A letter to British Sixth Formers

It's that time of year again, the time of year that fills the heart of every Year 13 with dread. Who knew that four little letters could cause so much pain? 

UCAS. 

If you're currently dealing with personal statements, predicted grades, incessant 'pick me' emails from universities and endless six hour road trips to open days then you truly have my greatest sympathies. Don't worry, it's perfectly acceptable to be drowning your sorrows in Ben and Jerry's or Carling. Or both. 


On a daily basis my Twitter feed and Facebook homepage are filled with the complaints, stresses and uncertainties of A Level students; it's quite easy to see why some people are put off the idea of going to university altogether. 
I come from a town where going to university isn't necessarily the 'cool' thing to do. The vast majority of older people finished their education at 16 or 18 and walked straight into employment. Certainly not among everybody, but among some people the opinion 'There's no need, you can get a job without it, it's a waste of money' is vocalised fairly loudly. I'm lucky in that my parents have always been 100% supportive but I know that there are plenty of people out there who wouldn't necessarily do the same. Equally, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking that going to university is completely unaffordable; £27,000 plus living expenses is a very daunting number, enough to make grown men run crying to their mummies. 

All I say to Sixth Formers is this: please don't say no to university for the wrong reasons. 
University isn't for everybody: If you want to work in retail and a management apprenticeship at a major supermarket comes your way then of course, it would be stupid not to take it. If you want to work in theatre and you're offered the opportunity to audition for a West End production then take it. Do what makes you happy. If that presents itself as a job opportunity at 18 years old then grab it with both hands and run with it. 
But if you're sat in a Sixth Form or College common room wanting to learn more about your subject, wanting to move to a new city and wanting to meet people who are just as obsessed with volcanoes, or trigonometry, or Shakespeare as you are then apply to university! I can't stress this enough. Don't let money or an unconvinced parent put you off. Even before your 18th birthday you have complete power over your university application and student finance, as awkward as their website is, are more than willing to give money as well as your University Student Services and several charities. There is help available. 

I know UCAS is horrible, it is not a pleasant experience. Student Finance isn't exactly a walk in the park either and don't even get me started on A Levels but 
in 12 months time you will be convinced, wherever you end up, that your university  and city is wonderful, brilliant, fantastic and a hundred times better than anybody else's university ever. End of story. This is exactly what happened to me and I will now proceed to tell you why UEA is wonderful, brilliant, fantastic and a hundred times better than anybody else's university ever:

1) UEA Bunnies: Campus wildlife is kind of a given when you look at how much green space there is on campus. Every night there are hundreds of bunnies running around some of whom will come up and sit right next to the steps to your flat! Apparently if you catch one and take it to the SU Bar you get free drinks for life. (Not too sure on that one myself; I think you're more likely to get wee'd on and not a nice visit from campus security) 
2) Last week my lecture on the Black Death was given in Middle English by a puppet rat. Best lesson that I've ever had. 
3) Pimp my Barrow: An event held every June. Get a group of people together. Get a wheelbarrow. Dress the wheelbarrow and team members in accordance with your chosen theme. Sit in the wheelbarrow with a bucket. Wheel yourself around Norwich trying to collect as much money for charity as possible in said bucket. Finish by going to the pub. 
4) Hot Chip: Best chips I've ever tasted. The chips and gravy are to die for and only £2 a pop. 
5) The lake is probably the most overly Instgram-ed place in existence; a crime of which I am guilty. But come on! A lake! On campus! A lake! On an inner city campus! (Insert cliche lake picture here)  

6) Last but not least, my love letter to the LCR. Nick Rayns LCR, University of East Anglia, Norwich. It was a cold day in September when you first welcomed me with open arms. With your £1.65 drinks and Rudimental's 'Feel the Love' on repeat I always find it difficult to pull myself away from you.(Although that may be because my feet have been stuck to the floor with spilled Stella and sweat) I love you LCR. I love your fancy dress Tuesdays. I love your comfy sofas outside when your shoes are starting to hurt. I love your cheap drinks. I love your gigs. 
I love your student rate gig tickets! LCR, if you were a human, I'd marry you.  

'I LEFT ALL OF YOU ANNOYING, SLOW PEOPLE BEHIND! WHY ARE YOU STILL INCONVENIENCING ME!?': Freshers Surprises

There are certain things that everybody tells you to expect before you go to university. You can't seriously tell me that you're surprised by the 5am fire alarm, there not being enough room in the fridge and the fact that everybody screams 'BIIIIIIRRRRMINGHUMMM' every time that you open your mouth? (That second one may have been slightly more appropriate for those friends from home. WOO! MIDLANDS FOREVER! YEAH!)
Despite the screaming stereotypes surrounding me there have actually been several surprises:

Not all ovens are created equal 

Nothing will work in the same way that it does at home. Absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. The worst 'how in the name of Benedict Cumberbatch does this work?!' appliance seems to universally at UEA be the ovens. Or as they're more commonly called 'the don't talk to me about the oven' ovens. Ovens is probably a bit of an overstatement actually, they're just glorified microwaves, the only thing that they make perfectly is crispy chips. (I think I said 'ovens' far too much and it's started to sound weird. Ovens? Ovens)

Whether it's the washing machines, the ovens, the irons or the printers absolutely nothing works in the way that you want it to and flats are just full of people taking frustrated shortcuts: washing laundry in the sink, ironing their t-shirt with their hair straighteners or letting out a communal scream of kitchen frustration and giving in and ordering a ridiculous amount of half price Dominos pizza. Pizza brings me quite nicely on to my next point (ooh, very writer-ish, links and everything!)

