If you’re homesick by now, university just isn’t for you

The 13th October is the official date students start feeling homesick and head home. Freshers’ week has barely come to an end, yet this day last year was the busiest day for train travel with over 337,000 train journeys being made.

The findings, from independent research and innovation group Atos, revealed a dramatic rise in travel for 16-25 Railcard users travelling from university towns.

A spokesman predictably said: “It’s interesting to see such a clear spike in Railcard journeys in October, as students begin running low on money, missing home-cooked meals, or maybe even running out of clean clothes!”

But if you’re heading home already, for all those yummy meals and “clean clothes!”, should you really be at university? You’ve got three more years of this, and you’ve barely made it past freshers’. God knows how you’ll cope when they start giving you essays. This isn’t a holiday and this definitely isn’t a gap year, it’s an extortionate £9,000 a year commitment that you’ll remember – and be paying off – for the rest of your life.

Not being able to operate a washing machine isn’t the best excuse for going home today

Homesick students who run away when it gets too much have no place in halls. After all, they are exclusively locals who live within 25 miles, and should have never left at all. You’re two weeks and five nights out in and can already hear them sobbing in their room – she misses the pug and the supply of toilet paper. Her sister says Rich might propose soon. So she’s back off to Halifax, where from now on she’ll return every weekend. Count on her to come back with fresh clothes, a bag full of Tesco’s best ready meals and the game face to tackle essay number one, only to crumble by next Tuesday.

If this is you, it’s time to face a hard truth. Ask yourself, are you really cut out for uni? It might have been easier to do an empty degree with the Open University, join your mum’s company answering the phone and stay in your market town forever.