Caltech

Matriculation

To be able to study at Cambridge, all students need to go through matriculation. I went through matriculation with the Corpus Christi College* freshers. I was considered a "fresher" because it's my first time in the college. I felt so old...

(*See note at bottom of post.)

Freshers (fresh-ers) noun. The Cambridge slang for Freshman; equivalent to "Frosh" at Caltech.

For the occasion, we had to wear gowns over our "smart clothes." "Smart clothes" basically mean "business" clothes in British English. It's a tradition here to wear gowns to the formal occasions, such as matriculation, graduation, and formal dinners. Before, it was mandatory for students to wear gowns all the time, even when just walking around the town of Cambridge, to separate themselves from the townspeople (The term "town and gown" was used to describe the two parts of a college town). At the more conservative Oxford, students are still required to wear gowns when taking exams! I like gowns because they make me feel like I go to Hogwarts.

After pictures, we proceeded to the Hall where the matriculation ceremony was held. The Hall is structured like the hall in Harry Potter, except we have 3 rows of tables while Hogwarts has 4. There's a special elevated table in the front where the master, tutor and fellows sit. On a day-to-day basis, this is where we eat lunch and dinner!!

In the Hall, we signed a special "Corpus book." After matriculation, we had tea in the master's garden. I managed to find some fellow American exchange students.

The Americans! From left to right: Conan from Caltech, Me!, Laura from Arkansas, and Alexandra from MIT

Then came the formal matriculation dinner. Grace was said in Latin (a bunch of sounds I don't understand..) once before the first course, and once before dessert. We sat with our Director of Studies (DoS), who are basically our advisers and academic faculty associated with the college and university. My DoS actually had his Ph.D. supervised by Sergio Pellegrino, who was, at that time, a professor at Cambridge, but is now an Aeronautics professor at Caltech! Small world. Or maybe it's just common for brilliant academics to all know each other.

I also learned from my DoS how ball bearings used to be made. They used to melt metal and cool them drop by drop in liquid. Because the intermolecular forces in the metal are much stronger than the forces of gravity, the droplets stay very round, thus making good, round ball bearings. Being a MechE, I think that's pretty cool!

*NOTE: You might be confused what the difference between Corpus Christi College and Cambridge University is. Cambridge University runs on a unique system. The University is comprised of the professors, staff, research facilities, etc. The College (Cambridge has 31) has the students, housing, and dining. The Colleges admit the students, collects the money, and pays the University. The University, in return, offers education and hands out the degrees. I've heard that the Caltech housing system is based on this Cambridge system, but the houses are definitely less autonomous than the Cambridge Colleges. They're like businesses of their own!

 

Scones and Cows

Cambridge is located close to a famous tea place called "The Orchard" in Grantchester, a small village right outside of Cambridge. We walked the 3 miles there, and the 3 miles back, and I was blown away by the picturesque English countryside. Apparently, it's perfectly common to see swans on the Cam, and they are super people-friendly and float only a few feet from kayakers or punters.

 

Also, the meadows are amazing... doesn't it remind you of Pride and Prejudice? England is much smaller than the U.S., so I was surprised to find so much unoccupied land.

We arrived at The Orchard. It's a place where people have tea, lunch or just rest for the afternoon in armchairs under the shadows of apple trees. In the brochure, they described the idyllic place as "a corner of England where time stands still as the outside world rushes by." Since the early 1900s, it was a popular place for the writers, artists, and scientists of Cambridge to hold discussions and have tea. This includes Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf, A.A. Milne, Sylvia Plath, Alan Turing, Watson and Crick, and Stephen Hawking, to name a few.

We had scones with cream and jam, an English classic. And by cream, I don't mean cream cheese. The cream here is sort of like a thick whipped cream, sweet and delicious. I also tried an elderflower drink. The label said: "gently bubbling with real elderflowers." I love lemonade, but this definitely trumps lemonade! I need to find a place in California that sells elderflower drinks or I'll just grow some myself!

On the way back, we ran into cows grazing right on the edge of the path we were taking. That was the closest that I've ever been to a cow without a fence in between xD

 

Row Row Row Your Boat

Cambridge is famous for being the best place in England to punt. 

You're probably wondering: "what is punting?" When I first heard the word, it sounded like "grunting" so I thought it was a very intense sport like football or rugby. I was very wrong, because punting is one of the most relaxing activities ever invented. 

To punt, you will need:
1. A boat. Usually, people use shallow wooden boats.

2. A tranquil river. There's a river running through the heart of Cambridge, which we call The Cam. 

3. A punter with a long aluminum stick, and passengers.

Here's a picture of a typical boat we use for punting on the Cam, our punter Chris, and me and Nikita demonstrating how to be passengers:

Instructions:
Now, because the river doesn't have much of a current, the punter must "punt" to move across the water. To punt, the punter stands at the back of the boat, and uses the aluminum stick to touch the bottom of the river and push off the ground at the bottom.

Okay, that's probably not the most efficient way of getting around. If we wanted to move faster, we would probably use paddles or oars, but the point of punting isn't for transportation. It's for the most beautiful, picturesque views in Cambridge:

The nice thing about the boat tour was that the river goes through private grounds owned by the colleges in Cambridge, and not busy, public streets. This is the Bridge of Sighs in St. John's College. It's modeled after a bridge with the same name in Venice:

I got to try punting too! It's harder than it looks... I had trouble keeping the boat from running into the sides or the other boats xD

How To Get To Cambridge

Everybody says that Cambridge is like Hogwarts, but the similarities were apparent even before I arrived. If you've read the Harry Potter stories, you pretty much know how to get to Cambridge too! If you don't, follow these simple instructions:

1. Go to London's King's Cross Station. It will look something like this:

 

2. Find Platform 9 and 3/4. There were some renovations going on for London 2012, so they relocated the platform from its usual spot. 

3. Buy tickets to the Cambridge Express. Yes, my train was called the Cambridge Express (kinda sounds like Hogwarts Express right?). There are trains that run from King's Cross station to Cambridge every hour, but every few hours, they would run a train directly to Cambridge without any stops. Those appeared on the "Departure" screen as "Cambridge Express."

 

4. Sit back and enjoy the beautiful English countryside... there are lots of sheep and cows.

5. After arriving at Cambridge station, find a thestral-driven taxi cab and it will take you to school. (ok, not really, but I'd like to think so...)

6. And TADA, you've arrived at your castle-school. Like magic, huh?

That's the main courtyard of Corpus Christi college, where I'm living this term! :D