A trend in fresher's anxieties and questions is how to be efficient at Cam. How do you two be as efficient as possible? (index cards, skipping bits of books?) Do you ever think the tutors set more work than you need to get a 1st/ high 2:1? (a cam grad with a 1st told me this, and said all that's needed to first is give original ideal whilst disproving something else). At A Level the reason why get an A* and someone gets an A boils down to simple exam technique, is it the same at Cambridge?
It takes time to be efficient! That may sound oxymoronic, but honestly, don’t stress about something taking you longer than it ‘should’ in the first couple of weeks because it naturally will! Until you learn how to pick out the relevant things from readings, how to construct an argument as you go along, how to skim read etc., you won’t be able to be super efficient - it’s a process vs an automatic skill that you acquire.
Some of my tips:
1. Don’t read the whole book in depth. If you’ve been assigned a whole book, pick out the chapters you think are most relevant to your essay question and the intro and conclusion. You’ll get a pretty good idea of what the author is arguing and you can use details from individual chapters to back up your argument.
2. Don’t read the whole reading list in depth: again, pick out the books/readings that you think will be the most relevant and, importantly, feel free to go off the reading list. By going off the reading list, you’ll be able to introduce original ideas and materials.
3. Organise information as you go along: I read and plan at the same time - I use Evernote for my essays and have a note for reading notes and a note for my plan, and I basically work on my plan as I read because I think it’s less efficient to do all the reading, and then have this massive document of notes that I have to go through again to plan the essay. My plan does get messy and does require refinement, but it saves a lot of time to do it as I go along!
Re: getting a first - it’s a mixture of exam technique and writing skill. You need both to do well. Your friend is technically right - if you don’t bring in any originality, you can’t get a first, but it’s not as simple as just introducing an original idea. You need to support that idea with relevant information, you need to convey it well, you need to show that it’s something you’ve thought through. How you present the idea is as important as what the idea is! THIS (links at the bottom of the post) is all the stuff I’ve written on getting a first in an essay subject!
As for tutors assigning more work - I wouldn’t say they necessarily assign more work than necessary, it’s more that some of them definitely grade much harsher. In my second year, I had a supervisor who kept predicting me a 2.i/2.ii in one of my compulsory papers - I ended up with a 75% in that paper. Same in third year - one of my supervisors was incredibly harsh on me and basically ripped my essays to shreds, but I did very well in that exam. I think it helps when they’re harsher - gives you more to work with!