This weekend I have watched from Vision Towers the hordes of brighteyed freshers moving. Weary parents in tow, clutching odd assortments of books, pans and soft furnishings, they’ve proudly written their names on their new college t-shirts, met their flat-mates, been accosted by over-excited STYCs and cracked open the obligatory first day wine. Amongst all this nostalgia I realised that my friends and I were laying up a paper that would, in all likelihood bring reality crashing down. Freshers’ week is a great time simply because the world weariness of your latter years hasn’t had time to set in. Your first college event IS brilliant, that first bar crawl novel and the first time one of your flatmates steals a road sign it IS hilarious.
Then come Tuesday, the papers come out and its 24 pages of ‘err you might have made a mistake here’. We love a good misery story, another f*ck up, another plan gone awry. Yet we are not alone. Across campus freshers will hear sighs of ‘it wasn’t like this when we were freshers ’ they mean even add their own ‘at my friend’s university they have…’.
It would seem that the students who come to York like nothing more than one big moan. I’m even moaning right now. Moaning about moaning. It doesn’t make sense. Amongst this tirade of apathy I would like to offer a ray of hope to our bushy tailed freshers. York is not the worst university in the world, you have not made the wrong choice coming here, and you will have the best three years of your life… so far. Those same party-boy STYCs who conspiratorially confide to you that York’s night life isn’t up to scratch will have declared hundreds of nights out ‘mental’ and will in the same breath give you enough typical, ‘so we were bladdered and there was this road sign’ stories to fill several freshers’ weeks. Your friendly bar rep (it might even be the same guy) will complain about the University’s lack of support for the student community and whilst this is undoubtedly true for every sour faced Jane Grenville, counting out the coppers so your society JCR can fund sports or buy a ping pong table for the JCR, there is a happy smiling porter cracking jokes with you as you lock yourself out of your room for the third time that day. For every time the scary goose outside James attacks you there’s a bevy of baby ducklings or a cute-until-it-gets-older gosling. It’s the gosling stories, the happy porter memories that never seem to quite make it to your saged self’s rants.
So for all freshers and also for any 2nd and 3rd years who think they don’t quite know it all I would like to propose a freshers’ fortnight of positivity. York has so much to offer from rowing to pantsoc, JCRs to world cinema soc. Not only does York have a lot to offer but it also achieves, Student Action has been nominated for two presitigious awards, Nouse and Vision have both been nominated for multiple national medioa awards, we won Roses and an ex student called Kirk won Coutdown! There’s plenty of time to discover, when your clubs in desperate need of new oars, pants, polo shirts or DVDs , just how many hoops there exist to jump through, how little money there is in the YUSU coffers or even just how much a knob your JCR Chair really is. For now it’s all games of Never-have-I-ever where the divulgences are still new, flirting with your JCRC Chair until you realise he’s gay and playing corridor cricket.
And freshers be warned. If I catch you saying ‘I’m bored of Ziggys’ before at least term three you’re transferring to Hull.