(Special thanks goes to Donna Atkin, my former housemate, who suggested the title and is also largely included in the shenanigans that are included in the following article. Also special thanks go to Katie Russell, Emma Johnson, Sophie Gordine and Alison Meachin, for allowing me to publish details of our house exploits from our three years together. Thanks also to Alexa Hughes, Jacqueline Errington, Megan McCarter and James Allum, for also being involved in the events which follow. All of the details below are based on true events.)

(Please note that no students were permanently harmed during the events depicted in this article.) 

With 2012 marking the second year of being thrust into the frightening world of post-graduate life, I felt that it was a good time to fondly reflect back on those golden days of being a student. As I look back to a time when there were things that you could easily get away with on a daily basis, I discover that these things are in fact completely socially unacceptable out here in the real world! I have therefore compiled a list of some of these events, which could only have ever happened at uni.

 

You know you’re a student when…

  • You are about to leave on a night out, and one of your housemates comes in the back doors, rushing for the taxi, goes to shut the door behind her and the patio glass door simply continues sliding off the rails, until she is forced to lay it down on the garden. You know that you’re definitely a student when this doesn’t faze you in the slightest, and all six of you leave to go out anyway (what?! The taxi was waiting!!), and call the landlord on the way down to the Student Union so that he can fix the problem whilst you’re out.
  • You and two of your housemates decide to pop round the corner to the shop, in pyjamas of course, on a chocolate run. This is perfectly fine, until you realise that none of you brought a house key with you and all three of you are subsequently locked out. When the three of you get back, you then realise that you are going to have to knock at next door, in pyjamas, to ask if you can walk through their house, through their back garden, over their fence, and hope to God that your own back door is open…unfortunately seeing your next door neighbour’s dad in his dressing gown, with socks pulled up to his knees, is something that you never recover from…
  •  You make a rather colourful punch, using all of the alcohol left in the alcohol cupboard at the end of the year, in a large plastic mixing bowl.
  • You even HAVE a cupboard purely dedicated to alcohol!
  • You wake up in the middle of the night to your housemate hammering on your door, screeching that there’s something scrabbling at her door. You fall out of bed, stumble onto the landing, and discover your other housemate’s hamster, having escaped from the living room, and climbed all the way upstairs of his own accord, is sat there waiting to be fed!
  • Your housemate goes to answer the front door, wearing only her underwear, thinking that it is one of you having returned from lectures…and it isn’t; it’s the gardeners coming round to mow the lawn…
  • Your mum comes to visit, and naturally assumes, due to the sheer volume of mess, that you must be living with boys, when in actual fact, your student house consists of six girls…whoops!
  • One of your housemates, who is training to be a teacher, tries telling you that Amsterdam, Holland and Belgium are all in Southern France. The same housemate also entertains you by reading a kid’s picture book, entitled Pants.
  • You fall out with the safety bus driver on the way home from a night out at the Student Union, simply because he refuses to drive you to the kebab shop.
  • You end the evening by throwing up between your knees, in the middle of the street, outside Bar 3one, and everyone assumes that you are a first year…when in fact you are actually a fourth year!
  • You wake up in the morning, having no recollection of the night before, and it turns out that due to glandular fever and having not drunk for 6 weeks, you then mistakenly assume you can carry on drinking as you did before, get plastered on only a couple of drinks, get caught throwing up in the SU toilets, get thrown out, your student ID confiscated, and a written warning, via email, for unacceptable behaviour.
  • Your breakfast normally consists of leftover Dominos from the night before.
  • It is perfectly socially acceptable to drink Sainsburys Basics Cider in your student house garden from 1pm until 1am.
  • You spend a night at the SU in your pyjamas. Naturally.
  • Throwing up purple after a night at the SU playing touch cup becomes a rite of passage.
  • Your housemate tries to convince you that High School Musical could ACTUALLY happen.
  • Your other housemate thinks that it would be a good idea to play touch cup with half pints of rose wine on top of a Chinese takeaway…Note to students; this is NEVER a good idea!
  • You stand in the supermarket aisle comparing the prices of instant noodles.
  • You can only afford the toilet paper which feels like tracing paper.
  • You have the time to watch Friends on E4, not just once a day, but the daily repeats as well.
  • It is perfectly socially acceptable to go to the local corner shop, for emergency chocolate rations, in pyjamas and Ugg boots.
  • You wake up in the middle of the night feeling slightly queasy in a drunken stupor, know that you aren’t going to make it to the toilet in time, and so grab the nearest pint glass from your window sill to use as your vomitorium!
  • You have more caffeine in your system than blood.
  • A reduced item sweep around Sainsburys is the highlight of your day.
  • A game of strip poker becomes a standard Friday night.
  • Your ‘training to be a teacher housemate’ truly believes that lettuce is part of the ‘water’ food group, despite your valiant efforts to convince her otherwise.
  • Six-way spooning with your housemates is just standard practice.
  • You watch The 40 Year Old Virgin a million times and don’t get bored…and know all of the words to the entire film.
  • You shrink your clothes to doll size in the tumble drier.
  • One of your housemates steals all of your socks.
  • Dominos pizza becomes one of the main food groups.
  • Vodka begins to taste like water.
  • Your drunken housemate mistakes a scaffolding pole in the middle of the street as a pole dancing pole, giving the High Street a show they won’t ever forget!
  • You go out clubbing, and your housemate starts dancing with a guy dressed as a cow…this is considered relatively normal.
  • Your only male housemate leaves his jumper in a bowl of sick for a week, and then politely asks whether or not the jumper will be alright to wear again.
  • The taxi driver to the Student Union knows you and your five housemates all by first name.
  • You drunkenly mistake a rather large hamster for a guinea pig.
  • You are out drinking at the student union, and have an essay due in in 24 hours that you haven’t even started yet…
  • You almost lost consciousness at the mention of the word ‘dissertation.’
  • Everyone in your 9am lecture turns up either in their pyjamas, or the clothes that they were wearing the night before.
  • Your hangover cure is simply to continue drinking.
  • Your mum rings you, and you tell her that you DID go to your 9am lecture that morning, and that you were NOT out drinking last night…
  • Your life motto becomes ‘I’ll try anything once.’
  • You can’t remember the last time that you ate anything remotely resembling a vegetable.
  • The only thing left in your cupboard is pasta.
  • Your parents come to visit, and bring you a sympathy food shop, including REAL toilet roll!
  • You start stealing the pens and pencils from IKEA and Argos.
  • Poundland becomes too expensive.
  • You feel the need to steal the mugs from Starbucks.
  • Neither you nor your housemates are responsible enough to take a key out with you, assuming that your housemates will leave the door unlocked, so when you return to the student village and find your front door locked, two of your housemates nominate you (being the smallest) to climb through the even smaller kitchen window! They vault you up and shove you through with you ending up knocking down the jenga stack of shot glasses delicately balanced on the window sill!
  • You use any night out as an excuse to have a theme and dress up like idiots.
  • A vodka and orange becomes one of your five a day.
  • You don’t have any recollection to this day of the entire rugby team having seen you wandering naked around the student village, following a drunken game of strip poker that when badly wrong…

But above all, you know you’re a student when you find yourself living with people that you can’t ever remember being without.