Program 1: Explorer 2017 – Day 9

‘It’s raining, it’s pouring, Cambridge is snoring…”

As one can expect in a traditional English city like Cambridge, the summer season is often interspersed with cold and wet weather. As a result, the Reach students were off to a slower start today. However, the Reach Cambridge team are adamant that a rainy day will never mean a boring day! Instead of a wet and wild version of sport, which was postponed in the interest of safety(!), the afternoon was filled with challenging interview practice questions and glamorous lanyard expression sessions. The students who attended the interview skills workshop were tackled with questions that spanned over the fields of Maths, Medicine, Biology, Physics and Engineering, according to their academic interests. Examples included: ‘What percentage of the Earth’s water can be found in a single cow?’ as well as, ‘Identify the bone of the thigh’. These academic mock-interviews were a great chance for the students to flex their mental muscles and gain feedback on their demeanour, posture and problem-solving styles from supervisors, many of whom have experienced (and successfully passed through) the often-feared Oxbridge-style interviews that guard the entrance to the UK’s top universities. For the students who would rather explore their creative side as opposed to their academic side, the ‘glamyard’ workshop held great appeal. This term was coined by supervisor Kate last year when she inaugurated the first lanyard-decorating session, to sparkly effect. Given that students are asked to wear their Reach Cambridge lanyards at all times, as they carry their Emergency Cards and allow them to be identified by Porters, the chance to personalise them is exactly what the fashion-conscious Reach Cambridge student needs! A funky playlist accompanied the activity, and by the end of the afternoon, students came out of the session with unique and oh-so-glamorous lanyards: glamyards for short! The afternoon also held particular excitement for students who had signed up to various Add-Ons when applying for the Reach Cambridge program. Creative Writing students cracked on with their linguistic adventures, while Architecture students enjoyed their first of three interactive sessions introducing the knowledge and skills requisite to the field.  Indeed, Architecture students were doubly-fortunate, as tonight’s guest lecture was given by their teacher. He gave an engaging and unusual talk which addressed the inter-dimensional aspects of Architecture and how there’s far more than meets the eye… Once again, in quintessential English fashion, at the end of the evening lecture, the students tucked into some strawberries while catching up on a Wimbledon game. The alternative to this was watching the Disney movie Moana in the Trinity Hall Music Room, snuggled up with the new friends that they have been making at Reach. Though I was not in attendance at either event, the laughter, adrenaline and enthusiasm oozing from the students afterwards strongly suggested to me that both activities were a success. In summary, today was filled with relaxing yet riveting activities which branched into academics, art, design, sport, film and literature. The day concluded the same way it started: raining and pouring, with students ready to start snoring!   ~by Tomini, Supervisor (Second-Year Medicine student at Leicester Medical School & past Reach Cambridge student!) SaveSave SaveSave