Cambridge Days

May Bumps, May Balls, and Magdalene MBAs

Last night I was happily back at Magdalene, even though the season of Formal Halls is over. This was a pizza-and-chips affair, instead, with the other Magdalenes who are in the Judge. It’s a small group – there’s four of us MBAs in college this year, a couple of MPhils, and our strategy prof, herself a Fellow at Magdalene.

Nice thing was, the college Master showed up, too. As you might expect from somebody who’s also the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, he’s a very cultured dude. (If genteel cocktail-party talk were an Olympic event, I be he could lead the field for Britain.) He’s also good-natured, and a super-approachable guy; that’s something I learned after he took a dozen of us MBAs into the Fitz, and gave us a quick lecture on how finance, marketing, and management issues affect the Arts today.

Anyhow. Cambridge is suddenly bursting with festivities, and it’s belatedly sinking in that The End, as I’ve always been warned, Is Nigh. I feel like I’ve been running this whole academic year, praying I can make it into the home stretch, and just now realized that it’s all already behind me.
It’s fitting, then, that our night sky has been rocked by professional fireworks days in a row – the May Balls are happening (in June, as always) and will be for the whole of next week. (I’m at Queen’s from Monday night to Tuesday morning, meself.)

rowers lining up for May Bumps

Simultaneously, there’s the May Bumps, a week-long rowing competition which is arguably the heart of Cambridge sport. That’ll be a blog entry unto itself; suffice to say that some students are walking around wreathed with willow branches, most the rest have Pimm’s in hand.

Oh, and the sun is out, gloriously. 84 degrees, no joke.

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