St Catharine's
St Catharine herself might have recognised something of her own experience in the Class of 2027.
We too have endured our trials. A dreadful fresher's flu — so terrible it had our mothers panicking back home; the struggle to cook anything remotely edible in the Main Site gyps; ritualistic early-morning fire drills, the post-2025 US election edition feeling not wholly unlike Catharine's own martyrdom. Yet like her we persevered, sustained if not by divine promise, then at least by caffeine, delusion, and an acute mixture of love and terror for our supervisors.
We arrived, some of us only seventeen, spluttering polite small talk, with doe-eyed innocence, and in time learnt the true hallmarks of a Catz education: the weekly fortification of Catz Corner; withering glares at tourists through the Main Court gates; the correction, delivered with quiet menace, that ‘Catharine’ is spelt with an a not an e; and our revered chant, "Oh St Catharine is wonderful”.
We’ve had our triumphs: two May Balls; athletic glory on the pitches in rugby, football, hockey, lacrosse, and golf, to list but a few; the great second-year migration to Chads; a valiant campaign for the reinstatement of happy hour.
But what defines our year is harder to locate. It lives somewhere in the accumulation of smaller things: conversations in Main Court that stretched without warning into hours; the ease of always running into someone you know.
It’s tempting to think our cohort is exceptional, a golden moment in a College over five centuries old. But perhaps the more comforting thought is that this feeling is not unique to us. The wheel turns, as it always has, and each generation steps forward certain that they must be the first. And in that illusion, so fleeting, so convincing, lies the real magic of Catz.
Cara Bossom, JCR President, MML & Classics
