Socialising: it's the means by which we communicate with others. It's the means by which we become a part of a group of people, the way in which we adjust and integrate into a new environment. I think you can see where I am going with this. :) Cambridge has so much to offer, but you can only appreciate so much of it by yourself. The memories that I've made here have almost never been those where I was by myself, but rather in the company of others. I suppose you could "ghost" your way through (i.e. don't talk to anyone during the year), but not only is that actually difficult (you have to interact with others during projects AND people are friendly enough to approach and talk to you if they can tell you are new), but also isolates you from a lot of the (social) activity that happens both in college and around the university in general.
In the context of CME, I should specify a little further what I mean by socialising and that is that it isn't just with other MIT students. Talking with just MIT students defeats the purpose of being here in the first place! Why travel all the way across the ocean to just interact with people whom you are familiar? Being at Cambridge means meeting new people and learning about their perspectives and opinions. I have spent many a fascinating conversation talking about the similarities and differences between MIT and Cambridge, as well as between the US and the UK. While the MIT bond can help you to become better acquainted with other CME students, blobbing together (i.e. just sticking together as MIT students) is certainly not advised, especially from a social perspective.
For me, blobbing was not issue. In what turned out to be a blessing in disguise, I did not know a single MIT student in the CME group! Sure, I had seen several of them from time to time on campus, but I had not had any serious conversations with them to the best of my recollection. Thus, in my eyes, the MIT students were not really much different from other Cambridge students socially because I did not know them! True, getting to know them was a little easier because of the MIT bond, but that bond alone doesn't make you automatically friends or mean that you automatically become apart of their own social group.
Another thing that helped me greatly in terms of integrating into the social fabric of Cambridge was the fact that it is (or seems to me) much more fragmented than at MIT. First, because college life is relatively autonomous compared to MIT dorm life (colleges are much larger after all), a lot of social activity and events happen inside college alone, so students spend less time interacting with other students outside of college. Considering trying to visit other colleges besides your own? Be careful! Colleges often put limitations on who can enter the college as well as the areas that you can access if you are not a college member. In addition, dining costs at other colleges are generally higher for non-members, though there are exceptions (e.g. Pembroke, which has some good brunch on weekends by the way!). However, it is in your best interest to double check these things before visiting, as it is not worthwhile to run into trouble because you accidentally overstepped the boundaries as a non-member, although being a Cambridge student can help to mitigate that.
The other reason that Cambridge social life is more fragmented is because academically, courses of study are quite isolated from each other, physically and logistically. For starters, departments do not coordinate with one another with regards to timetables, making attempts to double major (or even minor, which doesn't exist here) logistically impossible. This makes sense to a degree since you wouldn't want to have English majors in the same place as engineers, but nevertheless, it does mean that you find yourself interacting more with people in your own department rather than outside of it. Of course, that doesn't prevent you from meeting them, but this academic isolation does make such interactions less likely. This academic fragmentation made it easier to transition to Cambridge because I naturally spent a lot of my time in the engineering department, and as MIT is essentially one giant engineering establishment, academic life was a lot less foreign to me than I had imagined it would be thankfully! :)
So why did all of this fragmentation help? It's because that means students can't settle as much into their own social groups because there are just so many more people that they don't know here! From that perspective, a new student is almost indistinguishable from someone that they just haven't met in the one, two, or three years they have been here as an undergraduate. Being an MIT exchange student doesn't make you isolated from the rest of Cambridge life. In fact, it was a great way for me to break the ice with many students, as there were a lot (engineers in particular) who wanted to know what MIT was like. I would later realise that it's because the process for CME here at Cambridge is significantly more competitive (sheer numbers), so there are a lot more students who have interest in MIT compared to the other way around (unfortunately).
