Enough damn advice already!
Freshers’ Flu is a real phenomenon. What I have found really makes Freshers sick, however, is advice
Before you get any further, I feel you should know that writing these things isn’t as easy as it looks. That’s partly because you don’t actually see us writing them, but mainly because, unlike columnists at the Guardian who write for everybody who counts, and those at the Sun who write for everybody who can’t, we have no idea what sort of crowd we’re writing for.
Where are you from? What is your name? What are you here to study? Are you still reading this seemingly endless list of questions? These are all questions I’d love to be able to answer but at the moment I’m as much in the dark as it’s possible to be with the light actually on.
By far the more serious problem facing me is that I’m supposed to address your concerns without knowing any of the above (which are clearly, as I’m sure you’ll agree, prerequisites for the formulation of any coherent, practical suggestions). What is one supposed to do? I could always go to the college’s statistics database and attempt to write a piece tailor-made for the average student, but seeing as they would end up being 1/4 female and 3/4 other, I have a feeling I’d be just as much at a loss.
The best I can hope to do is try to answer some of the more obvious questions that might be spinning around the partially-loaded revolver of your mind in our mutual game of Russian roulette.
These might include: Is this the sort of dreck that passes for a student newspaper these days? Does Freshers’ Flu really exist or is it a myth, like David Cameron’s Big Society and Jeremy Clarkson’s penis? Do I really need to work for a hedge fund in order to get a well-paid job? What’s a hedge fund? What’s a well-paid job? And who is this prick with the questions anyway?
Most of those questions have fairly self-evident answers. But one that may surprise you is that yes, Freshers’ Flu does exist. Though you will probably escape unscathed, the true victims will be the seniors in your hall of residence who, in a desperate attempt to prove that they are still young, will get violently drunk, be violently sick, and violently dance about in the November chills without the fleece sweater you so assiduously promised your mother that you would wear.
What I have found really makes Freshers sick, however, is advice. And if you have a sensitivity to it, then my advice is to pile on the medication before you reach the end of this sentence and realise that you’ve already been infected.
It just can’t be helped. Your parents will by now have offered you so much advice it’ll seem like they’ve been buying up global fortune cookie stocks in the event that budget cuts cause a drastic shortage in Chinese restaurants.
Even friends who, by an accident of parental arousal, made it to university a year or two before you, will like nothing better than to feed you horror stories, interspersed, of course, with legends of their quasi-Arthurian chivalry and valour. All the while, student newspaper columnists who don’t know you will feel perfectly comfortable pontificating at you from within these very pages.
There’s simply no escape. A powdery snowstorm of advice is blowing all around you, and you have no choice but to pull on your fleece sweater and charge through it.
And what to do about it? Listen to it? Ignore it? Make little snowballs and throw it back in our faces?
Do whatever you want. Enjoy yourselves, be considerate towards each other, and take every opportunity that comes your way. If you’re not sure how best to do that - well, you know who to turn to.
