BED SHEETS
A lot of students, especially the boys, are little wimps struggling to understand life away from the comfort of mummy’s bosom. This is why they don’t wash their bed sheets for a whole year. They sleep on gallons of dried cum, piss, vomit, spilled beer and tiny particles of Original Doritos. This is how they get “freshers’ flu”. It’s because they can’t take care of themselves. They invented a thing called the internet a while ago and if you type in www.google.com and enter “healthy diet” you can probably stop all this happening. Also, don’t be scared of the laundrette. Just ask the immigrant lady how to work it. Or do a service wash. It’s more expensive but time-wise it’s a lot more economical.
COCAINE
University is probably the first place you’ll encounter cocaine, and unless you’ve got wealthy folks, shelling out £50 on a gram of chalk dust as and when will be beyond the reach of most, which means you’ll have to borrow off your friends until your next student loan payment and they will end up hating you. This isn’t much of a loss as coke is completely overrated anyway. The exception is at parties where really drunk people with jobs, who like hanging around you because it makes them feel “young again”, start racking up lines for you. In this case, you know what to do. Remember though, no bumps after 4:30 AM as 99 percent of the time nothing good is going to happen after that time in the morning.
DEBT
Hahahaha. This is why smart people never go to university. Even if you’re thriftier than an edgy trust fund graphic designer whose parents just died in a head-on car crash, you can expect to be in AT LEAST £30,000 worth of solid gold debt by the time you graduate. If you can get your parents to pay your rent you’ll still be about £20,000 in the red. Unless you’re a millionaire and can afford to have that debt hanging over you for about 40 years, ask yourself this question: is that three-year course in 3D digital design really worth the effort? What are you going to be qualified for? Being an intern at a computer games magazine while all your friends who fucked their exams up are making £45,000 a year selling mobile phones?
EGGS
As well as noodles and spaghetti, eggs are all that you’ll be eating for the next three years. You can’t make them in the microwave but you can throw them around your halls when you’re drunk (hilarious). These are the basis of the classic student dish: Spanish omelette. Boys who think they’re classy invite vite girls over to their house and give them £6 wine and a Spanish omelette when they want to impress them. Most of the time the girl is thinking: “He promised me a ‘chilled cordon bleu sesh’ and he’s serving me an omelette with potatoes in it.”
FRIENDS
As much as you want to be the moody outsider Ian Curtis guy, you’re going to need friends to get you through all this shit. If you’re shy, have a few drinks, then be loud and gregarious at as many parties as possible. Eventually something will fall in your lap. People will spread the word that you’re funny at parties and you’ll get invited back. Eventually you’ll have so many potential friends that you’ll have to go through the editing process.
GAYS
University is where a large majority of people experience their first dabblings in the exciting world of homosexuality. The best thing to do is to experiment as freely as possible, but be careful—don’t bow to peer pressure. The Gay and Lesbian Societies are huge in all the universities but that doesn’t mean they’re not annoying self-satisfied pricks who have swallowed so much mid-90s liberal dogma that having a conversation with them is like talking to an insane 90-year-old woman. It’s barely-remembered catchphrases and blank expressions the whole time.
They’re the ones self-righteously handing out sexual advice leaflets and free condoms while you’re waiting to get your lunch. Like anybody who’s old enough to go to university doesn’t know how to avoid sexual diseases and buy their own condoms anyway. And sorry, men who like dressing up in women’s clothes do not qualify as a social group. It’s a sexual foible. Should we have support groups, pamphlets and long public meetings about empowering people who buy underwear three sizes too small or people who like fat hairy Greek taxi drivers who ladle dollops of yoghurt on their gigantic hairy balls while they’re waiting to pick up a fare?
HALLS
More rules. Don’t eat other people’s yoghurts. Or any of their food. Conversely, if somebody steals your food from the fridge, don’t leave gay little outraged notes for them in the fridge. Track the fucker down and confront them directly. Poke them in the eyes and kick them in the crotch.
Also, don’t set the fire alarms off at two in the morning. What are you, 11 years old? Most importantly, don’t have sex with the people you live with unless you’re going to marry them. University is a chance to get laid as many times as possible with as many different people as possible. Leave commitment until your 30s.
INSANITY
Year two affects some people like a mini mid-life crisis. There’s the realisation that you’ve pissed away your first year and that now, all of a sudden, you’ve got to start getting yourself together or the whole thing will be a gigantic waste. This is where the weak-minded and the druggies start to wobble and develop signs of madness—like not coming out of their rooms for days, cutting themselves, crying out of context, etc. These people need your help. Talk to them honestly about how much they’re fucking themselves up and if, after six months, they show no signs of responding, then force them to quit university, rethink everything and go back to real life. Unless they’re setting fire to your house or killing animals, DO NOT take them near any on-campus psychiatric units. If you get detained, you are fucked forever. Remember Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted? The reality is a million times worse. You’ll be plunged into a twilight world of really strong sedatives, cigarette-smoke-filled dayrooms, constant yelling, farting, puking, crying, and people who are 30 years older than you waking you up in the middle of the night crying and asking to borrow your clothes. Flirting with heroin and burglary is less risky than flirting with the mental health system. You have no fucking idea.
JOBS
Unless you’re a leech with rich, misguided parents, you have to get a job at uni. It keeps you in touch with the real world outside student life and gives you a sense of perspective in between the all-night wine drinking and three-hour lectures about social media trend predicting. FACT: If you have a job, an internship or work experience while at university, the chances of you getting a job when you leave are quadrupled.
KNOWLEDGE
The pursuit of this is the main reason you’re at university. Just a reminder. Like we said before, it’s costing you at least £30,000.
LECTURERS
Lecture theatres are designed along classic panopticon lines, which means the teacher standing in front of you can see everything you do—even if you can’t see them properly. So while you are busy drawing embarrassing caricatures of them in unflattering positions with farm animals, they can see. Texting a friend? They can see. It really is in your best interests to turn up, look interested, take notes, laugh at their jokes and, if you see them out, buy them drinks. If they like you, you’ll get a better mark.
MEDIA STUDENTS
They have courses where you can learn how to be a TV presenter, but the people who teach you how to do it are failed TV presenters who wear cancer wigs in bed. The people who teach you how to be a journalist are bitter hacks from the local