20 Things to Do Before You Go to University

2012-09-14 05:12 PMStudent Life

So you got the grades you wanted and you’re heading to university in September. Congratulations! However, before you leave home and start your new life as a penniless student, there are a few things you should do…

“BANTER!!!”

1. Put all your clothes in the wash and wipe away a tear as you watch your mum slave over your laundry for one last time.

2. Develop a bunch of outrageous new handshakes to use when introducing yourself during freshers’ week. Give each one an inventive name, such as The Peanut Butterer, The High Five and a Half, No More Knuckles or The Moisty.

3. Start pronouncing it “Ooooh-nay-verse-it-tay”. Maybe it will catch on.

4. Learn to cook one thing and one thing only: Beef Wellington.

5. Build up a tolerance to necking watered-down lager whilst having the word “banter” shouted at you from point-blank range by a bunch of “top lads”.

6. Purchase a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. You don’t want to be the only person in your shared flat without one. They might single you out and gang up on you.

7. Learn to play some terrible guitar-based pop songs on your acoustic guitar. If you play some of Ed Sheeran’s abominations, the girls in your halls will think you’re “like soooo sensitive and deep”.

8. Spread vicious rumours on your university’s freshers’ Facebook fanpage: “Apparently there’s only one shower per 200 students”, “If you don’t get drunk, you are no-one”, “Last year, one fresher didn’t make any friends, descended into depression and was found on the roof of the Students’ Union, overdosing on packs of 135g packs of raw Hartley’s jelly.”

9. Acclimatise yourself to university life by being anal about people using your milk.

10. Come up with a nickname that you’d like your new friends to call you. “Hey! Nice to meet you. My name’s Chris, but everyone calls me Funbags.”

11. Read one of the books off your reading list. Have a mild panic attack when you realise you don’t understand a word of it.

12. Alternatively, read all of the books on your reading list and “wow” your fellow students by quoting extensively from them. They’ll love you.

13. Curl up in a little nest of shredded school leaver hoodies and cuddly animals and weep about the passing of your childhood.

14. Have one last “lads holiday” with your mates. Forget going to Faliraki, Ayia Napa or San Antonio, though. Head to Bridlington. Crazy golf and cream teas have never been like so ironic, yeah?

15. Pick the three friends you will actually stay in contact with. Be brutal. The ones who don’t make the cut will thank you later.

16. Grow a moustache or procure a collection of hats so you can easily be identified at university as “the hat man” or “that guy with the moustache”. Classic.

17. Cultivate a Glaswegian accent. If you’re Glaswegian, cultivate a Laaandannn accent, guvnor!

18. Make sure people will immediately know you’ve just got back from your gap year by getting a spray tan, stocking up on crappy beaded bracelets and preparing a range of mind-numbingly boring stories about how wasted you were in Ha Long Bay.

19. Embark on a journey with your friends along the railroad tracks near your hometown to find a dead body. Pretend you are River Phoenix.

20. Buy a morph suit. Drink, eat, p*** through it. You. Are. Epic.

Disclaimer: Ignore all of the above. This is terrible advice. But you knew that already, because you’re not a complete idiot.

Image courtesy of N Bartlett, ‘Al, Dan and Gill’