Everybody loves you now that you're a Fresher

I HAVE VOUCHERS FOR EVERYTHING AND IT IS FANTASTIC! Everybody wants your money. Literally everybody. They don't even want all of your money, they want a small amount of your money and want to give you everything in return for it! Dominos become your best friend, they've already been to the uni twice giving out free pizza and are doing the same again on Saturday. There's buy one get one free on everything, I've got a haircut for a tenner, the shopping centre are having a 40% off night. It's almost like they think that you've come into some money recently..oh, wait a minute...

(Tip for any future freshers: Don't do what the guy in the next door building did and go and spend your entire student loan on a Mac on the very same day that you get the money through. You will be living on beans and bread for the rest of the year. End of. No questions asked.)

No matter how hard you try you will definitely be a complete idiot

Everybody does it at least once, just man up and accept the fact that you are going to make a complete and utter gnome-head of yourself. My idiot moment? Hand washing my red velvet shorts and then leaving them to dry in my bathroom for an hour and a half while I went to my lecture. I came back and quite innocently went to go for a wee in my own bathroom. Oh my god. It looked like somebody had been murdered in there. The floor was red. The sink was red. The shower floor was red. The wall underneath the shorts was red. My toilet rolls were red. My pants that I was also hanging out to dry were red. Everything was dyed bright red in a shiny, white bathroom suite. 

I'd now like to take this opportunity to refer you back to the pants. Yeah, the pants that I was drying next to the red shorts. My panicked brain thought that a good alternative to bathroom drying would be to hang my damp undergarments from the handle of my closed window. *Big red buzzer sound* Nope! Zero points for you! The window wasn't completely shut and flung open as soon as I'd turned around sending my pants tumbling two storeys to the ground. Luckily the only person outside was a slightly bemused looking Chinese student. Think that I recovered that one pretty well. Class and dignity at all times. 

What did I learn from this incident? Just suck it up and pay the £4 for the laundry room. 

Getting unjustifiably annoyed at tiny things from home

This probably isn't true of people who have moved from one city environment into another but it has really surprised me how quickly I've adapted to a more urban way of life: 24 hour buses, 3 supermarkets all within walking distance, taxis for less than a fiver and a hospital just down the road is massively different from the place in which I grew up. I was so happy to leave BoringMcSlowsVille behind and move to a place where the average age is lower than 87 and people have more to talk about than Mrs Jeffrey's cat and how marvellous Nigel Farrage is. 
At the beginning of my second week I was tasked with quite a normal activity: in order to register at the Norwich GP Surgery I had to have the dates of the vaccinations I received as a baby. This should be pretty simple information to retrieve, right? WRONG! I called up my doctor's surgery from home and they were closed for lunch. CLOSED FOR LUNCH! People still get ill over lunch time! People don't think, 'Ooh, the nurses will still be eating their sandwiches, I'll hold off on my heart attack for 20 minutes'. The rage that I felt as a result of this one answer machine message was probably unjustified but it was just a reminder of the slow, nothing to do and all day to do it in attitude from home that had made me so desperate to leave. I should probably point out that I've never had a problem with my doctors surgery, I've always been seen when I've needed to be seen and the doctors are really good. If anything, I wish that this had been a phone call to the post office instead, that place always leaves me in a murderous state of mind. I'm sorry doctors, it's not you, it's me, please forgive me. 
I'm not proud of what happened next; I screamed down the phone 'I LEFT ALL OF YOU ANNOYING, SLOW PEOPLE BEHIND! I'M LIVING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY, WE MAY AS WELL BE ON A DIFFERENT LAND MASS WHY ARE YOU STILL INCONVENIENCING ME?!' Little did I realise that this was all being recorded on the answer phone...All I can say is thank god for the little voice at the end: 'Are you sure you want to leave this as your voicemail? Press 1 for yes or 2 for no.' Never have I ever pressed 2 so quickly in my whole life. 

University is the ideal time to perfect your business and invention skills

You may have never considered a career in business or invention in your whole life however university may be the time when you come to reconsider those life choices. Okay, the window laundry drying system may not have been a complete success but the blu-tac door stop has worked pretty well and you'd be amazed at the fancy dress looks that you can create with an eyeliner and a white t shirt.  My business skills have reached another level! Yesterday I paid a guy a with a packet of custard creams so that I could borrow his USB to set up my printer. (Yeah, I can set up printers now. Just call me a technological genius.) Who needs money when you have biscuits and baked beans? Everybody is really bad at something that somebody else, somewhere on campus, is really good at, all that you need to do is ask them their favourite food stuff and BAM! You've got yourself a trade off! 

Freshers hype is just really unnecessary...

Don't come to university with Freshers expectations of sex every night and drinking shots out of a girl's belly button. It just won't happen. 

It will just be a really fun time. You meet loads of new people all of whom are as scared witless as you are and it's just a good time! Just try and make friends! If you meet somebody then fair enough, but the worst thing that you can do is be that creepy person hitting on everything at the SU with a pulse. Oh, wait, no, the worst thing is the weird second years hanging around fresher's parties looking for 'fresh meat'. Really? Come on? Did everybody in your year hate you so much that you've had to find new people to freak out?

Admittedly there has been some stupid stuff, some annoying stuff and some downright ridiculous stuff happen to me in my first couple of weeks at uni, but I can't really deny it....Freshers was really good fun.