When you start working in the corporate world, the city you thought you knew changes its skin.
The River Cam flows quietly, as if reminding you that life has a natural rhythm, nothing like the back‑to‑back calls in your Outlook calendar. Its water reflects the perfect green of the banks. The punting boats drift lightly. Tourists laugh, imagining themselves in the water. Students take a break from their books. Behind the college walls, everything hums with energy: minds pushing to create ideas and make discoveries.
Then you step back into the office buildings: grey, massive, prehistoric. Concrete dinosaurs. Their bones creak under the weight of bureaucracy and endless meetings. Every step sinks into numbers, KPIs, deliverables. Ideas are measured, weighed, approved. Words lose their meaning. What remains are polite smiles, small talk, a well‑trained diplomatic tone. A gilded cage.
Meanwhile I think of Peggy, my dog, who couldn’t care less. I picture her hopping through the fields behind my mom’s house, her ears lifting like two tiny airplane wings. She chooses where to go, who to follow, when to stop. Her freedom scratches at you.
You don’t know why you stay, but you stay. In the kingdom of dinosaurs you learn their moves, their survival strategies, the subtle art of smiling without showing too many teeth. Every day you become an acrobat. You walk along the edges, searching for small cracks where you can grow, create, breathe. And laugh out loud.
The river always carries you somewhere else, sometimes to the dreams you had as a student, when the future was an open field and not an Excel sheet.