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 paper who became alcoholics and couldn’t cope on the news desk any more. If you want a job in the media, the key is to have ideas and to be prepared to work for free in shitty offices for months. People think working in the media is a carousel of comfort, huge pay cheques and glamour. Fact is, 98 percent of media shitworkers experience that kind of thing once every three years. One of the only valid things that the first-year feminists talk about is that media is still TOTALLY DOMINATED by rich white fat guys who like booze, whores, coke and paying their employees shit. You can forget waltzing through the doors with your piece of shit media studies degree and requesting a job starting at £40,000. It won’t happen.
NEWSPAPERS
Fuck those catamites who still walk around the campus with the Guardian or the Daily Telegraph poking out of their bag as a way of announcing to the world that “I’m clever and open-minded”. They are the worst. Fundamentally, there is no difference between that person and a working-class moron wearing a fake Gucci cap. They’re both walking around with a bogus status symbol trying to accumulate some identity.
Relying on a newspaper for your news is near useless anyway. People who work at daily newspapers don’t have time to get their facts entirely accurate. They just get a big whiteboard and write words like “racist”, “celebrity”, “cocaine”, “paedophile” and “football” and create stories around them. Make sure you get a fast internet connection from your university and read as many different news sources as possible. That way you can form your own opinion about things. Again, make it easier for yourself.
FRESHERS’ WEEK
The week leading up to the start of the first term used to involve avoiding all scheduled activities and signing up for classes quickly so you could get the hell out of there and go record shopping. Freshers’ week today is like a crazy carnival, where first years flaunt their new Supré outfits and everyone seems blind to the fact that it’s essentially a marketing exercise for banks and soft drink companies attempting to win over all the international and country students.
POLITICAL SOCIETIES
A total waste of time. Run by boorish losers with dogma breath. Take a course in political science or read some books if you’re that arsed.
QUITTING
If you’re spending more time in bars than in lectures and tutorials, you should do this.
RATS
These are what you get if you live near a pub or a restaurant and never clean the kitchen or living room. They may be a source of amusement for a while and the Crispin Glovers among you might protest that they’re living beings with as much right to life as humans, but bear in mind these fuckers carry myriad diseases that can kill you. If you let them live they will breed and then you will be charged about £300 by a pest control service who will douse your house with poison. Maybe they’ll kill some of the rats but they won’t stop the stench of their decomposing bodies that’ll start coming through your floorboards for the next nine months. Suuur-WEET!
SOAP OPERAS
No time for these either. If you get to a point where you can remember watching Neighbours twice a day more than five times in two weeks then you’re probably fucked.
TATTOOS
Go nuts. Traditional is always best though. No Chinese tummy tattoos for girls. No logo of any band unless it’s Crass, Eyehategod, Black Flag, Misfits or Motörhead. Bands like that designed their logos so they’d look good as tattoos. No graffiti tattoos. No mystic symbols. A red devil on the arse of a drunken 35-year-old swinger mum of three is a million times better than getting an AK-47 on your leg because you’re trying to divert attention away from the fact that you’re the biggest fucking dweeb in the world.
VENEREAL DISEASE
Register with a doctor. Like all the things we’re saying here, just be smart and don’t be scared of life. A wart on your penis or vagina can be cleared up in five minutes. Just next time be more careful. However, AIDS can be a bit more difficult to cure.
WIM WENDERS
You’re probably going to have to sit through one of his films during your time here.
XANAX
If you find an American exchange student, make friends with them. They will have Xanax. Also ask them about Oxycodone, Percocet or Vicodin (overrated). Google them. Erowid.org is a good resource for drugs information.
