Have you ever wandered what a typical geographer at Cambridge gets up to in a day?
Today I interviewed Sophie Angel, a second-year geographer at Murray Edwards College to investigate what a day in the life is like for a Cambridge geographer. Sophie is a human geographer with a keen interest in urban and economic geography with a particular focus on sustainability. Sophie’s geography highlight of last year (apart from finishing exams) was the CUGS Christmas Ball!
Sophie’s day started bright and early at 7:30 just in time for booking the Varsity ski trip at 8:00. To reassure concerned readers, Sophie would like to mention that she does not normally wake up this early! Breakfast consisted of a hearty bowl of Shreddies to fuel for the fairly busy day ahead. After grabbing a banana for the road, Sophie had a supervision at Churchill College for the Citizenship, Cities and Civil Society lecture series. Unfortunately, it started torrentially raining en route to the supervision and everyone turned up to the supervision completely sodden. Sophie’s first supervision of term was slightly larger than usual with nine people split into three groups, each group was tasked with making a presentation on ideas surrounding the EU and terrorism. Sophie and her group presented on migration. After the slightly soggy supervision Sophie headed back to Murray Edwards for lunch which incorporated some left-over fajitas from last night’s dinner.
After lunch, I joined Sophie and we cycled down from Murray Edwards to the Babbage lecture theatre in time for a 13:00 lecture on Development Theories, Policies and Practices delivered by Emma Mawdesley. Sophie noted how luxurious the Babbage lecture theatre is compared to the to the chemistry lecture theatre we were put in last year due to COVD-19 measures! In the middle of our incredibly topical lecture on neoliberalism, the Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned. In the manner of a true geographer Sophie explained to me how this illustrates how relevant geography is to real life! Straight after Development was a lecture on Citizenship, Cities and Civil Society by Charlotte Lemanski which introduced the concept of Civil Society.
Following the two lectures Sophie headed back to college and went to a council meeting as part of her role as JCR Green Officer! Then from 17:30 – 18:30 Sophie had a 1-hour rehearsal with the Inter Alios choir – which is the joint Murray Edwards and Churchill choir. Dinner was a homemade sweet potato Thai green curry with rice using left over vegetables (no waste from the JCR Green Officer) with fresh lime and chilli to garnish! After a sufficient dinner break Sophie went to the Rosemary Murray library in Murray Edwards as despite having a thoroughly busy day no supervision work had been completed yet… Sophie started by looking over the lectures from that day then she got stuck into reading for a supervision essay on Living with Global Change. After putting in a good shift in the library, Sophie finished the day with a well-deserved cup of tea and some TV!
Written by Taybah Khan-Lodhi, 2nd Year Geography Student