I don't feel like I have been here for too long, yet we are already five weeks into the term! Yes, we are half-way through Week 5 of Michaelmas, which we means we are knee-deep in what Cambridge students call the "Week 5 blues," which is essentially the Cambridge equivalent of the "blues" MIT students feel half-way into a semester. In light of this nadir in student morale, I thought it would be a good time to discuss student support at Cambridge, particularly in college.
Before I go into the general support, I should note that our student government (also known as the JCR, which stands for "Junior Combination Room," but also refers to the undergraduate student government) has been trying to host various events to help boost morale, mostly centered around eating and drinking various goodies (e.g. tea times, wine/cheese tastings). I've stopped by occassionally, but to be honest, I'm not really feeling the blues just because the amount of pressure/work is less (not significantly less but less for sure) compared to that at MIT.
For starters, we don't have graded problem sets (or examples papers). Instead, we are encouraged to do them as best we can and then try to finish and understand them during recitation (or supervisions). While there are no official solutions published, meaning that the onus and pressure is on you to compose solutions yourself or find some (called cribs) either online or from another student, the pressure is spread over the course of the year since you just need to be able to understand the probems by the time the final exams (or tripos) come around. We also don't have midterms/exams until the end of the year, so while the last term (or Easter term) is going to be difficult for me, right now, life is not so bad. But then again, what goes around will come around as I already can see, right? :)
Anyways, I won't go off on too much of a tangent with regards to academics and will save that for a future post, probably at the end of this term (December 4th - boy, how time flies!). This post is about student support in college. To begin, every college has its own structure or system for providing student support, so what I am about to tell you may differ slightly depending on which college you are in, but hopefully not too much.
First, from an academic standpoint, we do not have advisors here as we do at MIT. Rather, we have a Director of Studies (also known as DoS) who is in charge of overseeing the academic wellbeing of all college students (and by college, I mean those who belong to the same college!) in a particular area of study, which in my case is engineering. He/she is in charge of overseeing your general academic performance and for students in the first two years, arranging recitations (or supervisions). My supervisor is also my first point of contact in case I have problems with my supervisors.
In addition to the DoS, there is a set of faculty who serve as tutors (similar to GRT's) for general academic help in various subjects. In my college, we have one tutor for the sciences and one for the arts, and they are both overseen by a senior tutor. In light of the many subjects taught at Cambridge, sciences and arts are quite broad in my opinion. Thus, I'm not entirely sure how much help they can provide for specific questions you might have on a particular topic. It is probably best to reach out to your supervisors first before asking them. Unlike GRT's though, you can also see them when there are any issues for example with your DoS, exams, or fitness to study (i.e. do you feel mentally/physically able enough to continue studying here at Cambridge). They also can provide advice regarding academic travel grants and financial concerns with college bill payments.
Separate from academics, we have the student emotional/physical well-being aspect of student support. At the JCR level, we have two welfare student officers, one guy and one girl, with whom you can talk about anything regarding physical/emotional welfare (though if it comes to anything sexual, you're probably better off talking with the person whose you gender you most closely associate with). In addition, we have an LGBT student officer who is in charge of advocating and promoting the interests and welfare of LGBT students.
At the faculty level, we have two welfare advisors with whom you can discuss any problems that are affecting your emotional/physical wellbeing, and these meetings can be confidential. There are two other faculty members who can provide such support in addition to serving other functions in the college. The first is the college chaplain, who also presides over religious services of numerous faiths and can provide advice regarding spiritual/religious issues. The second person is the college nurse, who also serves as the first point of contact regarding any physical ailments (e.g. headache) and can refer you to a GP (general practitioner, or "doctor") if necessary. Note that if any of these welfare officiers are not able to provide sufficient assistance for your problems, they can refer you to one of the two student support officers who can provide more in-depth advice and help for your problems.
So while we may not have centralized student support groups like S^3 for example, there exist numerous resources in college for students. While I'm still not sure what the perception is about students who use these resources (many people have remarked at MIT that it is sometimes difficult to seek help out of fear of being seen as "weak" in the eyes of others), if you are worried that you might get "caught" seeking help from these people, the whereabouts of many of these faculty members are relatively discrete (i.e. there is no sign that prominently says "student support officer"), so I would think you can feel relatively "safe" seeking help from these people.
If I can digress momentarily though, honestly, the weakness perception that seems to exist at MIT is a problem. Emotional factors can crop up that are out of students' control but nonetheless affect them (e.g. conflicts back at home). Why would you want to make the lives of such students even more difficult by negatively judging them? They're already under a lot of pressure/stress as it is with their personal problems and all of the work that MIT has piled on, and it's not like the students brought these emotional factors upon themselves.
Well, that was my brief rant about MIT culture issues. I hope that such a problem does not exist at Cambridge. On the other hand, it seems customary here to act in front of people as if you do not have a lot of work to door problems to deal with, so I'm a little wary that this negative perception of seeking help for emotional or physical problems does not exist. But until I know for sure, I hope this post gave you a better idea about student support in college! Don't be afraid to seek out these resources if you need them. It is better to seek help and find out that your problem was easy to solve rather than not seek help and find later that your problem(s) has become insurmountable.