Stumbling Into Serendipity: My Student Years at Cambridge

By Marion Blank, Ph.D. / New York City

An unidentified student stands in front of an archway at Cambridge University in 1957 (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The year was 1957—a time when ocean liners, not airplanes, were the way one crossed the Atlantic. It was September and I was on a French ship that departed from New York, heading for England.  After reaching our destination, we disembarked and continued the journey on a small boat (known as a tender). It would take us to a port on the coast of southern England. As would prove to be a much-repeated experience, a dreary rain was steadily falling.

My journey was almost over. The final stop would be Cambridge where I planned to spend my “post-grad gap year.”  The bleak scene added to the trepidation I was feeling about my ability to handle the “adventure” I had planned.

The author at a family wedding in the 1950s

Unfortunately, my first weeks in England only added to my fears. Along with the rain that didn’t seem to stop, my living quarters were far from inviting.  When I entered the one-room apartment I had rented (while still on my home side of the Atlantic), it just raised more doubts as to whether I could cope. One of my first questions to my landlord was “Where is the fridge?” The answer was, “There isn’t one. But not to worry. There’s also no heat, so you don’t need a fridge.”

Then miraculously, these concerns fell into the background, to be replaced by an incredible world I hadn’t realized existed. Ultimately, it provided a set of experiences that changed my life and my priorities.

An Amazing Lack of Bureaucracy

At the time my odyssey started, my encounters with books like Dickens' Oliver Twist and plays like My Fair Lady led me to see Britain as a land with rigid social expectations. That view, which was quite accurate, stood in marked contrast to the mobility that characterized the U.S. at that time. Still as I was to discover, the close encounters of everyday life yielded a different, more nuanced picture.

Newnham College in the 1950s when the author attended there

Among the unexpected experiences were ones involving Anna Freud, the woman thought to be Sigmund Freud’s favorite child. Although her famous father was attuned to seeing the horrendous forces that exist in human beings, he felt certain that Germany was too civilized to succumb to the evils that Hitler might produce.  Guided by those mistaken beliefs, the Freud family stayed in Vienna until it was almost too late.  When the danger could no longer be denied, the family fled Austria and went to London. There, Anna established what would become the world-famous Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic.

At that point, Sigmund was too ill to work, but Anna was young, full of ideas and far more down-to-earth than her father. She devoted herself to helping children whose lives had been devastated by World War II. Her work was admired but also controversial. For example, she brought in teachers and caregivers to participate in the therapeutic process—a practice that challenged the traditional patient-doctor model. She also insisted that the clinic be free of any signs that indicated it might be an institution. She set it up to be as close to a home setting as possible. It was a great idea then; it continues to be a great idea now—despite the fact that it is typically ignored.

The clinic’s location in London was only about an hour from Cambridge. Deciding to pursue a faint possibility, I wrote Anna Freud a letter asking if I could participate in any of the center’s work. Her response came within a few days, and it welcomed my attending their weekly staff meetings. The ease of the process seems unimaginable in today’s times.

My acceptance at the Hampstead Clinic was not unique. The process of entering the doctoral program at Cambridge was almost as smooth. This was to be my “fun, unpressured” year and I had not expected to be a student. But to help with expenses, I got a job as a research assistant for Derek Russell Davis, a kind and caring psychiatrist. He was a man who, far ahead of his time, offered strong support to women in research. He encouraged me to become a doctoral student.  He ultimately became my Ph.D. supervisor and the central figure in helping me get a prestigious Pinsent-Darwin Fellowship.

Poet Sylvia Plath attended Newnham College at Cambridge from 1955-1957 on a Fulbright scholarship

It’s difficult, in today’s problem filled world of student debt, to believe the opportunities that were available during my student days. Prior to Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister of Great Britain, the universities—including Cambridge—were effectively free. So, along with not having to pay tuition, I received financial support. The support was seen as one of the most effective means for creating an educated and productive population. Though it seems long-distant history, for many years, a similar view prevailed in the United States. It ended when Thatcher’s close colleague Ronald Reagan became president and convinced Americans that the "subsidization of intellectual curiosity" had to be ended.

As I reflect back on those pre-Reagan/Thatcher years, I continue to be astounded by the simplicity that marked my British experience. Many decades have passed since that time, and I am not familiar with the current situation and its many post-Brexit complications. But for me, the time period was nothing short of miraculous. At the same time, the absence of creature comforts such as heat and refrigeration became a blip that didn’t matter all that much.

Women and the University

As with so much of life in England, the story of women in Cambridge begins hundreds of years ago. It started in 1209 when the University of Oxford–the preeminent  educational institution at the time--went into voluntary suspension following a scandal involving the murder of a local woman. Its scholars dispersed to many places including Cambridge University. It was, of course, a totally male establishment and it stayed that way until 1948, when it became the last British university to admit women. When I arrived in the 1950s, it had 25 colleges—23 for men and two for women.  That imbalanced number was still perceived as a threat. Hundreds and even thousands of male students engaged in aggressive, noisy protests against the distaff side of humanity entering their turf.

By the time I was there, there were some unanticipated advantages to that state of affairs. The university kept its eyes on the students by requiring them, in the evening, to wear gowns – like the ones worn at graduation. The rule applied to woman as well as men. But the guards who enforced the practice didn’t seem to envision that women could be students. So, even though I never put on my gown, I was never stopped.

