Parents and other humans think that University is all about drinking and parties, but that is not the truth. Here is why being a student is not easy:
- How difficult it is to get into University in the first place
Not everyone can go to Oxford or Yale. The amount of work necessary to hit top marks is ludicrous, and just to be considered as a student for your local sweat shop is depressing.
2. Expenses – like laundry fees and orange juice
Once you get your letter of acceptance and you tear yourself away from your family, you discover you need to pay for a whole lot of stuff your daddy used to pay for. Those Primark tennis shoes suddenly look quite attractive.
3. Spending half your student loan on McDonald’s
To a novice, 300 bucks is a fortune, but you will soon find out you can’t live on take-away food. You might have to set up a budget; otherwise, you will find yourself eating cornflakes with water until your next student loan payment.
4. Spending the other half of your student loan on Ibuprofen
It is fun being “free” from your family, but spending your evenings in the club, downing 20 Jagerbombs is not fun the next morning. Strong coffee and ibuprofen needs its own category in your budget.
5. Trying to find your laundry basket under all your clothes
Doing the washing is not a priority, especially when you have 200 pages of the Oxford Book of Clinical Medicine to read for Friday. Wearing your undies for three days is not the solution, though.
6. Buying all your textbooks on the required reading list and then using them as coffee table
Most of the lectures you attend will have handouts, and you will have extensive lecture notes (hopefully) so you probably won’t even look at the textbooks – although I suppose you should.
7. Visiting the library for the first time in three months
Most of the guys from your course use the library to catch up on the latest gossip. It gets kinda noisy in there, but when you are desperate to get out of your noisy apartment (and your textbooks are being used as a coffee table and you have a deadline of Friday for your 50 page essay, the library is just the place – if you know the Dewey decimal system and you don’t mind the scribbles in the margins.
8. Eating out of a saucepan
The plates in the communal kitchen are all dirty because your roommates are dirty little scumbags. It’s easier just to eat straight out of the saucepan. That’s if you bother to cook.
9. Surviving on pizza and red bull
Who cooks these days? It’s easier to order a takeaway or just chuck one of the Sainsbury’s basics pizza in the oven. Red bull is a given for anyone who needs the energy to survive on three hours of sleep.
10. Sharing a room with a someone who fits the description of all categories of the LGBTQ movement
Don’t assume anything. You can’t ask the gender of anyone you live with. Just smile and wave.
11. Your roommate raiding the fridge
You just spent your last 50 bucks on food and your cupboard looks kinda full and you feel quite proud of yourself for not spending it on cheap wine. Then your roommate comes in at 2 in the morning with all his mates and empties everything in there except a packet of Twirly Whirlies.
12. Telling your parents that you are studying all weekend
Going home is awesome, especially when your mom does all your laundry for you; but you want to show the family how independent you are and how hard you are studying. So, you tell them you are studying, when you are sucking on a lemon and staring into space and making little sock-puppets.
13. Writing a 20-page essay the morning it is due
You are panicking because the essay is due today, even though you started it two weeks ago but only managed to write one sentence. Your mate’s advice is to write big because it takes up more space.
14. Course snobbery. There is a hierarchy in university too
Medical students naturally look down on anyone who needed less than five “A’s” for entry, especially English and Arts students.
15. Watching Netflix until three while “studying”
Everyone knows that you can have the TV on, or the smart speaker at volume 9, when you are studying. It helps develop your other five senses.
16. Paying £10,000 for a semester – and attending three lessons
Nobody is going to check that you are attending lessons. That’s why you choose not to go to lessons, because your mate Matt is recording everything for you, while you get some much-needed sleep.
17. Sleeping during those three lessons
Nobody knows how tough university is. Even the lecturer couldn’t give a hoot if you sleep in his class; just don’t snore.
18. Finding somewhere new to live every year
If you happen to get through first year, by some miracle, you probably won’t be in the same student digs. In the three months between the end of this year and the beginning of the next one, you should have your next student loan approved, at which time you can start looking for a new place to live.
19. Realising that your three-year degree in Aeronautical Engineering qualifies you for work in a McDonald’s Drive thru
Nobody told you about the work experience you need to start at the company of your choice. Welcome to McDonald’s!
20. Realising that you must pay your student loan back
Well done! You’ve graduated. Now that you are earning a salary, we unfortunately must take some of your money away from you for the next ten years – to repay your student loan. You can always get a credit card.
David Owen Nunes
David is many faceted, fascinating, fastidious, fair, fabulous and the other F word. He works in the Pensions Industry, plays occasional golf, and dreams of being able to write full time.
