It’s your last chance to…
After years of frequenting the library and Ziggy’s, post-degree life can seem daunting. Rachel Ringstead looks at how to get the most out of your last few days at university, and ease into real life
There are many things that a person should do when they finish their degree. However, once the basics have been covered (such as washing one’s hair and nervously rehearsing the art of social engagement in the mirror), most students opt for the obvious, and embrace their inner ‘club rep’ by funnelling yards of ale, gyrating/urinating against first years and forgetting everything that they have ever learned.
Yet, while killing off brain cells is vital to the post-finals recovery programme, it would be a shame to let the precious sands of university time simply slip away through one long bender. After all, however hard the newly graduated strive to reclaim that hedonistic ‘fresher feeling’, it is never quite the same, as nostalgia taints all experience. Along with drunken exchanges of emotion – “I love you man! You made ‘Politics B’ for me”, every mundane act becomes imbued with new meaning: “This is my last ever chat with the fit second year”, “the last time I get cake from Roger Kirk”, “the last time I go through the library doors…”
Along with drunken exchanges of emotion, “I love you man! You made ‘Politics B’ for me”, every mundane act becomes imbued with new meaning
This cheesy finalist sentimentality can descend from tears of woe into regret. However, while it really is too late to study English and Writing and Performance instead of Chemistry, or run for SU president, the world still remains decidedly oyster shaped and open to opportunity, even as the university body clock continues to tick.
To start with, there is still time to start your own society. Not only will you leave behind an immortal personal legacy and actually have some ‘transferable skills’ to list on your CV, but by embezzling the SU grant you will be nicely set up with a graduate nest egg. The new society could be founded simply in honour of your own greatness, or if this smacks a little too much of self-aggrandisement, perhaps invent new extreme sports such as ‘flame fart soc,’ or trend-spot popular culture with ‘Dan Brown Soc’ - for people belonging to the bloodline of Jesus of course. If you do actually desire to top up your CV with real skills, you could consider more sensible options such as completing a finalist Illiad course, an intensive language course or learning first aid.
Equipped with the financial clout and responsibility that goes with being ‘society chairperson’, you will now be in an apt position to foster a new ‘busy and important’ graduate identity. This is vital for dealing with the inevitable questions concerning your impending future, which are next in line for irritability to “how did your exams go?” If you in fact lack any plans, direction or ambition, it is probably best to lie: “I’m aiming to go into organised crime” may get people off your back, while “I’ll be busy dividing my time between New York and Tokyo as the Hedge Fund manager of the investment bank that I created through the York Award,” will also silence onlookers into awe and envy. Perception is reality, kids.
Indeed, taking the piss, rather than wallowing in fear and nostalgia, seems a rather more effective coping device for leaving the comfort zone of York. After all you are only finishing university - no one died.
Playing practical jokes on those with less free time than you is a truly distracting source of amusement. Perhaps fashion a genius poking device, or glue pound coins to the floor. This, of course, will make you widely disliked, however who cares if you are popular now? While you once had a reputation to protect, it is now the perfect time to emerge from relative anonymity to become a big name. Create short lived campus celebrity by courting controversy and sensation at any opportunity: streaking, impersonating figures of authority, seducing tutors, re-enacting ‘Lost’ scenes on the shores of the lake. No publicity is bad publicity if it gets your name out there.
However, if being infamous is not your thing, you should at least ensure that you quietly get your money’s worth of university resources. For instance, this is the last time that anyone vaguely professional will listen to you moan for free. Book yourself an appointment with a university counsellor or welfare rep to get that long bottled up middle child persecution complex off your chest, or analyse your curious fear of hobbits.
Create short-lived campus celebrity by courting controversy and sensation at any opportunity
If the mood takes you, you could also tag along to the lectures of other subject disciplines and grill the lecturers at the end with impossible questions about pretend post-war Italian films. Now they have had their pay rise, it’s time they did some bloody work.
Furthermore, don’t let the University steal anymore of your money. Ensure you have fully used up all of the remaining money on your library photocopying card by xeroxing your arse and determinedly exhaust your print credit, even if it means drawing your own obscene stupid smiley faced images and printing them pathologically. So what if you offend environment soc., your campaign against university meanness is far more important.
Once you have made the most of the opportunities on campus, it is necessary to exhaust York. If, in the future, people find out that you once lived in this historic city, but failed to visit the Jorvik centre, have high tea at Betty’s, or go inside the Minster, you will be regarded as a pagan. Thus a day of tagging along to a coach trip is very necessary.
However if you have lived the cultural high life but failed to ever, a) eat a kebab, b) steal a traffic cone, or c) dress up as a ‘sexy bunny/doctor/nurse’ à la hen night, you are clearly not an authentic student, so it is time to get seriously vulgar.
Hopefully, by the time that all of the above have been achieved, you will be so tired and full of shame and self-loathing, that the prospect of leaving university will seem a welcome prospect. This, of course will be a sad feeling, but it will be far easier than having to say goodbye to York when you are still in love with it.
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