Primatologist Jane Goodall as a doctoral student in Africa

During my time in Cambridge, there were only two women in the psychology department. One was me; the other was Jane Goodall. We also happened to be in Newnham, the same college, but we never met during our Cambridge years. She was off in Africa, laying the foundation for her ground-breaking work.

In keeping with the flexibility of the university, her acceptance had been unique. She did not have a bachelor’s degree. However, she did have the backing of Louis Leakey, the world-famous paleoanthropologist. That was all she needed.  In describing the situation, she wrote in 2018, “He took me despite my lack of academic credentials — or even because of them as he wanted someone with a mind uncluttered by the reductionist scientific thinking of the time.”

The Lectures

My undergraduate days in the U.S. were marked by courses one attended several hours each week. Aside from science labs, most courses involved three to four hours of lectures each week. The situation in Cambridge was far different. Each academic year involved three eight-week terms based on the Anglican Church calendar. They were Michaelmas (autumn), Lent (spring), and Easter (summer). The non-lab courses generally involved only a one-hour lecture each week. When I first became aware of this system. I was surprised, and with a touch of American arrogance (that I didn’t think I possessed), quickly deemed “our system” to be superior.

My view of this matter did not last long. It changed after I sat in on the lectures of a few of the major faculty. The English readily acknowledge their lack of ease with what is commonly referred to as “the gift of gab;” that is, the ability to be a smooth talker who easily wins people over. However, when it comes to lectures and formal presentations, they cannot be surpassed.

One day, I decided to attend the lecture of an historian who was presenting the case for how Cambridge became a powerhouse. At the outset, Oxford was the leading center; Cambridge was in a different league—small, unimportant and underfunded. Then matters changed when King Henry VIII found himself facing a problem. He wanted to divorce the first of what would become six wives, an action that was unacceptable to the Catholic Church.

At the time, the faculty and senior members of Cambridge University were predominantly clergymen. So, Henry went to them with a “deal.” If they could come up with an acceptable religious rationale for his obtaining an annulment to end the marriage, he would ensure the prosperity of the University. The clergymen seemed to have no qualms about the morality of the issue they were facing. As the saying goes, “the rest is history.”

It’s not surprising to find that a single personal experience can have profound effects. But, like the dropping of the atom bomb, the experience generally has to be unique and dramatic. What is surprising are the major effects that can follow from seemingly unremarkable experiences like the historian’s lecture. It led me to an “ aha moment” that set me on a multi-decade quest to transform the way subjects such as history and science are taught. Instead of being presented as boring, abstract facts, we needed to capture their potential to be phenomenally interesting. That led me to focus a major part of my career into revamping classrooms that turn that potential into reality.    

Graduation

As in other universities, graduation at Cambridge is the final step once a doctoral candidate has completed all the requirements. In many places, the appearance of the graduate is optional and there are no significant consequences for those who forgo the ceremony.

That was not the case at Cambridge. A human body had to be present for the degree to be awarded. That body, however, did not have to be the person graduating. There was the option of paying a substitute to stand in for the actual candidate. I had no idea what the ceremony entailed, but there was no way I was going to pay someone to take my place. That decision led me to participate in a scene that could have been part of a movie extravaganza.

The ceremony took place at a regular faculty meeting in a large, prestigious hall. A series of issues—all presented in Latin—were raised for the faculty to consider and then vote on. The only words I could make out were in Latin: “placere” (meaning agree) and “non placere” (meaning disagree). The scene was like an ancient Roman market with lots of bargaining and heckling going on.

Then, the man who appeared to be the lord of the session and his aide, both in the finest regalia, went to center stage. The aide, speaking in Latin, would bellow out that he had a doctoral candidate to bring forth. When it was my turn, after being granted permission, he led me to the center stage where I was to carry out a set of instructions. They included my having to kneel down and place my hands on the lord’s knees. It was emphasized that when I walked away, just as is required when leaving the monarch, I had to walk backwards. That ensured that the lord would only see my face—and never my backside. Then the show ended. It was a marvelous production. Weird, extravagant, anachronistic—but absolutely marvelous.

A Final Reflection

During my years at Cambridge, I was not yet familiar with the word “serendipity;” I was also unfamiliar with the idea it represented. It never occurred to me that life could bring happy accidents that miraculously resulted in good fortune. It was only when I returned to the “real world,” that I realized the many encounters I had experienced with that remarkable phenomenon and how fortunate I had been to have had this period at an ideal time in my life.

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Dr. Marion Blank is a developmental psychologist with a specialization in language-both spoken and written. Her research and clinical work over the course of five decades has led to her recognition as an international authority in literacy, especially for children with developmental challenges. She has held academic positions at Columbia University, Rutgers Medical School, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and as a Visiting Professor at Monash University, Hebrew University, and the University of London. As the creator and director of Columbia’s Light on Literacy Program, she pioneered innovative, evidence-based approaches to teach reading to children with autism—including those who were thought to be non-verbal. Dr. Blank is the recipient of numerous national and international awards for her contributions to education and child development. Her new book, Brilliance Unleashed, will be published in June 2026.