Student living: slugs, drugs and mouldy mugs

Before moving into my second-year student house I had idealistic fantasies about what it would be like. I wasn’t the only one harbouring optimistic notions; throughout the summer my house Whatsapp group was abuzz with photos of new bedding and plans for house meals in our cute little kitchen. We had seen the house, we knew it wasn’t exactly the Ritz, but let’s just say we were expecting a similar standard of living to our beloved Heronbank. However, instead we were greeted with the standard of Old Rootes after a rave.

My room was a particularly sad affair. The furniture was organised in a way that minimised space, as though someone had begun rearranging it like a rubix cube and given up halfway through. The bookshelf was not only falling apart but positioned behind the bed. I didn’t have a bedside table or even a light shade, just a dimly-lit lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, more befitting of an interrogation room than a bedroom. However, these initial problems were just skin-deep and there were more grisly discoveries to be made. Namely the curtains, which were adorned with weird stains and mould, and the walls, which were hidden beneath a layer of grime.

Student houses are cold, that’s a fact.

We also had a squatter problem in the form of slugs, or one slug who kept returning –  we’re still not quite sure. Almost every day in the first few weeks, a slug would appear in our kitchen, usually around dinner time, as though to cause as much disruption as possible.

Student houses are cold, that’s a fact. However, when I say that my house is cold, I don’t mean it’s chilly. With a fire that doesn’t work, and all the radiators positioned on external walls below single-glazed windows, my house is an igloo. To make matters worse, we received an eye-watering gas bill at the start of December, prompting my housemates to develop a Scrooge-like attitude towards heating in the run up to the Christmas holidays.

I couldn’t do work without my hand freezing into a claw around my mouse and going to bed meant donning three layers of fluffy nightwear. As someone who finds the library too stifling and the Oculus too distracting, living in such a cold, uncomfortable house was not only affecting my general contentment but it was also affecting my ability to work in the only place I can truly focus. For the first time since coming to Warwick, I was literally counting down the days until I could go home.

In Term 1 we had guessed from an occasional whiff of a distinct sickly odour that our neighbours were no strangers to a certain recreational drug. It was unpleasant, but we weren’t particularly bothered. However, throughout Term 2 the situation worsened, and the odour began permeating our house on the daily. It was so strong in one room that my housemate swears it caused the inexplicable cure of her insomnia, and led to fears that she was being hotboxed by second-hand smoke every night.

If there’s one thing this year has taught me, it’s how much of an impact accommodation has on your student experience and state of mind.

So, this tale may seem like a gloomy one, but it’s not all negative. I’m now half way through my time in my Leamington house of horror and I’d be lying if I said that the thought of moving out at the end of the year doesn’t fill me with some sadness as well as relief. I like to think that I made the most of a bad situation. I improved the bedroom situation by giving it the Kim and Aggie treatment, reshuffling the furniture, and buying the cheapest pair of curtains that Leamington had to offer (a My Little Pony pair from Argos). I invested in a fan heater which salvaged my sanity and possibly my degree in January. My housemates and I learnt to compromise on the heating and laugh when something else in our house inevitably went wrong (frozen locks, mouldy walls – you name it).

If there’s one thing this year has taught me, it’s how much of an impact accommodation has on your student experience and state of mind. But it’s not the be-all and end-all. Yes, this year will have been bogged down with housing troubles, but it will also have been spent living in a lovely town, with three of my closest friends and just a street or two away from my others.

My memories of my second year in Leamington will be punctuated with Procaffeinate brunches and nights spent laughing over pitchers at The Benjamin Satchwell. I hope that the most vivid memories of my house will be the nights spent getting ready to go out, blaring Beyoncé and doing each other’s eyeshadow, and the evenings spent gossiping in front of the crackling fan heater, because those are the moments that make putting up with the slugs and the drugs worthwhile.

My curtains proclaim that ‘friendship is magic’ and I must say that if you keep your friends close and your blankets closer, the silver lining may be easier to find than you think.