WELCOME TO LINGUISTICS AT PEMBROKE
Dear Freshers,
Hello and welcome! You are lucky enough to be joining the best college in Cambridge,
congratulations! I’m sure that you will enjoy it as much as we did in our first year.
We are Emily and Kieran, the Pembroke College Linguistics Reps for next year, and look forward to
meeting you! We are both going into second year, meaning that we are unfortunately no longer
freshers, despite how much we may like to be! Although we are a very small subject in college (with
only 3 undergraduates + new freshers), we also belong to the MML (Modern and Medieval
Languages) and English Faculties, meaning that there are more of us than it might seem. In this letter
we’ll tell you a few useful things that may help you at the start of your journey. If you have any
questions at all before arriving in October, please do not hesitate in dropping one (or both) of us an
email, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions/help you out. Our emails are ksd36@cam.ac.uk
(Kieran) and ecd43@cam.ac.uk (Emily).
Firstly, most of your contact time will be spent on the Sidgwick Site in the Lecture Block and
supervision rooms that are dotted around the site. Luckily for us, the site is about a 10 minute walk
from Pembroke, or a 5 minute cycle. We can also use the MML library at the site, which is much
better than the Pembroke library for access to books on Linguistics. If you like, you can borrow books
out of the MML library and use them in the Pembroke library (as Pembroke library is the prettiest
around!). In an average week, you will have 4 lectures, one in each module, which are an hour long
and are spent listening to the lecturer and jotting down useful points. Luckily in our department,
lectures are put up onto a website known as CamTools, which you will be able to access once you
have arrived, so don’t worry about missing certain points! You will also have around 4 supervisions a
week, which is a chance to reflect on what you learnt in the lecture and get feedback on the tasks that
you completed for the module that week. These are usually rather informal chats, and are with 3-5
other students from different colleges. Both lectures and supervisions are good ways to meet the rest
of your coursemates! As our subject is small, our Director of Studies, or DoS, (Dr David Willis, who
is responsible for everything academic at your time at Pembroke and is very approachable), is based at
Selwyn College. This is not a problem, as Selwyn College is very close to the Sidgewick Site and
Pembroke.
You’ve probably heard that there is a lot of work at Cambridge, and there is. However, it is
manageable if you keep on top of everything, and there is plenty of scope to get involved in lots of
other activities, including sports, music, drama, and of course nights out. There are four 3-hour exams
at the end of the year, and it will all be worth it when we have the spectacular May Week at the end of
the year!
We are very much looking forward to meeting you, and expanding our small Linguistics family over
multiple brunches (which are the best around, trust us). Once again, if you have any questions about
anything regarding Cambridge (not just Linguistics!) please drop us an email.
See you soon!
Kieran and Em