Grape the Vine

Particularly those who are about to embark on their first university experience.

Having once been a student I like to think of myself as a member of that well known catchment of people who “had the best time of their life and winged about it ever since”. It’s a very sad day when university comes to an end. You quickly come to realise that friends you’ve lived with for three years have managed to subtly drill a hole through your stomach – as soon as everyone dissipates that hole is revealed and there’s a very strange feeling that follows.

It’s not just friends that are affected – any relationship you’ve had is about to change – think about how much more open minded you are now, how you have the opportunity to compare yourself with a previous version of yourself (before and after uni) for the first time. I know that when I was 16 I couldn’t really compare myself to my 12 year old self because our ideals were so different. If I had a turtles hat, some marbles and a couple of hours before I had to go home for dinner – I was chuffed. How things change.

You talk to your parents with a change of tone, sometimes good, sometimes bad. If you’ve made a partner it could well be that this is the point in time where the relationship is made or broken. Your friends from home will have picked up their own change in social outlook and you’ll now have to mash all of your colloquialisms and banter together in one big heap. For better or worse university is a changing process, and you will be hard pushed to leave as the same person you arrived.

If you’ve read these words and believe what I say to be true, even if you expect I’m just trawling through things that everyone has said about uni in the past, at least hear me out with some good practical advice on the first couple of weeks.

• The Three Questions.

When you first arrive at university everyone will be asking the same three questions. Who are you, where are you from and what course are you studying? I know people who pitched up on their first day with the answers to all three printed on a t-shirt – they were the few who still had a voice by the end of freshers week – and everyone knew who they were in a matter of hours. If you’ve got no spare banter in terms of breaking the ice then don’t worry – these three have been classics for years and years, so you wont go too far wrong. Now that you know maybe you can think of a way to make it more interesting?

• The First Point of Contention

90% (or what feels like 90%) of your peers will be receiving student loans to cover the tuition fees and accommodation. You’ll find that people instantly begin dissecting the bank they’ve chosen and the amount of overdraft they can get away with using. At the start of uni having a large overdraft seems like a great idea. At the end it’s a total nightmare, but you’ll have saved a lot of skin in the meantime (your own or others). This is something that requires some real research. I was one of the masses who wandered into a bank and signed everything as quickly as possible to get going with it – if you can spare a bit of time to tailor one around your personality (how likely it is you’ll be jet-setting or needing a quickfire £500) and your support (how likely it is your parents will cough up for said activities).

You can visit the current accounts of a bank website to see how the whole picture will look (remember you WILL cease to be a student at some point (no matter how impossible that is to comprehend right now). If you’re one of the golden few you could look into savings accounts as well – working through uni is a great way to meet new people and make the future look a little easier.

• Adopting the Position

It wasn’t until my third year that I realised how many times I’d been sat on the ground. In a circle. Students have a wonderful capacity to find another in a pile and begin forming a large ring so that everyone can be seen/heard. The tendency to sit on the floor follows directly along with the laziness factor. If you’re in a circle it’s only a matter of time before you’re joined by others and ushered to sit down on the ground. Learn this quickly. The more comfortably you can place yourself on a hard surface the better adapted you’ll be at conversing as a student. Of course you wouldn’t be frowned upon for spending the entire time on your feet. Frisby, football, hacky sack..

• The Friendship Factor

You may well bump into a group of people you quickly consider to be among the coolest on the planet when you first arrive. It’s more than likely that these people will be your bounce pad as you all start to learn how to act around such a criss-cross of cultures, which in turn means you’ll probably annoy one another to the point of calling it a day and looking for new friends. I know this is one of the most said things when it comes to university, but it’s so very true. The people you befriend there will end up being the best friends you ever make. However: those people that you meet in the first couple of weeks will MORE OFTEN THAN NOT end up as strangers after a month or so. Don’t cling, don’t get needy, and don’t take it personally if/when people move on.

The nature of the university beast is to find yourself. Plan well before you go, but don’t try to structure your time.

Everything happens for a reason. If you’re poor by the end of university it’s more than likely that both your brain and your facebook profile will be full of memories, quotes and pipedreams.

Bliss.