Freshers' Week: The great equaliser

I’ve had a pretty typical freshers week. I’ve attended about a million welcome talks that go along the lines of “You’re the best. You’re going to have to work fucking hard. But YOLO!” I’ve spent days without a swipe card, struggling to tailgate into every building, because I’m avoiding the queue at the ID card office. I’ve signed up for dozens of mailing lists that I’m only going to unsubscribe from (if I ever figure out how), and woken up in a nest of leaflets with details of the available pastoral care, and even the times for the men’s rugby tryouts. Where did that even come from?! I worried way too much about what to wear on my first day that would convey that I had more important things to do than worry about what to wear (but show that I’m effortlessly cool anyway, of course). And then I berated myself the next day for not being bothered to wash my hair. I overslept on my second day, meaning that I probably missed something important, like finding out where I’m supposed to be. I met the people who I’m going to spend the next three years with, and tried to resist the urge to wrap my arms around them and whisper needily in their ear, “You’re stuck with me now, you have to be my friend!” Okay, that’s not (quite) true, but I have made a lot of slightly awkward, stilted conversation, and in nervous hysteria told a few too many stories that might have made me come across as a bit strange. I failed at cooking spaghetti, although that’s probably due to all the free beer I picked up somewhere along the way, and I displayed an embarrassing lack of public transport smarts by narrowly avoiding getting my bag dipped in a major station while I managed to make the automated ticket machine not sell me a travelcard. Hi, my name is Tessa, and I’m a first year PhD student. This is the beginning of my sixth year at Imperial. It turns out that no matter how together you had everything last week, things never change when it comes to starting something new.