Top Class Portraits
Conversation about class in this university are often quiet. They are mumbled under our breath, whispered over coffee and cried out at 3am.
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Top Class Portraits as a series is endeavouring to change this and put a face on the class issue. Make it feel more human, and therefore more real.
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These aren't just the musings of nobodies but actual people and the following are just a small sample.
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Photography: Daisy Everingham
That’s level of deluded I’ve not encountered before or since. In hindsight, I wish I’d given him an earful on how I probably worked harder than he did to get here and deserve it just as much, if not more and that if he thought he was going to perpetuate my already increasing imposter syndrome then he had another thing coming! But alas, I was drunk, inarticulate and angry. Being Welsh isn’t my entire identity, but it is a large part of who I am, and probably the part of me I’m proudest of, and if some prick in a signet ring thinks he can embarrass me into subservience based on where I’m from (in Vinyl, of all places), then he is severely mistaken.
Edan Simpson
I don't come from a working class background, I live in a semi detached house in Sheffield and went to one of the best comprehensive (turned academy) schools in Yorkshire, and go on holiday abroad with my family once a year.
But coming to Cambridge I found that purely because I’ve got a slight northern accent and wasn’t part of the London-centric Grammar/private school axis people started pigeonholing me as working class or telling me I should identify as such. I’ve never seen myself as coming from that background, as most of my family are working class and I live far comfortably than they do, but I’ve found it quite interesting how much of a skewed view of class so many people at Cambridge have.
To many here it seems that unless you go skiing once a year, went to private school and live in the home counties, you don’t qualify for middle class status.
Bella Biddle
We want to believe that class is a fixed legacy we are born into, but with over a third of children growing up outside of a nuclear family, slippage is inevitable. Care kids are less likely to go to university than prison, and there is no rulebook on defining the class of those who do. Can sitting in a classroom with brains accidentally predisposed to understand academic content and absorb cultural capital elevate a person beyond their birth right?
Are our parents still more important class markers than the difference between saying “couch”, “settee” or “sofa”, whether our primary school banned bulldog, and if we’ve eaten pâté before? Does it matter who fed us pâté, really?
Lati Gutta
I was recently told that myself and some friends are ‘built of a different material.’
Yikes.
Meg Coslett
I’m Welsh. And I love it. Granted, I can’t speak a word of the language, I don’t like the constant drizzle and if I had £1 for every person who asked me to say “Oh! What’s occurring?!” during my freshers week, I would be able to pay off the entirety of my student loan in one fair swoop, but I wouldn’t swap it for anything.
I was talking to my dad about this thing called “Hiraeth” – there isn’t an English word for it but it simply means a longing for home, and a longing for Wales in particular.
I miss the dewy green hills and the smell of the sea and not being able to walk two minutes down the road without someone stopping me to ask how my Nan is doing or whatever. Though I don’t think I’ll ever move back permanently, the pull I feel from over the Severn Bridge will always be magnetic.
The thing I hate most about living in England (alongside paying for prescriptions) is how diluted my accent has become. I miss the melodic sing song lilt of my South Walian drawl, which only really comes out in full force when I’m drunk, angry or on the phone to my Mum.
I remember in my first few weeks of being in Cambridge, I was told by a boy (upon him hearing my accent) in the smoking area of a nightclub that I was “filling a quota” being here. He leaned into kiss me and I poured his blue VK over his head. The sheer audacity of this guy thinking I’d find him accusing me of only being able to gain a place at Cambridge based on my nationality (and I would argue that nationality and class is something that very much go hand in hand for Welsh people, as a whole) is one thing, but thinking he could say it in a way which was almost seductive?
Amy Clayton
One thing that has consistently baffled me during my time at Cambridge is how lots of students treat and value money; whether it's paying a one-off outrageous price for a Grandma Groove ticket, or not batting an eyelid at choosing a college room for the year that costs an extra £30 a week.
From my experience of working in my college bar, a few people have stood out for their spending habits... There's the one who paid for a £3.80 order with a £50 note- why use card when you can flex this hard?
There's the one who always manages to get through our entire stock of "fancy whiskey", and one time bought a pint for everyone in the bar- what a generous and not at all performative gesture!
Finally, there's the one who complained that his pint wasn't good enough and that he should get a discount, except when we offered him a discount he said "Oh no, money's no object to me!" This was probably the most baffling, but he was from Oxford after all.
