1.Don’t move in with your friends
Those wreckhead housemates you should avoid.
It’s third year and you’ve finally found those wreckhead friends that match your personality and your relentless partying. Of course, you want to live with them and repeat those alcohol-fuelled nights weekly, that you wish you could have experienced in first year, but weekly turns into daily and the hangovers have become a thing of the past. It may have not have been the wisest decision to make the move during your concluding year of university.
2. Don’t move in third year.
Moving your entire life for just one year.
It goes without saying, moving is a huge step no matter what stage of your life you are in and you’ve decided that the year you need to complete an 8000-word dissertation was the right time for you? Smart move. But at least you get to leave your dishes on the kitchen side for days and last week’s clothes littering the floor without the judgement and dismay from your mum.
3. Don’t break up with your long-term partner.
Seriously, don’t do it
Your big move led to an even bigger break–up and you did not handle it well. Despite trying to convince everyone you were okay as you downed multiple shots and stayed out till the early hours of the next day (or maybe it was the late hours of the following afternoon?) the dissertation has fallen to the bottom of the to-do list and you have fallen deep into your overdraft, but at least you had a good night, right?
4. Alcohol is not the answer – but it helps
Every fortnight recycling requires a team effort.
It’s Monday night and you have found yourself sat in spoons downing your £2.40 pint of cider preaching to the world that you are going to become somebody. But the truth is you’ll be back in the morning hiding your shame in an oversized hoodie and masking your face with sunglasses, hoping no one remembers you stumbling down the stairs as you work your way through your cheap and nasty full English.
5. Neither is the weed
The munchies are expensive but taste pretty damn good.
It’s hangover day, where’s the weed? Saturday night was heavier than expected and, somehow, it’s already four o’clock in the afternoon. The mature sensible option would be to crack on with dissertation work but instead: you message the local weed runner, order a Dominoes and crawl into your pit of shame you call a bed.
6. Don’t cry at your computer – cry at your friends
Weekly breakdown in Penryn library.
Halfway through the semester and you have nothing – just a lot of regret, shame and a surprisingly high tolerance to alcohol. With sleep deprivation and blurry eyes it’s time to open that laptop and read the brief you’ve been putting off for weeks. Instead, you just cry or strop at the endless list of confusing words (you’ve forgotten how to string a sentence together by this point), slamming the laptop shut and crawl into your bed to sleep the impending workload away.
7. Mangos won’t solve anything
Who wouldn’t want to be stuck in this crowd?
A bottle of wine down, AGAIN, and it’s time to hit the local dive. You’ve convinced your friends that you need this and it will be fun. It’s £1 Wednesday’s after all, how can they say no? Halfway through the night, you’ve realised this was an awful decision as your friend passes you another double rum and coke. Next thing it’s three in the morning, the lights are turning on, and the after party is at yours… not the wisest decision you’ve made.
8. Study pills don’t work
The tablets that make you want to clean, not focus.
Now the panic has really started to set in. A friend has mentioned a marvellous cure to handling that heavy workload you have left to last minute. It’s time to experiment with Modafinil. As you take the first one, sipping on your strong coffee, your heart begins to race and instead you think it will be a good time to reorganise and fix your room. After all, a tidy room is a tidy mind, right?
9. Writing your dissertation in a week is not clever
The library called and they want their books back.
It is the final week of university and your word count sits on zero like the percentage of motivation you have left. The books have been gathering dust on the side and it is time to hectically flick through those pages and absorb as much information as humanly possible. Trying to understand why you even bothered coming to university in the first place, you find yourself trying to comprehend the theory of human existence and somehow you’ve spent half the day watching endless videos on the theory of flat earth. The dissertation has fallen off your radar and it is becoming an unreachable goal. Where are the words? Where is the earth’s curve?
10. Forget steps 1- 9 and have a good time!
Does anyone remember taking toilet selfies?
Okay, so the final year did not pan out how you imagined it would go. The dissertation may be incomplete and the workload is still piled high, but nobody remembers university as the three years where you studied hard and isolated yourself in the library.
You’ve made friendships that will last a lifetime and most importantly you found yourself. The work will get done and you had fun avoiding work, even if you can’t remember all of it. University is about becoming yourself and being happy with life, the degree is important but it is not the be all and end all.
Get yourself to the pub and order that bottle of wine, you deserve it.