Uncle Rory’s Freshers Week Tips

You’ll be hearing this a lot this week but things were quite different back in my day. My day was 2008- Metric was a box called DB’s, Southside and Eastside were building sites, Facebook was a new thing and Justin Bieber was still an embryo. It was amazing. But as you prepare for the modern freshers’ week with your smartphones and status updates and hip-hop music and all that, there is one thing you will face that all freshers have faced since the first freshers guzzled WKD from a hollowed out wooly mammoth tooth; social interaction. Social interaction is a terrible thing and the less of it, the better. I think we all agree on this. In fact, much of human existence is spent minimising the horrors of interacting with other Homo Sapiens, as demonstrated by the inventions of walls, monasteries, earphones and science degrees. But for the next 7 days you will be forced, cajoled and conned into interacting with The Other. Having now looked on in horror at not one but four Freshers’ Weeks, here’s my guide to How Not To Make A Complete Idiot Of Yourself.

Don’t Buy A Kettle For some reason everyone is told to bring a kettle with them to university so you can give out tea and make your neighbours love you. Don’t. Just don’t. I don’t like tea and my Northern Irish accent makes me pronounce “kettle” in a way that makes English people laugh at me. Obviously this only applies to me and not necessarily to your new neighbours but my physics degree didn’t teach me to empathise so just leave that kettle at home.

Don’t Leave Your Door Open Again, everyone seems to be told to leave their door open so new neighbours can just pop in to say hello and share stories and eat cupcakes. No. People cannot be trusted and will likely steal your stuff. Also they will laugh at that Final Fantasy poster I have. I mean you have.

Don’t Become A Lad Congratulations, you’ve just left your expensive private school and have now met the first state educated person of your life. This does not entitle you to put on an inexplicable East London accent, call people “mate” and refer to your awful conversation as “banter” or worse, “ban’ah”.

Don’t Give A Damn And Just Have Fun Imperial is really bloody hard work. Nothing you’ve done so far will prepare you for this. I went from averaging 98% across my A Levels to scraping 60% here. Imagine being repeatedly and viciously beaten around the head by a thick metal bar. That bar represents knowledge and the sick bastard wielding it is this university. This is what your next 3-4 years will entail. Imperial will now spend two weeks wiping the blood and tears of last year’s students from that metal bar. Take advantage of the lull. Talk to strangers. Take shots from a cereal bowl. Join every club and society. Don’t sleep. Steal a traffic cone. Buy a top hat. Take one step inside an embassy and revel in the thrill of having one leg in Britain and the other in Yemen. Return the traffic cone out of social responsibility.

The world is your oyster. For two weeks. And then that oyster will be cracked open and swallowed whole, sliding slowly but inexorably down the gullet of this prestigious institution. Enjoy it while you can.