Living History: Kathleen Mitchell-Fox

My defining moment at Trinity

The Gate. The King. The Table-Leg. Chewing my lip, I stared, stomach churning, at the outsized door, and tried to ignore the fact that, not only my hands, but my entire body was covering over in a thin layer of sweat. I sighed heavily, then remembered that breathing too much would make me feel light-headed, and so stopped trying to breathe at all. Tiny sips of breath.

I had entered an essay competition… I hadn’t banked on having to show face.

Now, I had been summoned to Trinity, a place that, until today, had only really existed as a chimeric academic castle-in-the-sky. This manly cloud-fortress, festooned on Wikipedia by the spectres of great men. Newton, Byron, Wittgenstein, every master from BCE to yesterday. This was not a place where I belonged, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if a porter, Cerberus, Henry VIII or whatever had given me the boot upon entry. But I really wanted to get *in*.

Within two hours of getting through the gate, I threatened to pass out and into the Cam. I was hastily ushered away from the river bank and half an hour later I left through the same gate. Ultimately, I was just relieved to stay dry.

Cambridge, Trinity – that was my dream… but in a place so conducive to falling off a picturesque bridge in a faint, it’s all about learning how to keep your feet on the ground.

Kathleen Mitchell-Fox matriculated in 2016. She is studying Medieval and Modern Languages and is currently on her year abroad in Moscow.