Today I’ve been on a Magical Memory Tour. I had an appointment at Newnham College, Cambridge, to finalise details for the venue for the Mind Calm workshop on 21st November. I was an undergraduate at Newnham, reading English, in the early 80s, so it’s also a former home for me.
I had a lovely stroll in the gardens, for which Newnham is deservedly famous. For two of my three years there, I had rooms looking out over them, and we enjoyed walking through them every day and many hours were spent reading and revising in their lovely tranquillity whenever the weather allowed.
Later, I took myself round the town and revisited some old haunts. The Copper Kettle on King’s Parade, a convenient place for a quick coffee; Auntie’s tea room where I first experienced coffee from a French press; the Gardenia which in those days was ideal for a cheap last minute date. Many of the shops are updated, just like every other town, but the small Sainsbury’s where I found myself at the checkout paying for my groceries next to Prince Edward doing the same thing is still there, much the same.
I was surprised by the intensity and variety of emotions I experienced as I wandered round. I sat for a while in Great St Mary’s church to allow things to settle. I seemed to be reliving some of my angst from over 30 years ago. Life seemed so hard, so confusing and emotionally charged then, but, looking back, I realise how supported I was, how few responsibilities I had and how easy things really were. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
An Oxbridge education is supposed to confer incredible privilege, allowing graduates to walk into almost any position they desire, possibly unaware of the struggle that others experience in life. This has not been my experience.
I arrived at Cambridge having recently moved back to the UK from the Far East where I grew up. In those days, it really was the other side of the world and England seemed foreign, confusing, sometimes even hostile. I didn’t understand how to fit in. Sometimes I still feel like an outsider but I don’t see it as a disadvantage any more.
In my first month as an undergraduate, we lost my beloved grandmother and I learned that my parents were going to divorce, meaning that I no longer had a home in Malaysia. Back then, there was no such thing as counselling or anyone wondering how you were coping, so I just carried on and lost myself in my studies. At the end of my second year I had overworked so much that I became ill and had to take a year off to relax and recover. When I finally graduated, in 1985, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself and ended up working in a university library in London.
In terms of traditional success, I haven’t made the most of my Oxbridge education, so far. I didn’t stay on and become an academic, as I had initially wanted to do, and I haven’t ended up as an Oscar-winning actor, prominent politician or famous writer, like some of my contemporaries.
While a Cambridge education teaches one to think deeply and with agility and orginality, fills one with all sorts of knowledge and helps to cultivate discipline and intellectual rigor, spending three years as a Newnhamite provides something more.
Newnham was established in 1871 as somewhere for women to be while they attended lectures at Cambridge. They weren’t allowed to become full members of the university, however, and women were only given degrees in 1948 onwards.
So for more than 75 years Newnham was home to women who were willing to learn, study and develop their abilities without even the hope of a qualification at the end of it all. The culture of the College has therefore naturally become one of determation, gravitas, valuing knowledge and ability before prestige and traditional notions of success. Newnhamites tend to ‘get stuck in,’ working hard and enthusiastically with little thought for personal prominence.
During my three years at Newnham, I developed these qualities, most of which I already possessed to some degree. I honed my fledgling social conscience but missed the part of the Oxbridge experience that is supposed to confer a large dose of confidence.
Looking at success with a wider perspective, however, I can see how my own Oxbridge experience, and in particular the qualities I developed as a Newnhamite, have helped me to achieve large amounts of personal success in my own life.
Ask any Newnhamite where someone might have studied if she had ended up a single-parent-home-educating-freelance-solicitor-meditation-coach-writer type and she wouldn’t hesitate in defining that women as a fellow Newnham alumna. We’ll turn our hands to anything, cheerfully taking on extra tasks and sacrificing our spot in the limelight if we are needed somewhere else.
So this post contains a special note of thanks to Newnham. I am especially grateful for the lessons in applying myself to whatever turns up to be done, for the understanding that shouldering responsibilities is more important than personal gain and for the beautiful gardens that still feel like home.
Success doesn’t always look like glittering prizes, TV interviews and names in lights. It doesn’t even have to look like a bursting bank account. Success can also be unexpected challenges undertaken, responsibilities cheerfully owned and adversity faced. I can’t say whether I would have dealt with the unexpected twists and turns of my life as well if I hadn’t been to Newnham, but I suspect that my years there have contributed significantly to my ability to ride life’s roller coaster.
If you would like to visit Newnham and have been thinking about learning Mind Calm, why not combine the two? Here are the details of the next Cambridge workshop, to be held at Newnham. Perhaps I’ll see you there.
