6 Times Literature Summed Up Warwick Freshers Week

Sometimes only literature can really put into words how we are feeling. The following quotes from famous classic books apply strangely well to the Freshers’ experience, and might help you vocalise all the weird and wonderful things that happen during your first weeks at university. 

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

You go to your first seminar. You’re terrified but keen to learn. You have five pens just in case and you are ready to go. The professor is talking about something and everyone around you is nodding thoughtfully. You try to follow but don’t get it. “Oh no, should I even be at uni?” you think, panicking. The girl next to you is taking notes at high speed, still nodding.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Your student loan is in. You’re heading to Tesco to pick up some food, shopping list in hand. But everything looks so good! And you have money! Why not treat yourself to a tub of ice-cream? Vodka? Six tubes of Pringles? You deserve this. You can’t read the Iliad on an empty stomach after all.

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” ― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

It’s day one. You want to go into the kitchen to mingle with your new flatmates. These are the people you have to spend the next year living with. You need to befriend them – and fast! After an hour of psyching yourself up, you go into the kitchen to discover that, they too, are all still hiding in their rooms.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

You wake up after going to Pop! for the first time. You are feeling somewhat fragile and don’t remember much about the evening. Your mouth tastes like stale Purple and there is still glitter on your face. One shoe is missing – still stuck to the floor of the Copper Rooms – and yet, you know that you will be back for more, one week from now.

  “Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

You finally pluck up the courage to check your bank account after two weeks of eating out, heavy drinking and overzealous stationery purchasing and are horrified at what you discover. You resign yourself to your newfound student debt and accept that your diet will henceforth consist of beans on toast and noodles.

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

You are forced to stay up late into the night, finishing an assignment. With the help of coffee and energy drinks, you finish it just in time, but can’t bear to read it over before submission. You fear that you have gone off on a huge tangent, or forgotten how to write in complete sentences. Who knows what your professor will think of it. Only time will tell.

Image Credits: Steve S / Flickr (Header)