The 'week in the life' project was co-created with 11 students currently studying at Cambridge from different disciplines and with different interests. The students created this content in their own voice to represent their own experiences of navigating the Cambridge 'week'.

A week in the life of a Cambridge student is so vastly different from students at other universities. For starters, our terms are only eight weeks long, creating what I so affectionately dub the ‘Love Island Effect’ – a phenomenon in which everything appears to move much faster and much more intensely than it feels it should. In just one of these eight weeks, you could meet the love of your life, fall out with your best friend, and suddenly become the president of your college’s May Ball. Literally, anything can happen.

The life of a student taking Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS) is an especially difficult one to pin down. We have the freedom to insert ourselves into other sciences like biology, or humanities subjects like politics and education. Personally, I love Sociology and Criminology. After all, if this degree falls through, I’m going to have to know how to get away with crime. Such is life in this economy. (Disclaimer: this is a joke.)

Cambridge is one of the top universities for a reason - it'll give you the opportunities of a lifetime, but it'll also challenge you in ways you never expected. Lucky for you, I’m a lazy genius, which means I know all the top-secret methods, tips, and tricks to get through the year without losing your mind.

Cambridge weeks start on Thursdays, according to tradition, so this is often where your first lecture of the week lands. Lectures are a key part of any university experience, and Cambridge is no exception. These can be hit or miss. Some lecturers will explain things beautifully, and some lecturers will try to make themselves sound smarter by using a thesaurus for every other word. It’s important to remember that Google exists, and if you don’t understand something, lecture recordings and/or lecture notes are usually online, and Google exists to fill gaps.

In PBS, we typically have four different subjects, or papers, to do. Each of those comes with supervisions, often weekly or fortnightly, where we sit down with a lecturer or PhD student in that field to discuss our essays. They’re organised by you and the supervisor, so cramming them into every free slot you have is common, especially since you can have up to four in a week. They can really help your understanding and help you see things from other points of view, but I’ve also watched my classmates spend 30 minutes debating the meaning of the word ‘current’ (context: psychological practices currently in use. The whole discussion really had me wondering what I'm paying for).

Next up, the practical. These are great fun and fantastic opportunities to recreate experiments with you as the researcher and/or the participant to help you better understand what you’ve studied. I’ve experienced colour blindness with special glasses from Japan and measured at what distance certain visual illusions appear.

After that, I leave to go home, poor brain exhausted from over-exertion. A little time to relax is essential to maintain sanity, but so is time in clubs and societies. Some people join in serious clubs in which you can win awards, but I much prefer more casual things like K-Pop dance. It’s super chill, good exercise, and good company. Then I eat (provided my housemates haven’t destroyed the kitchen) and I sleep.

Sometimes, rarely, you get real lucky and you don’t get lectures on one day of the week. This day for me was Friday, so I use it to catch up on everything I forgot to do throughout the week and work on some essays, or, as I like to call them, try not to cry challenges. Fridays are a great time to go socialise, too – every college has a hangout spot like the clubroom, and it’s fun to get to know the regulars in college over a few drinks, whether they be beer or apple juice.

An unfortunate reality for some is the possibility of weekend lectures. Having to drag myself out of bed on a Saturday morning certainly isn’t ideal, so whether I attend a lecture or not is hit or miss, but in all honesty, you don’t have to attend every lecture. Seriously, it’s fine. You do not need to know everything. Nobody knows everything. I really recommend looking at past exam papers for your subjects early in the year to see what they want from you, because oftentimes, you’ll only need to know a fraction of the topics in your subject to get through the exam. Nobody expects you to know everything and realising this really does alleviate a lot of stress.

Saturday is another day for dance, usually followed by bubble tea and good chat. Free time on Saturday is a good chance to work on an essay or study. Study culture in Cambridge has a reputation for being intense and competitive and sometimes can consume people, with them bragging about burying their head in books for twelve hours a day. It's fine to not have a life if that's what you're about, but for the sake of your mental health, I don't recommend it. Consistently studying for a couple of hours here and there over the term is way more effective. Finishing Saturday by relaxing a bit is a necessity.

Sundays are luckily the one day you don't have lectures. Some supervisors will try to ruin your Sundays with supervisions, but I negotiated my way into ruining Tuesday afternoons instead. Sunday is a rest day and a panic-my-way-through-unfinished-tasks day, just like God intended.

Monday morning begins the cycle of crawling out of bed early in the morning to get to a lecture once more, leaving an extra five minutes early to have time to grab coffee on the way. I never used to understand why people would insist on having coffee in the mornings, but Cambridge showed me why. Treating yourself here and there is essential for getting through a day sometimes, and nobody should feel guilty for that. Mentor comes after a lunch break. Having conditions like ADHD, mentoring gives me an opportunity to talk through whatever's on my mind and better centre myself for the week to come. I know a lot of people who feel like they 'don't deserve' certain help, even though it'd enable them keep up with other students. Getting this help can make the world of difference though; making time for problems and stresses is critical for survival.

Tuesday is another practical day, another experiment to mimic and more results to analyse. Another lecture follows, and then I rush my way over to my next supervision. The free afternoon gives me a chance to catch up on things and sometimes I'll go to a formal dinner that night. My college tends to serve a lot of wine, so it's not uncommon to go down to the bar after to continue drinking with friends, especially since Tuesday is a cheap drinks night.

Wednesday starts us off with a lecture and a supervision follows, except... oops. I forgot to do the essay. I used to feel guilty for failing to submit an essay on time for supervision, but sometimes it slips my mind or too many things come up and I'm not able to finish it on time. One of the things I was first advised to do when I came here was to keep up, meaning if you miss a deadline, just move on to the next one, or you'll just continue to fall behind. Though, that doesn't fix your guilty conscience that may even convince you to skip the supervision altogether. "I have covid" was a great excuse back in the day, but it won't help your learning or understanding. Essay or no essay, it's still worth turning up and joining in on the discussion - you can still learn from how other people approached a question, and maybe it'll inspire you. Another lecture in the late afternoon ends my week, and in my opinion, a late finish justifies an early night.

That is what a week can look like for a more humanities-oriented PBS student. It may be hard at times, but I love my course, and it really has improved my life for the best.

There's a lot to keep in mind during time at Cambridge. Sometimes, a particularly bad day can mean lectures missed and supervisions skipped. Bad days can happen to anyone, and much as we may deny ourselves the luxury to miss things, sometimes it is necessary for survival, and they are easily fixed by looking at online materials and emailing supervisors. Many supervisors are students themselves and understand when you can't perfectly fulfil everything required of you. This happens more than I'd like to admit, but modern technology is a blessing that has enabled me to keep up with my course material. In Cambridge, one of the greatest strengths is to recognise one's own capabilities at any moment. If you don't feel capable of something at a certain time, it is better not to force it at risk of burnout. It costs much less to take a day off than to pay the price of burnout.

A lot of people will also insist on studying everything, but knowing your exam structure early on by looking at past papers can tell you exactly what you need to know and what kind of structure examiners expect that knowledge to be presented in. Prioritising is a skill naturally formed by the many topics offered at Cambridge, as it is impossible to study everything. Moreover, knowing your learning style can really streamline the process, and you can accomplish more in two hours than another student can accomplish in 12 if you're well-prepared and know what to study and how to study it.

Above all, the one message I consider most important is to take care of yourself. Kindness is not a luxury, and you are allowed bad days and little treats.