This was published in Pi Magazine 660, September 06.
Freshers’ week has become part of our national heritage; it is our cultural rite of passage for young people. In distant Amazonian tribes, young warriors might jump over flames, jettison their foreskins or impale unsuspecting woodland creatures on large sticks; in Britain, freshers drink themselves to a vegetative condition in the company of near strangers, before crawling to an unlikely establishment (police station / primary school / hospice) to hurl up carrot-shaped lumps on the doorstep. It is at once hideous and glorious; or so the media would have you believe.
Last year, when preparing for UCL, I came across a guide to Freshers’ week in the Times. I’ve since lost it, however I remember that it written by some Crispin Hyphen-Smythe character, who - despite having no first hand experience of University since streaking around an Oxbridge quadrangle in the late 19th century - was clearly determined to relive his misspent youth vicariously by writing a poorly informed guide to Freshers’ week. The advice started out straight-forward enough - send parents home at soonest possible opportunity, ensure when unpacking CDs they remain in alphabetical order - until it came to social intercourse, where Crispins’ ideas went something like this;
‘After unpacking your bags, you may be tempted to nap on your new bed, however head to the kitchen to meet your new friends; make sure to bring a bottle of something, and condoms!’
Sat between piles of half-filled Tupperware containers and Cardboard boxes back at home, I found it hard to imagine myself wandering into the kitchen, finding some beautiful stranger before going at it ruthlessly on the Smeg cooker, Morrisons’ own-brand White Lightning still in hand. Needless to say, I failed the test when I found myself sat in the kitchen, silently sipping tea with people from Guilford and feeling only vaguely disappointed.
Freshers’ week is, nonetheless, unique. At no other point in your adult life will you and your contemporaries be thrown into a social melting pot and be given nothing to do but run riot for a whole week. This artificiality does however have its down-side. Sat in a room where you know no-one, it’s a reasonably safe bet that the first person confident enough to speak will be the biggest twat in the room, happily marshalling the flow of conversation and intimidating everyone else into a kind of social submission. In this climate of uncertainty it is likely that you will bond with the most unlikely people; you will find solidarity with the mute international student in the next room when the Public School Rugby Massive loot and pillage your corridor at 4am on a Tuesday morning. You might even find yourself playing Warhammer with freshers of titanic dullness, if only to be afforded the security of a ‘gang’ with whom to walk to college.
Most importantly, the greatest unspoken truth about Freshers’ week is the fact that it is seldom indicative of the rest of your University life. However much fun you might have, over time you will almost certainly make better friends, find better places to hang out - although many have conducted their three-year long pulling jihad exclusively at the Roxy - and muster up enough confidence to lay rabbit snares for the Public School Rugby anti-sleep Fascists. I’d have to be an Olympic level spoil-sport to suggest you remain in your room rearranging your CD collection along alphabetical, chronological or even ethnic lines, but you’d probably make more friends taking George Foreman’s Lean Mean Fat-Grilling machine to the kitchen than you would a pack of Durex.