14 People remaining, 9 spaces on the reserve list.
I'd ordinarily reckon on the reserve list being a good bet at the moment, as most people are above you and you therefore have a good chance of getting a good room, especially as number two on the list! However, the freshers have been choosing some god awful rooms, so no guarantee. Bizarrely, there are still 5 rooms in college. 5! T9 is a lovely room that Chloe Mackley 'really loved living here and would highly recommend' with a 'really fantastic' location. George Ransome says F8 is 'better value than most', and H7 went well inside the 3rd year ballot last year. F15 is a reasonable size and, whats more, seems to finally be getting over its decade old badger problem. Freshers, what more could you want? Don't worry your little heads too much about missing out on Newnham- its overrated. It has hobs, but soon you'll realise you'd much much rather be in college, the moment you are in the library and realise youve left something in your room, or are late in the bar and have a long walk back instead of being able to quickly pop home for bed.
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It's time to answer the ballot's call. Will you answer?
(Please, please, yes...) If you are currently a nervous wreck, all the rooms you want having been chosen already, just take solace in the advice given by sage elders: "It honestly doesn't really matter where you end up, even if it is away from your friends. Its an opportunity to make new friends, and you will still see your old friends, unless you realise over summer you don't actually like them. Apart from Botolph. Thats shit lol" A room surrounded in mystery, occupied by legends and mocked by mortals has gone. This absolute gem of a room has been snapped up by Astrid Berge who's a whooping 115 on the ballot. How did this room make is so far without being chosen? Did its ample 10m^2 space put off those who don't wish to host guests? Is a 3 flight walk up too much for those made by corpus hall food? Did the lack of an "en suite" facility in the form of a sink make it a no for those too lazy to walk to the nearest toilet? These questions have plagued ballot gurus for literally hours.
Congrats on choosing what must be the best room in college, no, the university. Elena will envy you, Harry Armitage will thank you and the blog praises you. Lol no D7b is shit why on earth would you choose it willingly? A bold move for the fresher there, being the first to brave the reserve list in his year. He now must hope for a good room to come along.
Let's hope his luck is better than his rowing. Aslo to the person who said the blog had gone to shit: 1) How dare you abuse us from the safety of anonymous messaging 2) You are right tho THE 'CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY' PRIZE FOR RESISTING CHANGE
This category of awards is perhaps the most contended: It got of to a hot start with Damien 'King of the Ballot' Teague picking his own room, again. However, he is far from alone in showing a crushing lack of imagination, 6 people so far are choosing to stick with what they know in the face of some brutal room reviews. So what is it about these rooms that means they don't want anyone else to have them? What do they know? What is being hidden from us? Is that where the bodies are? Top contenders are: Damien Teague: Botolph 18 George Bateman: Botolph 4a (yuck). Yenxing Ooi: Newnham 16 Joon Yoon: Beldam 51 Emily Cairns: I6 Emily Glass: H5 The writers of the blog have used up all of their (extremely limited) comedic talent and so in the biggest cop out since the room D7b was built, here's a loom at the messages we've been sent.
Comments rage from pure rage: "WHAT IS MAYA ACHAN DOING WHEN WE ALL KNOW SHE WANTS NEWNHAM" To confusion: "But the question is, why did George Bateman pick Botolph 4a again? Does he just like complaining?" One balloter suggests society captains should also get special rooms,such as Netball. Though I think this should be reserved for proper sports, but someone did suggest Netball: "You've heard of the JCR President's room, well now get ready for the Netball Captain's room. Just a week after announcing the handover of the captaincy of netball, Anna's room has also been taken by her successor." But by far the most intriguing is this sent from Ryan Isabel who wishes to study the ballot from an evolutionary standpoint: "Dear Madam/Sir, I was intrigued to discover upon your blog a likely candidate for investigation into the unusual mechanism of shell evolution in mammals. Your blog represents a microcosm of evolutionary pressure on the human subspecies, homo-studentus. Through the hundreds of thousands of years that this "room ballot" is expected to take, it is my belief that homo-studentus will, in response to a lack of permanent shelter, develop its own shell, to provide much needed shelter whilst it awaits the eventual end of the ballot. I implore you to allow the "room ballot" process to occur at its own pace (at least for the next few hundred years), and not to artificially increase the speed of it, lest we lose a unique chance to study this extraordinary process first-hand. Yours sincerely, Ryan Isabel President - European Society for Evolutionary Biology" I for one think this ballot doesn't evolve but stagnates. It is repeated year upon year and we expect different results, the definition of insanity. Is a better way of analysing the ballot? Literary? Sociology? Mathematics? Maybe. One thing for sure is I don't have the talent to write something along those lines. Do you? Also, Rosemary Little is yet to choose, but you knew that already. Approaching the bottom of the second years can only mean one thing: feeding time for the reserve list. It had the appetiser of Dragos but now the main course: 9 helpless balloters who will have no choice to be devoured by this cruel, harsh mistress. Picture the sarlacc pit in star wars or that plant in little shop of horrors. Hope remains though, as now you must hope for people to fail to get firsts so you can nab those prize rooms. This is what the ballot does, turns freinds against friends and you into an arse.
God damn I love this shit. In the quickest the ballot has moved since Filip Lurka's decisive pick of G10, the remaining 2nd years have been subsumed by the reserve list. Ah, cruel fate. Or arguably, not cruel at all, need we be reminded of reserve list refugees past such as Emma Lubel who secured the palace of OO1, or Sam CW, of topping history tripos fame, who nabbed E8 from the 2017 reserve list? Could we expect Dragos to bask in the sun lit crevices of C1? Could Fliss soon be bashing her head on the charming sloped walls of P3? Only time will tell.
