Arya Sharma, who graduates this weekend with an MPhil in English, isn’t someone who takes big decisions lightly. She took a year out following her undergraduate degree at King’s College London to give herself time to work out exactly how she wanted to focus her research. Similarly, though drawn to the idea of further study, she is once again pressing the pause button rather than allowing herself to be propelled too quickly onwards.
“I want to be really sure of what I’m doing and feel like there’s a purpose to it that I can really get behind it. I just don’t want to rush it, because I know it’s such a commitment.”
It’s perhaps surprising, therefore, that someone so careful with her choices left one of the big ones, from a Cambridge perspective, up to chance. But her College selection was, it seems, a happy accident.
“I was very, very pleasantly surprised with it. I didn’t know anything about the collegiate system here – I applied on a bit of a whim to see what would happen, and it worked out. I was really glad that it was a postgraduate College – I think the energy is a lot calmer, but there’s still so much going on.”
Darwin provided an opportunity to try out passions and activities which Arya had previously shied away from.
“I’ve always loved music, but I’ve always been a bit too nervous to get involved in it the way I wanted to. But just seeing the Music Society doing jams every week, organising all these events, it just encouraged me, and I actually ended up joining a band and performing with them. I think that was partly just the ethos of Darwin, which encouraged me to get out and do that kind of thing, which was probably my favourite part of Cambridge. Darwin pushed me out of my comfort zone, but into a zone that I really wanted to be in!”
Arya also wrote for Varsity, an experience which confirmed that, whatever she might do next, she hopes to find the opportunity to write.
Knowing that her MPhil course would only last a year, she made sure to take advantage of the Cambridge experience and everything it offered, including the chance to pick the brains of those already signed up to further academia.
“It was really nice to talk to so many people who were doing a PhD and to work out if it was really something I wanted, or maybe something I wanted but not right now. I really got a lot of advice. It was quite a nurturing community in a lot of ways.”
That sense of warmth and support was clear from day one. Living in Darwin-owned halls at St Edmund’s College, Arya found herself isolated in her new accommodation in a week of persistent rain.
“I like doing the walk from there to Darwin, it’s very pretty, it’s along the Backs, and Cambridge is so gorgeous so it was nice to walk along there every day. But the first week I got here it was just raining the entire week and I sat here and I was so depressed. And I just walked through the rain to Darwin because I just didn’t want to be here, I wanted to go and be around some people. I went into the Dining Hall, and it was my first day here, and I started talking to a bunch of people and they were so nice and so friendly. And some of us are still friends – it was a great first experience.”
Arya’s research explored the formation and maintenance of digital social capital, asking whether social media can itself be considered a narratorial form, through the lens of political engagement online. She is particularly interested in the ways in which people use their bodies to perform politics online, such as in relation to the body positivity movement. She enjoys the way that her interests push the parameters of what can be considered English Studies.
“Actually King’s was very forward with that kind of thing, they were very into alternative narration and literary forms, and how all of that fits into English, so I kind of had to argue my case a little bit for the English faculty here. But they did get it, and they chose to help me with it, which is great. I think it’s so fun to try and push it in directions that are maybe a bit unexpected.”
Having taken the time to fully consider what she wanted to get out of this year of research, she was delighted to find herself surrounded by equally unexpected pursuits across the disciplines.
“It was really important to me to work on something that I felt was important and worth pursuing. And even that I think fits into the ethos of Darwin, because it does feel like people are doing very interesting, thought-provoking things in all their different fields.”
