Beware the Freshers’ Hypothesis

Another university year, another bunch of freshers. Complete with their John Lewis ‘all-in-one-all-the-kitchen-stuff-you-will-ever-need’ box and crispy brand new bed sheets, they are at the peak of the organisational spectrum they will experience whilst at university.

But these freshers also, year upon year, fall into the main, inevitable student misconception: they believe that they will reinvent themselves at university.
After working hard for all those A-Level A’s and A*’s, you promise your parents and yourself that you’ll do all your work, go to all your lectures and become a shining beacon of intellectual prowess. You will not.

At the end of the day, Freshers’ Week is a write-off. You will go out most nights, if not every night and you will wake up either sleep deprived or still drunk. The saying ‘start as you mean to go on’ is key here. My first lecture notes of each year have consisted of a title, maximum 4 bullet points and then a random assembly of letters, numbers and Greek symbols from when I’ve fallen asleep face-down on my laptop. This is a feature common in most of my lecture notes. You promise yourself you will do all your work, but “A pipe burst in my house so I couldn’t do this week’s reading” will most likely become a staple excuse to placate less than impressed seminar tutors.

Then there are those who are convinced that having a gym on campus will automatically mean you’ll go to it because it’s so ‘accessible’ and just so close to your halls. These people, my friends, are silly. Many misguided souls, excited by the student-loan-induced large sum of money in their account, will buy a yearly gym membership at the start of the first term, blithely calculating that “the money is totally worth is as it’ll only take you 30 gym trips to make the £160 worthwhile.”

Now, thirty looks like a small number, but when you are running round campus, already late for a lecture or seminar (having slept through your alarm as you were out at Pop! last night dressed as Mario and Luigi with your new-found best friend) I promise you that the last thing on your mind is a quick abs session in the gym.

The best freshers, however, are those on a mission to beat the ‘Freshers’ Bulge’ and complete the nigh impossible task of graduating at the same weight and clothes size as when they enrolled. This naive bunch of people buy porridge for a ‘healthy start to the day’ and stock their cupboards with couscous and lentils and other grossly middle-class herb-infused concoctions of Eastern origin. These healthy options will end up sat in the back of the cupboard, probably unopened and forgotten about while you gobble down late night voucher-aided Dominoes and the student’s gourmet meal of ‘chicken’ flavoured Tesco Value supernoodles.

But newbies and seasoned students alike shouldn’t let themselves be disheartened by a characteristically sarcastic person’s column. You go cut your hair and dip-dye it crazy colours. You go do a u-turn in your music tastes from One Direction to something far cooler and oh-so ‘alternative.’ You buy a gym membership to make you feel better about yourself, kitting yourself out in new running shoes and all other sports-related paraphernalia.

Because, ultimately, this column has been brought to you by a student who made best friends with people who pay attention in lectures, who bought a gym membership and went a grand total of 6 times, and who still has an unopened bag of lentils sat in her cupboard from first year.

I fell into every trap that common university misconceptions laid out for me and I’ve had a fabulous time here. So go on – go buy some couscous to accessorise your cupboard and go out like a good fresher should. Falling into the traps is all part of the university experience after all.

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