Until then, finally, freshers, it's your turn. Its not like you haven't had time to decide. It took Dragos Iordache 4 hours to decide to go onto the reserve list, it took Jiang An Lim until I had ordered and eaten a dominos pizza (was lit tbf) to decide on BELDAM, and now, dear reader, to my utter dismay, George Bateman has decided to choose the same fucking room he had last year, worse still, this room is Botolph 4a, a room described by Bateman himself as a candidate for the worst room in college. His room review includes such delights as "The walls. Dear God, the walls. The walls slope at a frankly frightening angle. You will, at some point, concuss yourself on them." and "you've moved in, you've put two suitcases on the floor, and now there's no floor space left to stand in."
So I think it is fair, at this point in the day, to ask, why? Why are you doing this to yourselves? More importantly, why are you doing this to me? At this point last year I was reclining in the bar with a long island ice tea and a gleeful smile on my naive face. I am exhausted, I am confused, and the only resolution is to look at ballot orders past and remember a time where Botolph was still a festering plague pit and Beldam, a soulless, pine, pity palace. Ah, the good old days. If you've got the time , write a review on your room. It may be helpful to others, you can vent about your how loud your neighbours are when "sleeping" and if you're funny enough you may get a mention on this blog.
If you can, go one step further and do a video review of your room. Balloters then get a sense of space, light and atmosphere of a room. Take Simon Locks review of E9 2015-16: "A comprehensive tour of my room can be found here: https://vimeo.com/142145532 also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" Ah Simon. He never gave up on the blog or let anyone down on the ballot. He knew how the game was played. Just as the ballot gains the smallest hint of momentum, it comes screeching to a halt at William Edmonds. Is he busy? Perusing the choices? Or just content with annoying everyone (including the third year writing this who doesn't even need to choose a room). Whatever the reason, I'm sure Joseph "Krolpus Kristi" Kroll is itching the press the choose room buton like a buzzer on university challenge. Heck let the man choose all ready, he's tired from carrying the rest of the corpus university challenge team.
We're in day 2. Finally. Simultaneously the longest and shortest day of human existence- shorter than the typical 24 hours but its end came far later than we ever would have expected (to emphasise how naive I was, my bet was 1:00pm). I hear a call in the distance... what does it say... "preserve bliss"? "conserved lisp"? Hmm, never mind.
Hang on, no hold the phone. Let me pose a question for you. How many of last year's prize winners have chosen a room? I won't name names, but there're a couple out there, and they've secured good property in places like C and H staircase. I wonder who'll get those rooms when they inevitably double down on their humongous firsts? Food for thought. I can't help but notice that Y8, the current abode of Jacob 'once affable but now Stalin' Bradley, is still available, despite being halfway through the ballot. I know that he is a man of sometimes questionable odour, that his penchant for swimming trunks in the depths of winter is alarming, to say the least, and that he has been known to steal *not at all bitter* people's chilli flakes even though he isn't a fan of spicy food, but don't take it out on his room. Y8 is a splendid room, once home to Muriel Moser, who lived here in 2003. I never knew Muriel, but she sounds nice and I do like her name.
The smell will fade, the bed can be moved so you don't smack your head on the shelf every time you wake up and the view of Kings on a sunny morning is surely incomparable. And anyone who lives there after Jacob will have the benefit of being Nina the bedder's favourite person by virtue of not being Jacob. In a callous turn, second years seem to be queueing up for Newnham Rooms. Aside from the obvious disregard for tradition, who knows how many Freshers will be forced into Old Court rooms on the reserve list? Harry Armitage had dreams of Newnham 7, not N7!
This years ballot seems to be the slowest yet, dragging on like one of those plays your friend is involved in. In order to pass the time I'd thought I'd write a comprehensive list of things slower than this room ballot:
Don't mess with me, I'm a corpuscle on the edge. While she can craft a mean Mixed Netball doodle poll in under 10 minutes, our very own 'Beast from the East' Anna Bondarenko is incapable of choosing a room. One can only assume M6 next to Dave Franco is on the cards?
In what can be only described as a mistake , a second year has chosen a Newnham room. There can only be one reason: Surrounding themselves with young, fresh meat of the year below is the tactic of a shark. They lurk the corridors, sniffing out the smell of their drunk, sad prey. Beware freshers of YenXing Ooi, who hath revealed their true form with this choice of evil lair. Tom Davidson would be proud.
Who would have thought that at 13:11 on the first day of balloting, we would still be at slot 18, waiting on Maya Achan? For those new to the ballot, this repetitive grudge against slow movers is a tradition of years, but this cohort have proved themselves particularly lacklustre.
For those more accustomed to the conventions of the ballot, is it possible we could make it through Day 1 without celebrating the first ballsy plunge into the Reserve List? I dread to think. Can he see into the future? Does he have a fifth sense (ESPN or something)? Or is he just a meticulous machiavel who does his research? Whatever the answer, Dave Franco's list of room predictions compiled last night is proving scarily accurate so far. With Achan taking after Franklin and making her choice slower than a glacier on a tricycle the question on everyone's lips is will Franco call the next five choices.
The Tab Cambridge reports trouble at RuPaul's own College. Figures at Corpus lament that we can't even get people to do one ballot in good time, never mind two.
thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2018/03/07/queens-dean-ballot-blackmails-students-108672 Decisive, efficient, punctual, effervescent; we would expect nothing less from Corpus's favourite economist. Filip has reminded us all that we are capable of making good choices, if only we have the courage of our own conviction, if only we believe in ourselves. Thank you Filip, God speed.
"This ballot is like driving a golf cart down the M1. Unpredictable, but mostly just slow."
As anticipated, the obvious bias of this heavily influential outlet's authors has directed the opening salvo of room bidders towards Y Staircase. Little did you know we're a bunch of low-order first years just trying to make sure there's room in Newham for us!
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