Social integration also helps when people in the country speak (almost) the same language as you do, and while the accent may take some time to get used to (by the way, it isn't just British ones, but also those from surrounding areas in the UK as a whole), almost all students will understand your American accent, so no need to be concerned about that! However, American and British English are not entirely compatible, and there are some notable differences that I have encountered, which I will enumerate now:
1) You don't fill your cars with gas but with petrol
2) You don't play soccer but football
3) Parking lots are car-parks
4) Questionable or shady things are dodgy
5) Cars don't have trunks but rather boots
6) You use rubber, not an eraser, to erase mistakes
7) You use a lift to get to another floor, not an elevator
8) You pay at the till, not a cash register
9) You look for the way out, not the exit of a building
10) You use surgical spirit, not rubbing alcohol, on cuts
11) You drive on the motorway, not the highway (or freeway)
12) You follow a timetable, not a schedule, for your lectures and supervisions
13) You plan events using a diary instead of a scheduler or planner
14) Intelligent people are clever, not smart
15) You dress smart instead of dressing well
16) Students who do well at school are considered high-flying
17) You go to the toilet, not the bathroom or restroom
18) You use cutlery instead of utensils to eat food
19) You ride a cycle instead of a bicycle to lecture (the latter is used but not as frequently)
20) Someone who is disrespectful in an amusing way is considered cheeky
21) You have mates instead of friends (the latter is used but not as frequently)
22) The graph of y = sin(x) is generally graphed from nought to two pi ("zero" is also used but not exclusively)
23) An exam is out of 100 marks instead of points, and you sit for exams, not take them. To prepare for an exam, you revise instead of study the material, and the word "test" (exam) is almost never used in conversation. Once exams have been turned in, they are marked instead of graded.
24) Crunching numbers involves doing a lot of maths instead of math.
25) To express good will or appreciation OR as a farewell, you can say cheers (thank you is also used)
There are certainly many more than this, but don't pressure yourself into remembering all of them! I learned many of these throughout the year, and people here are generally patient and understanding enough that they'll be glad to help you out in "clarifying" their English to you. They also can understand American words most of the time, with a notable exception being the word moot (e.g. moot point), which apparently has no equivalent in British English and confused many at dinner one time in buttery to my great amusement.
I should also point out that there are pronunciation differences, most notably the word "literally" is pronounced more like "lit-trally" (the "e" is left out). Don't forget about the spelling differences as well! Words like color (colour) or labor (labour) are spelled with an extra "u" (they might call it proper but I consider it inefficient :) !) Words like while are instead written and pronounced as whilst. The "-ed" for past tense is frequently dropped both in speaking and talking in favor (or is it favour?) of "t", such as learnt instead of "learned," and last but not least, "shall not" is often contracted to shant. Furthermore, I also have picked up a slight difference in tones when it comes to asking questions. In the US, we seem to end questions at a lower tone than when we started, whereas in the UK, they seem to end questions at a slightly higher tone. I'm not sure if this is true in general, but it was something that I noticed amongst many of the people with whom I interacted.
Again, these differences are not necessary to adopt, as British people do understand American phrases and pronunciations for the most part. Teachers are also very understanding of them as well, though I did hear one horror story this year in which one marker took off points for American spellings. Hopefully that won't happen to you though! I must say though that while (or is it whilst?) I did give up early on in attempting to develop a British accent, I did find myself adopting their spellings, vocabulary, and some pronunciations. In fact, I developed a "British mode" in my brain that I would turn on and off as I entered and exited the UK. How long that will persist once I leave I'm not sure, but it's definitely something that I did not expect to develop when I came here.
Finally, there is one other important point of difference in socialising at Cambridge and MIT: Cambridge is not a pure engineering school! At MIT, students seem to implicitly carry around an assumption that anyone they talk to on campus has some knowledge of mathematics, sciences, or even programming. That is hardly the case at Cambridge as you might imagine. Even in the engineering department, which is separate from the computer science one unlike MIT's EECS department, some engineers do not like programming at all, so carrying these assumptions around at Cambridge will only impede and limit your conversations with others. Interesting conversations can be held with people outside of academics, especially with those who study wildly different things from you! I remember having a fascinating conversation about religion at the beginning of Michaelmas term with a girl studying humanities, something I would almost never have had at MIT given how technical we are as a school (we do have a chaplain and a place of worship though). Thus, try not to get too technical in conversations or assume that the people you are talking to have such knowledge! I have found it best to stay away from engineer-specific topics (unless you want to complain about an examples sheet with another engineer just like we would about problem sets at MIT ;) and focus on things outside of that, such as TV shows, upcoming social events in Cambridge or in college, or in my case this year, the EU referendum (June 23rd). As soon as you begin to detach yourself from largely technical discussions, you will find that there is a lot you can talk about with people outside of that, which will help to enrich your discussion and conversation skills later on in life such as at the workplace, which also will not be as niche (technically oriented) as MIT.
Phew! That was quite a long blog post! With the year beginning to wind down, I foresee one if not two more posts coming your way, so be on the look out! Just a few more weeks to go until summer! Woot!