A father and daughter reflect on their time at Clare, 35 years apart.

“Following the results of the Cambridge Higher School Certificate Examinations, I had won a scholarship in mathematics at Queens Royal College (QRC). I wasn’t clear on a proposed course of study and I didn’t want to go into teaching. Our Principal was a Cambridge graduate himself and he advised me to take up engineering. Although he was a member of Jesus College, he advised me to apply to Clare. I was happy about that since I found out later that two former students of QRC were actually at Clare at that time.

Up to that point, I had never travelled outside of Trinidad. Commercial air travel was not yet available and I had to travel by boat to the UK. The trip took 12 days with stops at Barbados and Spain (Vigo). The voyage was quite enjoyable since three other scholarship winners who had been admitted to Cambridge were travelling with me. None of my siblings had been to the UK before but I had three cousins who were studying in the UK at the time and a fourth one in Dublin.”

“I applied to Cambridge at ‘someone’s’ insistence, little believing I would be accepted. From my distance, applying to Clare was synonymous with applying to Cambridge. I did not have the means to undertake pre-application visits to different colleges, or discuss their relative strengths with peers, or go to the local library to research the matter. And I will reluctantly admit that the internet did not exist in those days. So, I applied to the college whose blade had hung over every breakfast since I was born.”

“I joined the Boat Club soon after the start of Term as we were advised to participate in sporting activities for health reasons. In 1955, I rowed with the Clare Gentlemen’s Eight who won their blades in the May Bumps. Through the Boat Club activities, I made a number of lasting friendships, some of which have lasted to this day. In my second year, I stayed in ‘digs’ at Braeside. For the third year, I shared rooms on T Staircase with a Boat Club colleague who pursued Engineering and Law. My family and I have maintained contact with his family to this day and through the years we have exchanged visits to our respective countries.”

“I signed up for rowing in my first term. Obviously – I was a tourist, after all. It was beyond cold. This was my first winter anywhere, and it was a year when the Cam had burst its banks. So, we had to wade out with the excessively heavy wooden novice eights into the thigh-high ice water at 7am to begin our training. The novice regatta was an unqualified disaster for us in the Clare Women’s E crew, and I was overjoyed to have no encouragement to take the thing up again!”

“I should like to register my deepest appreciation for the interest shown in my progress by Professor Baker, a Clare Fellow and Head of the Department of Engineering. He regularly inquired into my progress. Like most foreign students, I stayed in College during the winter vacation. I sincerely appreciate the Baker family’s invitation to their home for dinner during my first winter vacation.”

“Perhaps the greatest yield from my years at Clare is the friendships that blossomed there. For most of us, this was the first time we were living away from home, and we quickly forged friendships to replace family. Several friends generously invited me to join them on their trips home during holidays – Mrs Levene will always be my ‘Mrs Weasley’. Given the thousands of miles that have separated us for many years, these friendships are not as vigorous as we might have hoped, but we do occasionally manage to reconnect.”