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How To Be A Proper Student

I embarked on my journey of self-discovery and higher education during the glory days of undergraduate study also known as the late 1990s and early 2000s. My experiences of university straddled a few major breakthroughs in technology and communications...

HOW TO BE A PROPER STUDENT

WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY RHYS COREN

I embarked on my journey of self-discovery and higher education during the glory days of undergraduate study also known as the late 1990s and early 2000s. My experiences of university straddled a few major breakthroughs in technology and communications. This was a time long before housemates could Skype each other to get the coffee machine on. Then, the idea of downloading a band’s entire discography or a complete TV series in minutes was pure fantasy.

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More worryingly, it seems that students nowadays actually go to lectures, throw dinner parties and get their deposits back on rented accommodation.

I am sat here asking myself: “Has the traditional student experience gone the way of VHS tapes and Our Price?” I fear it has.

I’d like to think that there are students somewhere out there who continue to use their imagination, party, and watch TV while drinking lots of tea and remaining oblivious to advances in utilities and amenities. A bit like those Japanese soldiers who carried on fighting at the end of World War II, blissfully unaware that the war was over and they had lost.

So listen here, student of today: don’t lie down and accept the experience of now. If you do you may come out the other side with a 70-word-per-minute typing average and at least 1,000,000 MP3s, but you’ll miss out on the essence of what it means to finally move away from mummy and daddy and do whatever you want for the first time in your life.

Therefore, to become the gregarious, charming, sexually experienced and alcohol-dependent adult that anyone graduating prior to 2005 can claim to be: ration the ketamine and internet use, and try some of the following.

WATCH TV ON THE TV WHEN IT’S ACTUALLY SHOWN ON THE TV

First of all, ditch the iPlayer and quit downloading the latest series of

The Wire, Mad Men

or

Lost

, and don’t even think about heading to 4oD. Wake up just in time to watch

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Neighbours

at 1:45 PM on Five. Of course, if it is that one compulsory day of attendance and you’re out of the house, make sure you and all your friends are home at 5:35 PM for the later repeat. Then watch

Hollyoaks

topped off with

EastEnders

. That’s at least two hours of solid tea-drinking and trying to do what could technically be termed as “fuck all”. This involves trying to do as little as possible, which can be a problem when tea needs to get made and someone needs to lean forward to change channels. The latter task simply requires thumbing the remote, while the tea-making requires a well-constructed hierarchy involving a complex system of knowing who’s done what and when. When any of the above programmes aren’t on, it’s time to switch on the PlayStation 2 and let

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Tony Hawk’s Underground

or

FIFA 2001

consume your every hour. The main goal here is bonding in a communal area around a television and developing your understanding of close social constructs. Oh, and no self-gratification in your room is allowed.

DON’T WASH UP OR TIDY

When I lived in halls I tidied up once in a whole year and that was only because it was the day before an inspection. I don’t think I ever washed up. Who needs to wash up takeaway boxes? Come second year and the move into an actual house, I had established a system whereby myself and my housemates only had to tidy four times per annum. We managed to avoid washing up as it really annoyed a particular housemate’s girlfriend who lived rent-free in our house for far too long against our wishes. By year three we would, admittedly, tidy every other week and loosely stuck to a washing up rota, but that’s because our popularity was increasing and we received many, many house guests, each causing a lot of mess in their own special way.

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ACTUALLY GOING OUT AND MEETING ACTUAL GIRLS AND BOYS

This is not quite the same as stalking someone on Facebook and sending them M. Ward YouTube clips in an attempt to woo them. When we wanted to begin our fiendish late-teen sexual revolution, we had to actually leave the house, go to a bar and attempt to charm members of the opposite sex. Think about it: when you’ve graduated and you are trying to get that job you’ve always wanted, you aren’t going to get away with walking past the interviewer, going home and seeing if you and your potential boss have any mutual friends who you can tap up for potential ingratiating information. Practice the skills of one-on-one charm, lies and manipulation now, and you’ll have three years of experience in the bank that no amount of witty photo tagging or oblique Tumblr blogging can ever contend with.

USE YOUR IMAGINATION

In my second year our TV aerial didn’t really work and we didn’t even have the internet. We did, however, have our imagination and almost limitless amounts of free time. This meant we spent our time scouring charity shops for weird videos, making ramps inside our house to skate or BMX on, knocking together costumes out of whatever crap was lying around for parties, reading Viz and cooking hash cakes. These were all mind-expanding pursuits in their own way. You want to see what you’re really capable of? Then embrace the genuine, absolutely skint boredom that only university life can offer.

DON’T GO IN TO UNIVERSITY VERY OFTEN

There is a very good reason why university courses last three years. It takes a good 24 months of sex, drugs, making tea and doing as little as possible with your new-found freedom and your government loan before you’ll have developed the necessary life skills to cope with a whole year of library-going and working hard(ish).