What You Don’t Yet Know

Arnold Thornton-Rice says you should withhold the judgement about your (seemingly) crazy flatmate…

My dear freshers – ye naïve whippersnappers/people probably just months younger than I – please, flashback with me to September 28th 2014. I am sat at a round Heronbank table blinking from one new face to the next, feeling that ambiguous stomachy knot of social anxiety that I’m afraid my frantic chair-rocking is doing a horrendous job of disguising. The seven people around me all play host to similar nervous ticks, though at the time I am of course oblivious to this possibility: I’ve got my own worrying to worry about.

The first fresher’s flat meeting is peculiarly funny in this way. A group of equally uncertain people, flicking between nervousness and excitement at an uncomfortable rate, attempting to mount perhaps the largest sheet of communal ice they’ve ever encountered in order to find someway, as the saying goes, to break it. It’s daunting. I was very daunted. And this universal daunt comes from all the things you don’t yet know.

“I had cake; I couldn’t care if he was a people-trafficker by that point.”

For example, I look over to the most distinctive of these newbies: shaggy hair, paled Hawaiian shirt, copious amounts of tobacco in front of him on the table. The philosophy student stereotype, I don’t yet know, is all too true. I don’t yet know that I’m to be in attendance for a few of his many late night pseudo-seminars on the “non-existence of atoms”, or that I shall accompany his bare-footed self to restaurants and bars as he unashamedly garners the expected gawps, gasps, occasional gagging, and eventual campus notoriety as “Guy Who Wears No Shoes”. I don’t yet know of his penchant for delectably articulate conversation and debate, of his enviously slick people skills or his affinity for inside jokes – one of which, in first week, saw us terrorising (and, in hindsight, likely alienating) neighbouring flats with a fake cult based purely around the name “Jeremy”.

But I also don’t yet know that his tobacco shall plague this central table for the entire oncoming year, or how I’m going to resort to keeping my mugs in my room to prevent their inevitable theft and wine-staining at his hands. I don’t yet know his curious fascination with urinating out of the kitchen window (seriously) or that the regular upper-limit volume of human speech doesn’t apply to a few of his oft-visiting friends. Basically, I don’t yet know that with all his wondrous idiosyncrasies comes a slew of pains in the arse: that the “crazy flatmate” is still, after all, a flatmate.

“Any expectation of greatness or snap-judgement of dullness can, and in most cases will be overturned at some point.”

And this is the thing I wish I really had known – that flatmates, from the eccentric to the near non-existent, are all one big jumble of pros and cons. Any expectation of greatness or snap-judgement of dullness can, and in most cases will be overturned at some point. Like when that one guy whose private school obnoxiousness seemed to render him incohabitable turned out to be capable of creating a rather mean victoria sponge. Did it stop him being a dick? No. Did I mind it less? I had cake; I couldn’t care if he was a people-trafficker by that point.

Discovering the inherent good and not-so-good of each member of my newly appointed family of strangers quickly became one of the most rewarding aspects of first year. And likewise as others discovered mine — in particular, that nose-ringed girl two seats off from the would-be “Guy Who Wears No Shoes”, who doesn’t yet know how she and l will rush into a relationship that we’ll tell ourselves is “just like Monica and Chandler!” but will end weeks later more like Monica and that guy Jon Favreau played for like six episodes.

Sitting there at that inaugural festival of awkwardness (AKA “The First Flat Meeting”), chipping tentatively at the conversational glacier, it’s actually nice not knowing any of this.  All the crazy fun and crazy frustration, friendship and resentment, romance and rejection is ahead of us. We’re united by this indefinite potential, and that’s enough common ground to make a start towards it.

Will this article hold true for you? Reduce that daunt just a little bit? I guess you just don’t yet know. Go find out.