Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

What to Expect When Starting University

A num­ber of friends head­ing to Uni next year have been ask­ing for advice, so I wrote this in response. It is not meant to be com­pre­hens­ive, but con­tains what I con­sider to be some worth­while sug­ges­tions. YMMV.

Before I came to University I, like pretty much all people about to make the same trans­ition, was offered advice from vari­ous people about the nature of Uni life — everything from food to drink, drugs, sex and so on. We’re told that Uni is an exper­i­ence shared by all first years; that every­one else is in the same boat etc., but hav­ing been here a term and a bit I thought I’d attempt to dis­pense some advice of my own that didn’t come up in the pre-game pep talks I had. Everyone’s exper­i­ence var­ies — I speak from an English A-level stu­dent POV — but I’m sure someone will find some rel­ev­ance in this somewhere.

1. Levels of promis­cu­ity are, by and large, grossly exag­ger­ated. I may not be top of the tree of social movers and shakers, but I’m cer­tainly above most of the pond life you can find around here, and I can tell you it’s not what it’s hyped up to be. Granted, I am in the “quiet” halls of one of the country’s most respect­able insti­tu­tions, but so far the action has been decidedly sub-par. So if you’re feel­ing des­per­ately starved of pootang, don’t be des­pond­ent — chances are you’re not alone (just take a look in the com­mon room of your Computer Science depart­ment, if present).

2. Fiscal mis­man­age­ment is not assured. Everybody sounds off about the dangers of debt and the hor­rors of stu­dent over­drafts, frit­ter­ing away your money etc. etc. In truth, unless you are a com­plete trend whore with a com­pul­sion for irra­tional spend­ing, chances are you’ll be just fine. The people that make a song and dance about their fre­quent shop­ping sprees in the first few weeks of Term 1 are, sur­prise sur­prise, the ones who you find whin­ing about hav­ing no money around week 5. Curtail those £200 shop­ping trips for more shit you don’t need, work out exactly how much you can afford to spend each week and keep track of it. There will be a few blurry morn­ings where you can’t remem­ber how many trips you made to the cash machine the night before, so check your state­ments. Online bank­ing comes in invalu­able for this.

3. Be pre­pared to accept your achieve­ments may equal shit. Yes, Uni is all about pro­mot­ing indi­vidu­al­ism and a sense of self-worth, but no mat­ter how well you think you may have done in whatever, you’ll always find someone who trav­elled extens­ively, lived in four dif­fer­ent coun­tries, spoke five lan­guages and became a ski instructor in the time it took you to get your driv­ing license. I thought I was pretty well-travelled and well-cultured, and I’ve been left gawp­ing by some of the people here. You’ll prob­ably be able to beat them on some­thing, but for the time being allow your sense of accom­plish­ment to be taken down a few notches. This is espe­cially true for English stu­dents — see next point.

4. If you’re English, be pre­pared to take some shit about the A-level sys­tem. Especially true for high-ranking Universities — you’ll find that just about every­one else did the International Baccalaureate (IB) and they’ll all delight in telling you how much more work they had to do than you (and they’ll also never tire of com­par­ing scores with each other like they were penis sizes).

5. If you haven’t lived in board­ing school, be pre­pared to start hav­ing to carry your­self. You may have been warned about this and it’s true — you have to get your own shit together your­self, and fast. For the most part, if you don’t turn up to lec­tures or sem­inars, nobody will give a shit; if you don’t cook you won’t eat; and if you don’t do your laun­dry you won’t have clean stuff to wear. You have to make the effort — sure, you can sur­vive on box food, but ulti­mately it’s cheaper, health­ier and more reward­ing to learn to cook occa­sion­ally rather than stuff­ing your sys­tem with crap (and you’re far less likely to end up a fat bas­tard). On the whole, those that eat badly are those that can’t be fucked to do things prop­erly — get off your asses. It’s a much bet­ter ges­ture to invite a girl (or guy) over to your flat for din­ner and cook and serve it your­self than to toss her a couple of bags of Cheetos and a can of Coke and be sur­prised when she doesn’t want to eat your face.
Get a decent alarm clock and get into a morn­ing routine. Mornings have been one of the hard­est parts of daily life for me (and not just now, for a long time), so fol­low the basics — don’t drink too much when you know you have a lec­ture at 9 the next morn­ing (you may think you’ll be okay but trust me, it hurts, and it’s hard to learn when you feel like you’ve been run over); get enough sleep; get up in time to be decently washed and fed before you have to head out; and get some decent cof­fee. If you don’t drink cof­fee, start. Another top tip is to loc­ate your alarm clock some dis­tance from your bed/hammock so that you have to actu­ally get up to turn it off. The urge to return to bed will be strong, but you must fight it, god­dam­mit! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve over­slept of a morn­ing because I silenced the alarm, thought “I’ll be alright here for a couple of minutes,” and promptly fell asleep again, wak­ing up two hours later think­ing it was five minutes.

6. Not quite run­ning out of ideas, but abandon­ing any sense of order to this: get out and meet people as soon as pos­sible, espe­cially your neigh­bours. This again is often said, but I can­not emphas­ise it enough. 90% of the people I now know here, I met in the first week or two. People form groups of friends very early on so it is vital that you get in there quick. Get to know your hall-/flat-mates ASAP — you’ll prob­ably end up liv­ing with them the fol­low­ing year. If you stay in your room you’ll get left behind pretty soon. You will find people with tastes and interests sim­ilar to yours, be it Bach or BDSM.

Hopefully that will give some some­thing to chew on; I may well add more as I think of it. Enjoy.