A guide to the post-uni friend cull

The social politics of university can be excruciating. It’s supposed to be the time where you really grow into your own, but if you’re not lucky enough to find yourself a more than a few mutual friends away from someone in the rugby team, a toff or an absolute gear head, you might feel like you’re doing uni wrong.

But university is not your last chance to reinvent yourself. It’s time to rid yourself of those vanilla idiots you were unwittingly lumbered with three long years ago.

Become a banker wanker

It’s just a rule of life that people won’t ever like bankers. In fact, they probably hate themselves too. Land a job at a bank, or even better a recruitment firm, and your time, soul and friends wither away.

You’ll be too busy doing coke and having fake fun in booth of a West London tiki bar to care about not having any friends. Money is better than having friends.

The Friday-night gym goer

Become the type of person who treks an hour to Wholefoods for a superfood bar and pretends to like the nutritious smell of ‘Alpha Men’ capsules from myprotein.com.

Don’t ever go to the pub after work, because Friday night is prime benching time, and when you do, order a pricey low-cal vodka tonic with a twist of lime and ruin your mates’ round. While you’re busy posing in your room, your mates will carry swilling pints and getting on with their lives.

Start a blog

It’s unlikely that ‘the lonely musings of the country girl’ will ever be lapped up by anyone other than your mum and couple of her book club mates. But it will be so cringe that people will stop caring what you have to say in real life. Like a true blogger, treat all readers like disciples – you are their revered leader.

Every sentence should start with I, you should have at least one post with the title ‘My response to’ and don’t underestimate the literary prowess of phrases like “and I was like ‘what is going on?” Carry on posting about going for walks and baking and soon, just like your sense of purpose, your friends will melt away.

Become a political hack

If the allure of the corridors of power isn’t enough for you, the air of self-importance you develop working as part of a commercial imports think tank will give you such boring pub chat that no one will want to be friends with you anyway.

Even your pals who studied politics will realise you have become everything they feared for themselves, leading them to take a drastic career move as an artist, so hopefully you’ll never bump into them again anyway. Unless you’re cutting red tape at an art academy if forty years time. By that point, your dinner parties will be the stuff of their dreams.

Enjoy a drug spiral

If you didn’t spend every weekend on ket at uni, now is your time to shine. Smoke weed on week nights in the bunk bed of the warehouse you share with ten other young creatives. Generally, just do whatever Clive Martin tells you to and people will be worrying about your demise in no time. 

But for a real fall from grace, as all drug users and Vice readers do, make sure you talk about them all the time. Those old friends are sober dweebs to you now any way.

Become a hometown hermit

The humble hometown – a retreat for the boring and un-aspirational. The second you settle on moving back home, probably to spend time with the hubby and save up for your hols to Tenerife, is the second your uni mates forget who you are anyway.

Get some posh mates

They’re an un-accepting breed. If your basic uni mates don’t ski, drink bubbly of an afternoon or host parties in marquees they’ll be rejected quicker than you can say “quinoa“.

Sleep with all your housemates

 

Bumping into someone you’ve slept with whilst at uni is an different experience than running into them in real life. You can’t just laugh it off and do it again any more, you’re a grown up. So when you leave uni, make sure you’ve done goldrush properly – sleep with everyone, so you can avoid seeing anyone. Or you could do the absolute opposite…

Get a boyfriend

And if you already have one, retreat to your smug life together. Constantly cancel plans in favour of looking after the fish – the only “night out with the gals” worth having is the embarrassingly tame hen do for your summer 2025 wedding.