6 Lessons learned from university (which didn’t help me get a degree)

So having gone to the trouble of actually starting this blog, I haven’t updated it for a few weeks. This is, in part, because I have been undergoing preparations for graduation (and applying for jobs and the like). Anyway, it went ok, I looked like an idiot in my gown, but so did everyone else. And whilst waiting to be called up for my six seconds of fame- to cross the stage, shake the chancellor’s hand, then go back to my seat- I had plenty of time to reflect on university, and the stuff I learned.

So in honour of this fact, and as a final nail in the coffin of my time at uni here you are, 6 lessons from university that weren’t part of my course and didn't help me get a degree.

1: The Lesson: Shaking hands

When: The first week onwards

A little bit banal this one, but before I went to university, I hardly ever shook hands with anyone, but it started to become commonplace in the first few weeks to shake hands with more or less anyone who I met. And at university there are a lot of new people.

I have no idea who introduced such a formal way of greeting someone in the student union, but for the first couple of weeks it was the standard thing. Eventually people stopped doing it so much, but I like to think that I spent the entire 3 years of my degree in training for that one handshake with the chancellor at graduation.

2: The Lesson: Life is expensive

When: Every first of the month, when rent came out of my account

Something I was blissfully aware of until I went to uni was just how expensive it is to simply continue existing. Housing, food, electricity, water, surprisingly enough, all cost money. Whilst a lot of money was spent doing fun things, such as drinking a lot and buying new things I didn’t technically need, it was the necessities that were the most shocking.

The most disheartening thing was when I worked over the holidays, amassing several hundred pounds (or at least reducing my overdraft by several hundred pounds), which went on paying my first month’s rent and outstanding bills.

And the more most disheartening thing (other than grammar check not finding fault in placing ‘more’ next to ‘most’) is the fact that I haven’t even got to a point in life where I pay taxes.

3: The Lesson: How to kill my liver in new fun and creative ways

When: Various occasions, mostly in the first year

While I used to drink before I went to university, it was a pastime, limited to Friday and Saturday nights, on the rare occasions when I was able to get hold of alcohol from somewhere (being shorter than average and lacking an older sibling made this rather difficult). Nights were short lived (I was usually in bed by 1am) and the hangovers were lean.

Upon getting to university, this changed radically. Going out became far more common (largely because clubs would let us in and pubs would serve us, and student nights are awesome) and the duration of said nights were rather longer- my record was drinking from 2 in the afternoon after handing in an essay and ended at half past 4 in a club that had remained open after its licensed hours, then going home and drinking until physical exhaustion rendered me asleep.

The drinking itself became far more structured and even competitive. Halo became drinking Halo. Scrabble became drinking scrabble. Staying in on a Friday night watching Eastenders became drinking staying in on a Friday night watching Eastenders. Then inevitably going out after.

Other greatest hits (to my liver) were shots, dirty pints, ring of fire, and pub golf. Pub golf sums up the drinking at university experience perfectly. It is drinking, competitive, induces fancy dress, and involves drinking a large and rather unpleasant mixture of drinks, I could probably write a post on 6 lessons learned from pub golf alone, but it would mostly be a list of which cocktails don’t sit well on top of other drinks and ways to covertly throw up without people finding out and nullifying your score.

4: The Lesson: Dancing.

When: Throughout.

As mentioned previously, I didn’t really go out clubbing much before I went to university, I have memories of going to Newquay in the summer before university and having to drink a huge amount before moving onto the edge of the dance floor and shuffling a little.

Three years on, I’m one of the first people on the dance floor and will literally drag people up there, usually only after a couple of drinks, where I will proceed to embarrass them- and anyone nearby- with unnecessarily flamboyant moves. I don’t remember there being a specific night on which this change happened, but it probably involved winning a dance off.

5: The Lesson: Fencing, capoeira, squash, badminton, djing, the plight of Venezuelan farmers, playing the

piano, rock climbing, anything that seems like a good idea when you’re going around a societies fair.

When: The beginning of every semester.

I’d like to say that time management was something that I managed to learn whilst at university, but it wasn’t. At the beginning of every semester I joined many societies and attempted to partake in the activities required of them. I gave up on a great deal of these within a couple of weeks.

A perfect example of this decline: Squash clashed with capoeira, so I dropped the former as I was already playing badminton, I then found capoeira whilst being fun, was leaving me far too achy to play badminton the next day, so I dropped that too (although to my credit, I was playing badminton 4 times a week by the end of uni).

This is before even taking social activities into account, of the list up there, I managed to maintain being a member of the badminton society, and the radio society, and there were numerous occasions where events and socials clashed.

6: The Lesson: People don’t really change that much over the three year period

When: The horrible reflective period between the last piece of coursework and the first exam.

Like all things, university had to come to an end, and whilst for the first two and a half years its easy to hope that it will somehow continue beyond the final exams, there’s a point at which you realise that soon you will be fruitlessly searching for a job and the trip will be over.

At that point it is incredibly easy to get reflective (certainly in my case, after all, this blog is about nothing if not unnecessary and self-indulgent reflection), and I thought about the ways in which I had changed and how my friends had changed, and found that, fundamentally speaking, I hadn’t changed much.

I’d had many new experiences, and changed in some small ways- I lost roughly a metric ton of hair for starters, but no colossal epiphany had been had, no new beliefs had been acquired, although I’d acquired a nice new amp and a lot of cds.

Not a particularly funny thing to end on I know, so to balance that out here is a video of Chester the Amazing Peeing Dog: