but with some of the advanced BSc courses combining Knitting with Media Studies may be less stressful.
Afraid this shows the simpering mawkish weaklings that Oxford and Cambridge produce - all I've ever known to come out of there are liberal sycophants! Unable to cope with the workplace, living with an eternal sense of entitlement without reciprocal effort and walking/talking with an air of superiority throughout their life. I've made a point of only attending universities in the bottom performance quartile to avoid these people.
Billy it takes all sorts I suppose but I too went through my highers being read out to the senior school and it's all part of learning how to cope with disappointment/elation. Didn't do me any harm and yes it was exceptionally stressful.
Perhaps the thought of it made me work that bit harder to pass. :)
SL I love the 'eternal sense of entitlement', superb. Indeed I've met and worked with that attitude and it's been a hard fight to establish my place - done through hard work rather than school tie.
You really have no heart SR! I remember vividly the exact seconds twenty years ago when I went to see my degree results posted up in Edinburgh. Dozens of people were milling around, some literally leaping in the air, others helpfully shouting out what their friends got. I had to look over people's heads and look down the list twice. I missed my own name twice, thought I had bombed out with Ordinary 'only' and eventually spotted the telltale big 'Q' at the bottom. I can still tell you (after decades of a successful life lived well) that third class is a bad carriage to sit in... :-p
Auch Mek I'm not such a hard hearted bitch, honestly. Did the experience really influence your life so much? Would it have been better if it had come by snail mail?
Sorry Subrosa, gotta disagree on this one. I'd prefer to know my results before anyone else saw them, good or bad...
Not a life and death situation, and tradition can be a good thing, but there's nothing wrong with change as long as it's change for the better, in my view.
Some think these things are strengthening to the character, and for some they are. For some they aren't though. For some it's just another humiliation.
Yes and no, SR. I was a little embarassed to go back to the Uni to chase up a PhD, so I never did one. Instead I did charity work over the Summer and got a job in London soon after. Did well etc. etc., but - now you've made me think - 'Doctor Mek' does have a bit of a distinguished ring to it... :-)
Mek, take it from me it's never too late. Go for it if you feel like it. Right enough Doc Mek does have a ring about it.
Funnily enough, SR, I was at Edinburgh, and getting the results on the board is an abiding memory. But it's a good one.
Maybe it was the fact that the teaching area (we'd got rid of Departments by then) was so small and close-knit (it was the old Theoretical and Applied Linguistics section, which has since merged with - and taken over, if the leadership structure is anything to go by - English Language), but it was a great day.
It was as though we'd spent the four years together, and we were ending them together, as a group, sitting in the Common Room, all of us in suspense, going through each other's successes and disappointments. I remember just staying for four hours with one of the girls, who was so nervous about her results (she needn't have been - she got a First) that just to keep her calm we did every su doku in every one of that day's papers, and I recall everyone being so gutted about the 2:2 I got... they took it worse than I did, mainly as I'd seen the writing on the wall for months beforehand!
But it was a wonderful day: all of us together, as we had been from the start, like the extended family that we pretty much were by then.
Maybe there's a different atmosphere at Cambridge, but I'm sad for the guys and girls who won't get to share this last experience with their friends and colleagues.
OK tris I understand what you say, but isn't it better to learn humiliation in such a 'sheltered' environment than in a workplace where it's all dog eat dog?
I'm sure I would prefer to receive anything like that in private too, but I respected what had gone before.
I'm just old-fashioned I know. For graduates of Cambridge I should think this is the first time they've ever felt humiliation if they fail. Hard to cope with right enough.
Will, that's very similar to mine at school when they read out the Highers. I'd gone though that school with some from the age of 5 so, as you say, they felt like my extended family. It was nerve-racking but also exciting. Mind you it didn't help that my mother said not to come home if I didn't pass - perhaps the worst memory of the whole day.
I'm genuinely pleased you had a good experience, Will. (Must have been artsy faculty.) Su doku? I think they had just invented Mah Jong when I graduated...
Yes SR, I certainly see your point and I'm not really one for sheltering people from every nasty thingsthat comes along... Perhaps it's because it's such a big thing. The culmination of 3 years (at Cambridge) or 4 years in Scotland, and if it goes horribly wrong for some reason, it might be better to suffer that shock on your own. Maybe it's because I'm just a rather private person....
What a heartening story from Will though. What a lovely bunch of people your classmates sound.
As another "Alumni Universitatis Edinburgensis", the year I graduated they ceased to post names on the list, but instead used one of those sly individual numbers. Needless to say, one had to squint at it several times to be quite sure that one had all the little squirming digits in the proper place.
Being less sociable than Will and his fellow linguists, I eschewed my fellow lawyers who rushed to the earliest posting, went out for an afternoon pint, and moseyed up after the rush. Two-hundred folk pressing in a flushed crush of anticipation isn't my idea of joy!
Aye Lallands but it's something you'll never forget isn't it. That's the difference.
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