Saturday, June 04, 2005

One Year

I've been at university for one academic year now, strange that. Its one of the one of the weirder realisations that comes with finishing the last exam (the others mostly involving the amount of alcohol that you plan to imbibe) and has got me wondering about things, and, you know... stuff.

I was trying to come up with a list of what things I have learned this year. There is the obvious academic stuff like how to fake references, how to make it look like you've read a book you have never even seen and of course secret and arcane knowledge available only to the enlightened such as the location of the history office or what a room number like RXQ207.34A-B means.

However it is the other things, the side effects of having to live on your own and make your way in the world that I am more interested in writing about today. When you get to university you don't realise just how little you know; the most apparently obvious things can come as a great shock to you. For example what a spin dryer looks like; my lack of knowledge in that regard caused many months of damp clothes and stinkyness.

Other things I have learned (in no particular order):

The drinking activities at university are organised with military efficiency, especially during fresher's week

...But the academic departments couldn't run a bath and with most of the subjects the entire department is run by a single part-time secretary.

Ducks are surprisingly violent animals

Americans are fun and they aren't nearly as annoying as you've been led to believe

They do, however, believe that we all have appaling teeth. (not entirely unjustified)

Matt has Gay eyebrows

Rugby players are the same everywhere. You have to use pictures, big writing and colourful diagrams to explain to them how to use doors, urinals, pens, etc...

Bunnies are fun and the ones born on campus have even less fear of humans than london pidgeons

The vast majority of student bands are really, appalingly bad and the music played on campus is a eclectic range of everything from The Libertines to Razorlight

Whitstable is a nice place although walking back across the countryside at night will give you the screaming heebie jeebies

If you look at the statue thingy on the hill outside keynes college from the side it looks like a gigantic penis

I can't think of anything else right now and what I've already written is rubbish so I think I'd better shut up and go and do my laundry.

- Ben