Some things you should know about second semester

You nailed first term, with the foresight of everything that would happen. And now you’re looking toward summer. What do you wish you’d been told after you finished your January exams?

This. All of this.

The flatmate you were shagging in ‘secret’ turns into a serious relationship

“It’ll be fine”, you said when you chose to live in a house of eight together in second year, “a year is so long away”. But now you’re talking about living together alone next year. Is it too soon?

OR the flatmate you were ‘shagging in secret’ goes sour quickly

It’s difficult to look at him in the kitchen now. Look at him, eating his cornflakes, acting innocent and not the BASTARD that he is. You know Julie sucked him off. He slurps his milk and bile rises in your throat. Maybe you do something to his toothbrush. Maybe you don’t.

You give up your coursemates, they’re wet

Honestly Emily if you keep organising Theology drinks with us we are gonna have to remove you from the group chat. No one cares, and no one wants to talk about it after the lecture. We have officially run out of small chat waiting outside the tutorial door, so please act like a normal person and pretend to be engrossed in your Instagram feed instead.

You stop visiting home

Sorry mummy.

You realise that really charming guy in your flat is actually a massive pervert

Tom seemed cute and harmless at first, always asking when you’d be home and having a cup of tea ready for you. You’d cook meals together and he’d help you decide what to wear before you went out. But then his compliments went from flattering to intrusive, he gets all wierd when you bring the guy you’re seeing over and you realise you need to stop talkign to himall together.

Your gym membership becomes useless

Be honest Gemma, we’re not gonna meet up tomorrow for a quick go on the cross machines before our lecture.

The sad but inevitable decline of your grades begins

You’ve got your marks back from first term and hey, what do you know, it’s just like A levels. You now realise you can put in very average effort for a 2:1 and there’s no point pushing for a first. Why get a 69 when you can have a 60? That’s a lot of extra time you can save on studying and spend on partying. Plus if you do dip into the 50s, there’s plenty of time to bring it back around in summer. Why do now what you can put off till then, or next year even, when your marks actually count.

You start going to the cool nights

Enough of this chart music and VKs rubbish, guys. It was fun for a while, but now we’re older and wiser, and I got some vintage Nike air maxes for Christmas and they will only grace the floors of the grimiest, stickiest and coolest clubs playing electronic music and selling nothing but Red Stripe. No, I didn’t just ask for them because all the cool girls with oversized denim jackets wear them, I just really like the colour.

You start to try and be healthy

25 takeaways and 200 litres of alcohol later, you’ve got really fat from last term. New year, new you, you tell everyone it will be different this term. You’ll buy a gym membership that you’ll probably never use, and you share your cheesy chips with Laura from flat 12 because it’s half the calories.

Your housemate buys DJ decks

For fuck’s sake Theo.

You realise the person you bonded with in the first week is actually fucking annoying

Hear me out: I sat next to Jon in your first lecture. He seemed nice enough and we shared an interest in niche European football teams. He bought me a few drinks at the Union and you enjoyed a few games of FIFA. Then things got weird. He messaged me every day wanting to meet up, started appearing behind me on campus and decided to turn up at my flat’s Xmas meal unannounced. He sent me a hundred inane Snapchats on Christmas Day, and is planning an Interrail trip for the both of us over summer. Now I realise why no-one else seemed to go near him. Now it is too late.

You see an attention seeker for who they really are

Paul, you never had that threesome with the takeaway owner and Michaela next door did you? It is not humanly possible to have done everything you drank for in “never have I ever”. Can sexuality really be that fluid? The clever ones caught onto his game in the last week before the end of tem. But what Christmas brings is clarity – you’re taking no more of Paul’s bullshit and he certainly won’t be living with the rest of the gang in second year.

Alice, the homebird, will finally slip away

Why? Because after five long years, her hometown love has proposed. Of course she said yes – he came up from Halifax for the weekend, got a double room at the Hilton and did it properly. Now she’s gone – gone from your nights out, gone from your flat, out of your life. Good job, she’ll end up as dull as her mum.

You fall out with your future housemates

Having been very on the ball in first year and signed for a house, you’ve successfully fallen out with all your future housemates. You’re spending every waking hour scouring the contract for a get out clause, before realising there’s no way you’re getting out of that bad boy. Hope you’re looking forward to a really awkward year hun.

You finally settle on your drink and takeaway

It’s been a long, rocky road, these past few months. First, I thought maybe I was a “cheesy chip after a rowdy one” kind of gal. A “hold my heels in one hand and balance my chips in the other and get glass in my heel between the cobbles and have to get a tetanus shot” kind of gal. But you know what, I’m not. Actually, I’m a chips alone kind of girl. A chips alone and not projectile vomiting Hardy’s rose kind of girl. And yes, maybe that means paying extra for vodka at pre-drinks. Maybe it means letting your beloved strawpedoed blue WKDs go untouched, but I’m not a girl anymore. I’m a woman. A woman who’s stopped pretending she likes cheesy chips and wine.

You stop hanging out with your one mate you knew from home because she’s got a bit weird and she’s still wearing her leaver’s hoody

It’s FEBRUARY Andrea. And you’re doing an MA.

You and your friends begin to get quite worried about that guy in the group who is always drunk

Always. Not just on a night out or at pre drinks, but he drinks in his room alone, and has a bottle of wine with dinner. At first he was a legend and now you consider staging an intervention.

You’re fat

You’ve finally realised this. For a while you were calling it the “freshers fifteen” and saying you were walking it off on the hill to lectures, but then you went home for Christmas and your mum asked very seriously “how you were looking after yourself”. OK, that’s fine to brush off, but your granny literally prodded your belly in the middle of her Yorkshire puddings at Christmas dinner and said “porky porky” and you are fat. Fat fat fat.

You join a gym

Christmas was an awakening. You download that calorie counting app and use it during college meals. No more brunch for you, just muesli and a plate of salad.

You break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend back home

It’s been a long three months. After seeing them over Christmas, and fretting that your Christmas gift wasn’t good enough or that their family will suddenly start hating you, it dawns on you that you’ve wasted the entire first term of uni. Your phone bill has gone through the roof from late night conversations about nothing. You’re not even going out anymore just so you can Skype them later that night. Your room is cluttered with tacky photo frames of your getaway to the South of France. And quite frankly, you’ve had enough. You end it and you could not be happier. Then starts the descent into meeting up with them when you go back home for the weekend. You’ll have sex, regrettably, for a few more weeks. They’ll come up and visit, and come on a night out with your mates. It’s fine, you’re friends, you’ve always been close there’s nothing wrong with them sharing your bed. But by that point you’ve got your eye on someone else. You’ll flirt with them a bit on the night out and all hell will break loose. Your ex will leave in a flood of tears, and catch the first train home. You’ll yell good riddance. It’s fine, you’ll have sex again at Easter.

You stop dressing up for uni

You’ve realised you’re not going to get with anyone in any of your seminars so there’s no point. Sleeping has become the priority, and you’d rather have the extra time in bed than making yourself look presentable. No one has ever met the love of their life in the library after all.