Freshers: Welcome to York
Freshers’ Week is upon us and for newcomers to York, there is so much to find out and so little time. Don’t worry though: from making friends with your flatmates to swimming in the lake, second year Nicky Woolf has all the answers (or so he thinks).
I feel very old indeed. The campus is quiet, for the moment, but there is a sense of foreboding, a sense of a gathering storm. On Sunday the October 7 this storm will break, and two and a half thousand young adults will rain down on the already-strained concrete of this frail University. In fact, by the time you are reading this it will already have happened. Like floods after a monsoon, you freshers will have poured in drunken rivulets from college to bar, from bar to club and – in all probability, as water will flow down until it collects – from club into the waiting embrace of the lake.
Which brings me to my first piece of advice. If you can possibly help it, and if you haven’t already, don’t swim in the lake. Let me qualify that. If your honour is honestly at stake, swim it. It makes for a good story to tell the grandkids, assuming the pollutive experience hasn’t rendered you chemically unable to reproduce. But remember that it is only two feet deep (people have broken ankles jumping in from the bridges) and almost entirely composed of germs, excrement and broken bicycles.
There is no Mini in there, no matter what anyone tells you. It isn’t deep enough. But there is a murder-weapon in there somewhere. Dr. Elizabeth Howe, a visiting Oxford don, was stabbed to death in a Wentworth (now Goodricke D block) bedroom in 1990. The knife was, police say, cast into the murky depths of the lake and never recovered.
As a fresher, you’re probably going to get a lot of advice and be told a lot of stories in the coming weeks by us old-timers. Some of it will doubtless be sage. Some of it will doubtless be inaccurate, alcohol-fuelled, immoral, uncool or illegal, or some unholy combination of the above. I am going to do my level best to tell you what I got told in my Freshers’ Week that stuck, and some of the stuff that didn’t. Don’t try to catch the ducks or geese. They are faster, more agile, more intelligent and almost definitely less intoxicated than you are. They can also fly. The odds are stacked against you.
‘The geese are faster, more agile, more intelligent and almost definitely less intoxicated than you are. They can also fly. The odds are stacked against you’
The University’s official policy – and this is 100% true – is that if you kill a fellow student you are allowed back to study once you have completed your allocated custodial sentence, but if you kill a duck you are banned for life. Rumours of duck-eating in Langwith are, I’m reliably informed, entirely unfounded.
The swans, too, are beautiful, serene, peaceful creatures, majestic in their snowy finery as they cruise upon the placid surface of the lake. If you approach one from behind while he sleeps, ever-so-softly, ever-so-quietly, ever-so-gently, closer and closer, hand outstretched in cautious curiosity – you will get your arm broken and your eyes pecked out. Best to let them alone, really.
Alcohol is not always your friend. An acquaintance of mine is known to have drunk some spectacular quantity of alcohol on his very first night at York, rendering him unconscious in a corridor early in the evening. A little while later, as his new-found friends conscientiously checked on his well-being, he was found to have suffered an extremely unpleasant accident. He has, I am told, been known as “Spongebob Shitpants” ever since.
Another fresher last year, a friend of mine informs me, lost his entire student loan at online poker during the first two weeks, and was forced to drop out of university before the term had even begun. Money is an important consideration, in fact. York’s Freshers’ Week is not the cheapest few days you will ever experience. Quite apart from the price of alcohol, taxis, food and other essentials, there’s the price of the events to think about. And t-shirts. And online poker. Be prepared for your bank account to take quite a hit. Ultimately, though, it is worth it, even if it means pot noodle on toast for a few months afterwards.
Asking around, I find that the most common piece of advice for freshers is to just go out and knock on doors. Meet people, as many people you can. For God’s sake don’t be put off if the first person you meet is a complete twathandle. That’s very important. Quite often, in any university, you’ll meet these people. Just smile and nod, and they will go away. We’re not all like that. Nobody likes everyone they meet.
A friend of mine tells me of someone she knows who, out of shyness, spent their entire first two weeks in their room playing Xbox. He now wishes fervently that someone had come along and just dragged him out to meet people when he’d had the chance.
This is crucially important. Freshers’ week is like being five again. When you’re five, making friends is easy. “You live on my street! Let’s be best friends!” or “You have a purple bicycle! Mine’s green!?Let’s be best friends!” Everything is simple. Every sentence ends with an exclamation mark. After that, things become more difficult for a number of years, until suddenly Freshers’ Week arrives and the old simplicity, and the exclamation marks, return. “You live on my corridor! Let’s be best friends!” is a real and viable, if perhaps a slightly over-enthusiastic approach.
“I?am so drunk! So are you! Let’s be best friends!” a very possible, and common, alternative. Whatever you’re doing, whether you’re recovering from a heavy night out with a coffee, taking out the bins or queuing for the sexual health clinic, just talk to whoever’s near you and get to know them.
On second thoughts, you don’t strictly have to do that in the queue for the sexual health clinic. But everywhere else, just open up to people and they will most likely open up to you, or at least tell you at length about their hangovers. It’s disturbing how quickly that changes. Everyone swiftly finds a niche or two in which they are likely to spend the rest of their university careers. It’s very different from school, where most of your friends are your friends because you grew up together. At university, your friends are your friends because you are genuinely similar people.
The best way to make friends like that is to do something. Get involved somewhere. Join a team, if sport’s your thing. Join the newspaper if you like writing. Join the radio if you like talking. Join the Medieval Recreation Society if you like wenches and have a beard and your own axe. I cannot imagine coming to university and not doing something.
Because, and it sounds blasphemous I know, drinking can get… old after a little while. I know, I know, it sounds unlikely now. But it will. One of my housemates, Smally, (the name is ironic) is on the rugby team, and that consumes his life. He prepares mentally and physically for the matches, and drinks – a lot – afterwards with his team-mates. But it isn’t aimless drinking, it is society drinking, with tactics to talk and a unity of purpose bonding the group.
Another housemate, Remi, is on the football team. A friend of mine, James, started a political society. Another is editor of the campus fashion magazine. Yet another has a radio show. It is almost like a microcosm of real life. Everyone has a job, everyone has things to do. There are bars, there are newspapers, there are celebrities. There are traditions and legends. There are successes and failures. It’s like a training camp for real life, Legoland for 18-24-year-olds.
Yes, you’re here to do your degree but as often as not it’s what else you do that defines what you do afterwards. Student politicians go into politics. Student journalists go into journalism. Student actors go into acting, student musicians start a band, student Deloitte reps end up working for Deloitte.
Find somewhere. There are niches everywhere. You’ll definitely like one. And if not, don’t worry – you can always concentrate on your degree instead…
Claire Hollingbery
According to the Times article. Elizabeth Howe was an Oxford graduate but taught for OU. Also she was murdered 1992.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=195994§ioncode=26