Diary of a Fresher: May 30 2011

As the melancholy Jaques explained in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, we all play our parts in this enormous cyclical play called life. In our old age we simply revert back to being the helpless, puking creatures we were as infants.

I’m not one to criticise old Shakey, but strangely enough, a lot of people become puking creatures a lot sooner than in their old age – the end of exams at university being a prime example. Personally, before all the insanity of the summer started I honestly just wanted to sit down for five minutes, have a brew and maybe one night of sleep. Regardless of my plans, like many others, my first year has drawn to an end and I too have reverted back to living the life of a lazy first term Fresher with nothing but nothing to do.

To earn the right to be a disgusting slob wasn’t a walk in the park mind you. Third years will undoubtedly roll their eyes at this, but the first year was not quite the sloth-like existence that I had expected it to be. After handing in what feels like 4000 never-ending essays (which would have been significantly easier if it wasn’t for the infinite referencing) and exams that never seem to be close until you only have 20 minutes left to revise, my first year is finally over.

I sincerely feel for anyone who is reading this and still finds themselves in the dark, yet admittedly self-imposed, mire that is the exam period. It is an illness with very distinct symptoms. These include an unrelenting feeling that time is infinite and that there will be no escape. Interchanging delusions of grandeur and inferiority in comparison to everyone else on your degree, and a tendency to intellectualise everything including the cornflakes you have for breakfast.

In the time leading up to the exam, my flat felt more and more like the only place in the world. I was in my own version of the The Truman Show and my room’s window was just like that big box they kept him in. The great outdoors and its deliciously sweltering heat was a forbidden place. I tried revising medieval death-themed literature on the beach, I really did try. I’m sure you can imagine how effective it was.

My only salvations were the intensely exciting but nevertheless short-lived trips to The Co-op. These were for essential supplies, such as brain food and exam misery suppressants; mainly including Jelly Snakes and copious amounts of chocolate, preferably enclosed in brightly coloured packaging designed for children to remind me that there is a world outside one lit exclusively by a desk lamp.

Undergraduates aren’t alone in this. My brother just completed his PhD at UCL and was struck with a similar disease. Once a normal man with a girl friend and a life, he became obsessed with his compost bin and making unusually large amounts of stock out of various types of meat in the 6 month period it took him to blitz his thesis.

And now, I am free, he is free and hopefully soon you will be too. My only purpose in life now is to wait for the next vomit inducing episode of Made in Chelsea. What a sublime existence.