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The Bridge Story

On Saturday, January 9 we all went on walking tours of Cambridge. There were three different tour guides and each group of students saw different things. The tour that I went on was with Dr. Nigel Allington, a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. The other tour guides were Dr. Nicholas O'Shaughnessy, a fellow of Hughes Hall and university lecturer (as well as brother of another famous O'Shaughnessy), and Mr. John Harrison, Assistant Master of Eton College. Each of the tour guides showed their group different aspects of Cambridge. Professor Allington showed one of the groups several different colleges and shared many humorous stories. My favorite story was that of a bridge that is incomplete: the bridge is missing a cornerstone on one side. During the summer when there are many tourists in Cambridge, the students take a piece of styrofoam and make it look as if the bridge is complete. As a group of tourists in a boat make their way down the river, students make it seem as though they are making a great effort to push the corner stone into the water. When the tourists see that what appears to be a very large rock is falling at them, they jump out of their boat. Then the styrofoam hits the water and floats. The students think this is very funny.

After walking around Cambridge, Professor Allington showed his group his office. This was much more elaborate than the offices that we were accustomed to in the United States. The office had just been redecorated and was not fully complete, but everything was in place except for the paintings. As Professor Allington stated, "The walls will be graced with the faces of past professors." As we sat comfortably in huge leather chairs, Professor Allington explained to us how the college system works in England.
A typical student has lecture in the morning and tutorials in the afternoon or evening. It was the tutorials that were most interesting to us. Each student is assigned a tutor. The student meets with the tutor weekly and is instructed to write an essay and to return the following week. It is common for the student then to work very hard on the essay, return the following week only to have the essay completely ripped apart by the tutor. Tutorials only have one to four students in them, so learning is very much one on one. This is one of the benefits of this form of education, but this is also the most costly form of education.

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