I’m not posh and I go to St Andrews

When I initially said I’d write this article, I had to have a background check from a non St Andrean just to double check I wasn’t secretly posh.

I reassured the external assessor that I don’t look posh  (in context, I don’t own a Canada Goose or hunter wellies), I don’t sound posh (An essex girl through and through) and one of my favourite activities is going to Tesco late at night in order to buy my food for the week at 90% off. In fact, my flatmate and I both shared excitement over a girl who wrote about her working class problems at a posh uni.

Essex at heart

Essex is actually one of the last counties in England that still has grammar schools (schools which you take an exam to get into), and it was always kind of seen that if you went to private school you basically weren’t smart enough to get into a grammar but daddy wouldn’t let you mix with the mandem.

Being posh was uncool. It was actively laughed at in my school.

One of the boys who crossed into the middle class border was completely ripped into when he uttered his famous last words ‘At Cambridge we work hard, but we play harder’. This was consequently turned into a twitter-wide meme and a good ole ‘by jove’ was added into the statement. Private school kids were alien to my life. My friends worked at Waitrose rather than shopped there.

I really hope he’s okay with this image on The Tab

Therefore, coming to St Andrews was a little bit of a culture shock. I went from pitchers in the post (our local spoons) to port and poetry. People ate food like ‘quinoa’ and ‘raw cacao’. I learnt a lot- mostly how to BS about golf and not to drink Tesco everyday value wine from a carton (ah- freshers).

The social scene was off the scale, instead of traditional trashy events my friends had at uni, like ‘back to school nights’ and ‘carnage’, I was going to champagne garden parties and balls. I liked getting dressed up, but I missed my trashy night outs back at home and did look at their lifestyles and feel like I was missing out on something. Isn’t the student experience about making it through as long as you can on instant noodles and lots of vodka? Not Sauvignon Blanc at prinks? For a while, I resented that part of St Andrews and didn’t want to be here.

It actually wasn’t till I fully embraced it that I started to enjoy it.

Carton wine = Best wine

So what’s it like not being posh at St Andrews? Actually kind of non existent. Whilst I know I’m not that different, the changes in me are subtle but clear.

“If there are no clubs in St Andrews, how do you socialise?” my friend asked me last christmas. I said: “We have a lot of dinner parties?”

She just looked at me sympathetically. I use big words in conversation and talk politics during meals. I eat avocados. My Instagrams of red gowns get a lot of comments of utter confusion from friends at home. My essex accent was described as the ‘queen’s english’ this summer.

Bottles of free champagne lining the piano we’re casually posing in front of in our red gowns – so St Andrews

Nay, if we can’t beat them, join them. If you’d have met me three years ago, the idea of paying £40 for a ball would have been laughed off quicker than you could say ‘double barrelled surname’. Come Sunday will be my third year at christmas ball, which has actually morphed into one of my favourite events of the semester, and it doesn’t come cheaply (or easily).

Started from the bottom now the whole team’s f***ing here

Whenever I go home for the semester, I always look back on St Andrews as a bit of a dream. It’s kind of terrifying how wine and cheese and clay pigeon shooting societies become assimilated into our culture. My accent gets back to it’s regular TOWIE twang and the cheap drinks at spoons are fully embraced.

The best thing about being normal at a posh university is you can enjoy both sides of the world, and you never really have to pick one.

Posh shaming is no longer a past time of mine, instead I think a lot of the time when you get to know people who have come from more affluent backgrounds than yourself is that they aren’t really that picky about their friends either. Ultimately, Banter is cross classist.