Freshers Frenzy | CULTURE

It’s your first day here and everything just seems so exciting! Sure, they gave you the wrong key at first, and your kitchen looks a little grim, but still. Everyone’s so amazingly friendly! All the older students are so confident and good at helping the new kids out –will you be like that too someday?!– and your flatmates are so funny and sweet. It’s your first time living away from home, but who cares? There’s so much new stuff to do, so many new people to meet, you don’t even have time to be homesick!

(Except for when your flatmate starts talking about going home for her mum’s birthday in a couple weeks. You will only get to see your parents twice a year now: plane tickets cost too much to just stop by for a weekend. Twice a year for the next four years– and, well, you had been planning to find a job here after graduation. Twice a year for the next four years, and maybe for the next forty? You shiver.)

Plus, everyone you sit next to could be your new best friend! They’re all eager to talk; even when your opening line could use some work –So, the lecture theatre seems a little less crowded today, huh..?– the people sitting next to you respond with enthusiasm. Everyone knows exactly how you feel after all: everyone else is new too. That guy next to you? Maybe you’ll never talk to him again, and maybe you’ll move into the same flat next year. Your stomach is full of somersaulting, barrel-rolling, bungee jumping butterflies: equal parts social anxiety, uncertainty, and hope. Every day feels special.

(There’s seven of you at the pub table. The girl next to you is desperately trying to keep up the conversation with the person across from her, but the other is too shy? too out of it? to respond. Your other three neighbours are laughing together, oblivious. You feel like you should help the girl out — oh God she’s moved on to the ‘awkward-smile – phone-check – alcohol-sip – rinse-and-repeat’ routine. Yes, you should definitely help — but you have no time, no time! You have to keep on chatting with your own conversation partner after all, you must keep him interested for as long as possible. It’s really, really important that there’s no lull in the conversation. After all, any break and you two would realize you really don’t have much to say to each other. But just keep talking, just keep throwing things at the wall, and eventually something will stick. You’re sure of it.)

(Also, is anybody else feeling a bit like a robot? The three demands for name, country, subject and outside subjects, with a Why Edinburgh? or Which highers? occasionally thrown in as extra seasoning, are getting just slightly repetitive. On Monday you stuttered through the unfamiliar course names, by Thursday you have approximately four witty comments as a follow-up to each answer. You rotate through them with alarming regularity.)

(Oh, and you’re never sure exactly how to introduce yourself. Should you anglicize your name? One of your new friends introduces herself as Lisa, and that doesn’t have even a single letter in common with her birth name. On the one hand, you’re not sure you could respond to a different name– and well, you don’t exactly feel like changing for other people’s convenience. Plus, how embarrassing would it be if you mispronounced your name to someone who turned out to be from your birth country?! On the other hand, well. You’re getting pretty damn tired of the whole Oh I’m not even gonna try to pronounce that one! thing. Everyone around you laughs, so you do too, but it’s really not that funny the 34th time.)

And the sheer variety of courses people are taking astounds you. There’s the usual of course: Biochemistry, History of Art… Not quite your thing, but you’ve heard of them at least. But what the hell is Cognitive Science?! And in the library, you glimpsed someone reading a book called The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration. Wow!

(Is that a thing? Is that the kind of books people here read? You hope those are older students; you hope you won’t be the stupidest one in your course.)

Oh, and the amount of societies? What a bonus!! Cocktail Society, Tai Chi Society, Vietnamese Society, Bachata Society. Oh screw it, you’re joining everything. Turns out, the second hardest choice of the week is whether your Thursday evenings are better spent at the Politics Society or the Sci-fi Society. Who would have thought? Anyway, even if you quit stuff later on, at least you’ll have new experiences and buddies. That’s what university is all about, right? Studying what you’ve always wanted to study is a dream come true of course, but that or the existence of a Harry Potter Society? Yeah, you know what’s cooler.

(Still, even in the weirder societies you feel a little out of the loop when the girl opposite you proclaims My mum is from Newcastle and my dad is from Bristol, and I was born in London, but I lived the last five years in Sheffield– no wonder my English is so strange! and everyone around you giggles sympathetically. You’re sure glad that sentence meant something to someone, because it meant absolutely nothing to you. You feel, just a little, as though the universe is mocking you. After all, your own accent is a mixture of your own native tongue, your parents’ immigrant roots, the strongly accented English spoken by your classmates and teachers, and that neighborhood kid from Texas who was your best friend when you were eight. And the Upstairs people from Downton Abbey, of course. Hm.)

Yeah, it all speeds by so fast; you can’t believe the first week’s already over!

(Only 124 weeks to go.)

#CULTURE