Real life has been amazing over the past few weeks. At the start of June, I finished my final exams ever. Not long after, on what is probably going to turn out to be the sunniest day of the year, I took my then-girlfriend, Catherine-Mary Andrews, out in a canoe on the Cam. After sipping Pimm’s & Lemonade in a quiet spot down a little stream for a while, I got down on one knee, without falling out of the canoe, and proposed. Catherine-Mary said yes.

CM & me at graduation

CM and myself at graduation, a strange ceremony where everyone dresses up in suites, gowns, white tie, bands and a big fur hood. We received our degrees in the Senate House building in the centre of Cambridge, after listening to the proceedings entirely in latin, holding the praelector’s finger and putting our hands out to the master while on our knees.

The following few weeks were full of parties and balls (as it always is in Cambridge after exams), helping make the time extra special. All our friends were in Cambridge celebrating for three weeks between the end of exams and graduation. We threw on our own little party for all our friends, as an engagement party and also as a party celebrating the past three years we’ve all spent together at uni. It seems most people are staying around Cambridge, either working, doing a masters, phd, “part III”, or just looking for a job, but it will be very different, which is quite sad.

As for CM and myself, we’ll be back in Cambridge in September. I’ll mostly be working, as a software engineer in Royston, and CM’ll be continuing her fourth of six years at uni to be a vet. At the moment, she’s doing her final 2 of 12 weeks farm work required for her course. This time, her job involves getting cut fixing barbed-wire fences, being rammed by a calf with a bucket stuck on it’s head and testing the electric fence every day. Later in the summer, we’re off hiking in Scotland, hopefully going up Ben Nevis.

Thank you to all our friends and family who gave us their good wishes, cards and presents.