Parties and pizza box furniture
A year on York’s claustrophobic campus is enough for most students who eagerly await moving into a house of their own. Toby Green examines this rite of passage
Moving off campus is almost like starting university all over again. After finally getting used to the concrete monstrosities and enjoying the brief summer moments, when campus becomes sunny and you can get a tan amongst the duck shit, it’s time for first years to consider the implications of their approaching shift into the real world. Will I stay in touch with people I’m not sharing a house with? Will I get a brick through my window courtesy of student-hating civilians? And, most importantly, (especially if you’re a BA student) will I ever have the motivation to make the 20 minute walk to the library and do some actual work? However, these worries should be put to one side; forget cleaners, Costcutter and campus events, becoming a resident of York is where the real adventure of university begins.
Your main preoccupation as your mind starts to turn towards the big move is the house itself. For most students the location and surrounding area of their new quarters will be a mystery, unless you happen to be living on Micklegate or along the No. 4 bus route. You may have heard rumours of exotic places such as Fulford and Walmgate, but unless you are intimately acquainted with a 2nd or 3rd year, the thrill of exploring past the army base will match the moment when you discovered Brown’s sandwiches as a viable rival to a Your:Shop Meal Deal.
In reality, far from being the hood of York, Tang Hall is just really ugly. Garish houses decked out in England flags and kids riding bikes after 8pm appear the only identifiable signs of social delinquency in this ‘ghetto’. If this is York’s roughest area then its no surprise the York Press are up in arms when a couple of bricks get light-heartedly thrown at a bus every now and then. I mean, come on, Tang Hall even has a Co-op!
After you’ve discovered the location of your abode and got over the shock of finding you’ll live near a shop that will sell you fresh fruit and veg, you’ll have to start thinking about how you will deck out your house. You’ll have decided how yours will avoid all the stereotypes: the PlayStations, the pizza boxes and the beer cans. Let me give you one piece of advice: this will not happen. Whatever your grand plans, give them up. Seriously. Because once you move in and rediscover the joy of mixing a sofa with a TV, your plans for a suave and classy abode disappear. Last year, my fellow housemates and I wanted a multi-screen, multi-room wireless entertainment network through which it would be possible to enjoy music and films whilst making your pizza or taking a piss. We (like the trendy and ‘wacky’ students we are) were going to have a shisha pipe and even traditional Moroccan wood carvings on the wall (ok, the last one’s a lie, but you get what I mean).
What have we ended up with? A dodgy wireless internet connection and a TV in the garage with a few sheets tacked onto the ceiling. And guess what? It suits us just fine. One request however: please, for the sake of the most basic standards of interior decor, refrain from putting girly posters up in your sitting room. You don’t have instantly to point out to your landlord what a moron you are.
Oh yes, the landlord. How this turns out is pure luck. You could end up with a landlord like mine who has popped round once to mow the lawn (which, to be fair, was up to my waist), or you could end up like my friend, who is being sued by his landlord after a few late nights too many. However, either way, it’s always good to stay on his or her good side. Even more important are your new layman neighbours. It’s well known that on campus the porters and cleaners are the most important people to have on your side. Well, off-campus those that you share a wall with are the equivalent. They are the ones who’ll let you know when bin day is, who will pick up 9am parcels when you’ve been in Ziggy’s the night before and who, with a bit of charm, will turn a blind eye to parties every now and then.
Your neighbours’ most important asset, and the most refreshing part of living off campus, is simply that they are normal people. They have jobs. They have lives that don’t revolve around essay deadlines. Their mood doesn’t depend on whether they have an approaching exam. Now I’m not going to lie to you: I’m not the biggest fan of students. Obviously this has no real basis or justification, it’s just a general prejudice in the same way some people don’t like the French or vegetarians. Students are lazy, they smell and they are surprisingly snobby (I hark back to the description of Tang Hall as being full of “chavs”, the catch-all-term used by the middle class to describe those poorer and stupider than themselves). Yes, I’m sure I hold all these qualities myself, but I’m happy with my hypocritical unfounded views. So that is why it’s so refreshing living somewhere where you’re not a student 24-7, where you see other people (apart from the taxi driver who takes you to Micklegate and back again) who aren’t lecturers or fellow students.
Not only do you get to meet and interact with York residents, you’re forced to explore the city itself. And this doesn’t just mean the centre, although you do spend a lot more time there once you’ve escaped campus, but the other areas as well. You’ll find parks, grocers and even one day stumble across the physical location of Efe’s. You’ll actually feel part of York the city, rather than York the university, and it’s a lot more exciting.
There are downsides to living in your own house. The bills can often be shockingly high, and you seem to learn a lot more about your housemates than you did whilst on campus. I will never get over the shock of settling down for breakfast one morning in front of the TV, and having my cornflakes interrupted by the sound of my housemate and his girlfriend enjoying a morning quickie. Yet even this sort of psychological scarring (cereal will never hold the same pleasure for me) cannot mar the freedom that living in your own house offers.
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