An Honest Guide to Everything That'll Happen at University

What if you were reading this article… in an email? Sign up to the VICE Australia newsletter Hello, 18-year-old. Here we are at the tail end of O Week, which means you're now the proud owner of approximately one million bits of promotional stationery. It also means you've willingly paid $10 to join a "student club or society" that is "relevant to your interests," and have exclusively eaten sausage sizzles for the past four days. Welcome to tertiary education! What a blast.

You're about to embark on a fraught journey littered with UniLAD memes, 12 AM Red Bulls, terrible club nights, and creatively deployed goon sacks. There's so much that can go horribly wrong, but I want you to succeed in spite of these odds. I want your HECS debt to be worth it. So please, please read the below tips. Learn from them. I am literally begging you.

Listen: do not go to uni if you don't want to. It's expensive, it takes up at least three (probably five) of the best years of your life, and it actually isn't a prerequisite for most careers. It really isn't. Enrol at a university if you want to get a specialist qualification you can't attain elsewhere, or learn more about some complex subject that you're passionate about. Otherwise, get an internship. Still keen to accrue that $30,000 HECs debt? Okay, fine. Your funeral.

Chances are you'll mistakenly want to do a law degree at some point. The thought will at least momentarily cross your mind over the next three years, probably quite late at night. Do not, I repeat do not, give in to this urge. Law school is essentially a trap designed for people who want to enter society's elite, but aren't good enough at maths to get into medicine. It's long, hard, boring, and competitive degree— and you're extremely unlikely to get a job at the end of it.

I know why you want to do law. Believe me, I know. You enjoy Suits. You did really well in HSC legal studies. Miranda is your favourite character on Sex and the City. You dream of working at the UN. There's a sick part of you that kind of likes the idea of buying pantsuits from Cue for the rest of your life. Or, more likely, you've just finished an arts degree and are interested in spending another three years on Centrelink. None of these are valid reasons to go to law school. There is no such thing as a valid reason to go to law school. Just don't.

Inevitably, in your first or second semester, you'll take a throwaway PSYCH101 class that will change your life. You will discover your true passion: the human mind. And it all seems so logical, doesn't it? Everything is falling into place. Of course you're interested in the brain. After all, you HAVE ONE!! Alright. Sure. There's nothing wrong with majoring in psychology, but it's also important to know upfront that this is a very, very basic thing to do. Also, because everyone majors in psychology and the grading scales become extremely competitive, your chances of becoming an actual psychologist are slim. So you end up in law school. It's just a vicious, vicious cycle.

In the first few weeks—let's be honest, months—of your uni degree, every new person you meet will accost you with one seemingly-innocuous question: Where did you go to school? Be warned, these people are not just being polite. They're not trying to make friends. This isn't small talk. Whether or not they consciously realise it, they're trying to classify you by socio-economic status. And they'll judge you accordingly.

Australia absolutely has a class system, and nowhere does that become more apparent than at a fancy uni. This is because you'll find yourself literally surrounded by private school students who were fated to be there since birth. They'll all have MacBook Airs. They'll all listen to Dune Rats. They'll all be Young Liberals, or former Young Liberals who now support the Greens because that seems like something Dune Rats would do. There's a really good Bitch Prefect song about this that sums up the whole situation perfectly. It's a nightmare, it really is. Just be prepared.

On-campus residences are hotbeds for sexual assault, as well as the aforementioned Young Liberals. Even, if by some miracle you can afford to do so, do not live in them. Sure, we all have our John Belushi-inspired fantasies about living across from the quad, and drinking out of solo cups and pranking the Dean, but this is Australia. If you absolutely must participate in the hackneyed ritual of the toga party, you'll have to go on exchange to the University of Wisconsin, or wherever.

I know your cherished varsity years are meant to be spent discovering your passions and losing your virginity and making mates for life, but the reality is a lot more pedestrian. That is, due to the fact you're unlikely to go to a university outside of your hometown, you will probably spend the three years of your undergrad living at home with your parents and going to parties with the people you went to high school with. And, especially given you can now legally buy alcohol, it will be fine. Just fine.

Do you like the sound of spending an entire year stress-vomiting in a library toilet? Yes? Then honours is for you! Otherwise, avoid it at all costs. Consider this: Nobody will ever read your honours thesis. Nobody. Your parents won't read your thesis, your friends won't read your thesis, your girlfriend won't read your thesis. Your supervisor will only barely read your thesis, and even they'll find it very boring.

In theory your marker will read your thesis, and chuck you an HD if they are having a good day. But that's it. You will spend an entire year writing what is essentially a very dense, very niche novella that nobody will ever read. It's not right. It does not make any sense. Are you doing honours because you want to do a PhD later on? Or are you doing it to stay on Youth Allowance? Just sit down and think about it, for one second. Because if you're about to sacrifice a year's worth of mental health for $570 a fortnight, I am here to tell you that your priorities are all wrong.

Even if you went to a shitty high school, there were probably teachers who cared about you. Or pretended to care about you. Or at least talked to you, or bothered to remember your name. I need you to know that university is not like this. As an 18-year-old undergraduate, you are just a walking dollar sign. And dollar signs do not have names. When you're in year 12, you read lots of expensively printed pamphlets advertising all the various competing uni courses you can take. And, invariably, they all sound really good. Every single course sounds like it's a one way ticket to fame, fortune, knowledge, and power. You were going to change the world with that anthropology degree—the next Indiana Jones, baby!

Here's the truth: the university spent all of its money hiring the world's best copywriters to lure in potential students by making their mediocre degrees sound fascinating, and then had nothing left over to pay their tutors and lecturers properly. As a consequence, you'll most likely be taught by an extremely jaded, overworked, socially inept academic who hates their job and life and, consequently, their students. They have offered the exact same class every year for 15 years, changing nothing, never integrating any new or relevant information into the syllabus, never adding to the book list, memorising every lecture and then regurgitating it while mechanically moving their head back and forth between their Clip Art-heavy powerpoint presentation and the lecture theatre with glassy, hollow eyes. Spending two hours with them per week will cost you $2,000 per semester. Super stimulating stuff. Really inspiring.

Happy studying!

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