My brother arrived as a fresher in Manchester last week with a bag of dirty clothes, a toasted sandwich maker, and a doorstop. He might have been nervous had it not been for my detailed and calming advice for surviving fresher’s week, which was; “make sure your door is open, bring something to eat with, and always be sick in your own toilet.” He’s using the doorstop as a kind of food shovel, I imagine, and loving life.
Freshers’ week may be the first time in your life in which you discover vegetables need only be eaten once a fortnight and you can live in a room with the smell of armpit as the only furniture. It is also, traditionally, a bit of a nightmare. As well as the obligatory run in with scurvy, you may have to battle for the first time with uni-sex showers, bad drains, lack of fridge space, living with lunatics, and realising you forgot to pack any clothes other than the fancy dress caterpillar costume your mum bought you. I have no sympathy with you. Your current life, even if you’ve eaten nutella with your fingers for a month, is easy. Instead I want to direct your attention to the horror of entering life as a third year.
For the entire first year of University at every slip, social malfunction or third, you’ll be reminded that it’s ‘only your first year! It doesn’t even count.’ During your second year, at every failed exam, vomit stained outfit or failure to remember the lines as leading man in the play, you’ll be reminded that it’s ‘only your second year! It barely even counts.’ During your third year not only does everything count, God suddenly demands of you a life plan. Are you going to be one of those graduates that returns home and nods sedately along to your parents’ conversations for the next ten years of your life? Even though since the age of fourteen, you’ve suspected at some point you’d have to become a real person with a job, it’s suddenly a hideous, blood curdling surprise when the universe turns around and screams, “NAME THAT PROFESSION!” At this point, I’m in desperate need of a very kind person who will bring me a sedative and kindly explain why I’m studying History and History of Art and not something with a job description in the title. I now get enjoyment from the depth of hate that comes when I think about those people I know (who were once my friends), and are studying something genuinely useful and life directing, like medicine or law. Sorry that you had to find out this way, there won’t be any Christmas cards.
To all you freshers out there, with your ‘struggles,’ consider the plight of those sad and stressed third years, like me, who DO know how to use a washing machine, but in all honesty, absolutely nothing else. Disaster.