The saga begins

Welcome to university on rails. A simple story of how clichéd your experience will be, three years full to the brim with stereotypical student escapades of self-experimentation and free-thinking.

The First Year

A goodbye will mark the beginning of your entrapment in higher education. Mum will sobbingly close your new bedroom’s door as Dad puts on the stern grimace that says “don’t fuck this up, you aren’t living with us once you graduate”. Left alone for the first time in your life, you will do what any intelligently designed being would – get pissed on cheap booze and blitheringly try to invite people to your flat for a party.

Lectures will start and you will be confronted with the choice of either choosing to study for the degree that a year ago you thought “looked sort of interesting” or to sod that and enjoy the seemingly non-stop party lifestyle filled with wonders such as “the ring of fire”.

You will probably meet some amazing people, or at least people who profess how amazing they are. The tales of their life experiences will be enviable, although probably mostly fabricated. To look intelligent you will say you’ve heard of books by authors with vowel-less names, desperately maintaining your lies by reading the synopsis on wikipedia. When having a ‘cotch sesh’ with your new friends, your music collection will come under scrutiny, to which you will be betray any individuality you may have and inform the critics that “yeah, I never listen to that shit any more”.

There is even a chance that you may meet someone who, through some possible distortion of reality, finds you attractive. It will be just like those drearily rose-tinted films based in universities: you’ll be slightly cautious and naive, but then they’ll open your mind to experimentation and reveal you to yourself. Or, you’ll occasionally spot each other at the kebab shop and then go back and shag.

Then the whole of your year as a fresher will be gone quicker than you can make a pot noodle. What awaits you next is the dark middle chapter.

Second Year

“I’m going to get involved in everything”, is the general tone of second year. You are now familiar with how this university thing works and are prepared to explore as much as what’s on offer as possible. Of course, you will do none of this.

The first thing to hamper your idyllic reinvention is your new house. This is most likely the first property you’ve ever selected for renting and perhaps you hadn’t got the eye for detail yet. The initial deal clencher that was the basement now turns out to be a dark, damp mess filled with what appears to be the remnants of some form of cult activities; and the rest of the house stinks like soggy flannels and dog biscuits.

Nevertheless, you endeavour to throw a party! It’s going to be like skins and american pie got together a spewed out a bastard child of narcotics, beer kegs and people dancing in their underwear. However, what you most likely to end up with instead is a room full of DJs and a hallway of people queuing for the loo.

Third Year

If there was ever a time where you were going to have to work, this would be it. You have now decided that you’ve had enough of trying to relive the freshers year magic. Your liver is now a black lump of compost and you will find yourself sweaty, tired and entirely non-functional the morning after just two pints at the pub.

You can barely look at a fresher without pondering your own wasted existed. You are over the hill and your time here is almost up. All those things you said you would do at university are distant memories and you just want to get your degree and get out of here. Maybe you’ll finally get to go on that journey around the world, see chant with some monks and spend a season teaching to kids with chicken pox to ski.

Most likely though will be you turning up back home (to your parents delight) and spend a few fruitless years trying to find a dream job before realising your real place in society and settling for a beige office and a life of admin.

***

The Queen of Hearts has finally abdicated and been replaced by an inspired collection of numbers. ‘256’ is the new dive hole for Fallowfield residents and is sure to succeed just by being closer to Owens Park than vodka revs.

They appeared to have been doing lots of renovation work over the summer, but have remarkably been able to recreate it almost exactly how it was before. Of course the old furniture has gone and been replaced with brand new, gleaming white tables and chairs – ready to for a finishing coat of sticky vodbull.

I was fortunate enough to see the first ever puke to grace the newly opened venue. Pink and porridgey, the spew was splayed along the men’s room urinal. The two chirpy members of staff who had to clean it up put on a brave face, knowing that this was just the beginning of the end.