Here are some wake-up calls you’re guaranteed to get in second or third year at Sheffield

For a year, nothing could stop you. As a fresher, life was lived through rose-coloured glasses. You slept in until midday, spent way too much money on Spoons pitchers, and skipped a few more lectures than you’d like to admit.

Then, suddenly, where’d had the time gone? One day you blink, and the library is a closer friend than any of your housemates. You can’t get away with the excuse of “this year doesn’t count” – it just doesn’t wash anymore. You’re reliant on a pamper evening (or five) each week to de-stress.

Basically, it’s real, you’re in university, not uni. Here’s your list of wake-up calls one too many of us might realise by year two.

Your party days are over

It gets to a point where you step into West Street Live and it all feels like you’re an OAP. “Cha Cha Slide” is booming through the speakers, and you can’t chug on a Frube shot without the need to evacuate to the nearest toilet.

You find yourself yearning to spend every day in Coffika or Starbucks, looking classy and feeling very mature while you sip on a chai latte. The clubbing outfits just don’t hit the same, you’re so in favour of baggy mum jeans and a pricy cashmere jumper.

You come to the realisation you’re too mature and civilised for the party life. It’s time to retire and splurge on a cheeky bottomless brunch every now and then.

Your dissertation is a real thing

This lingering idea of a “dissertation” is a concept we’re all familiar with, and have heard a lot in passing.

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It’s only when you start hearing phrases like “research proposal” and “10,000 words” that you really start to shake in your boots.

Friends and family who have been through uni have reassured you that once you break it down, you’ll get into a rhythm and maybe even enjoy it. But, in all honesty, your main motivation is coming from the thought of an aesthetically pleasing photoshoot, diss in one hand, graduation cap thrown in the air by the other.

It’s time to make your academic advisor your lifeline, and spend so much time locked away in your room you might as well buy the house from your landlord.

You’re getting closer to reality after uni

Life after uni? Is that even a thing? It was basically yesterday that you had three years of uni left, three years to live your best life, and then the sun rises one day and it starts to dawn on you that life isn’t always studying with a side of, maybe, a little part-time job that funds all the chaotic antics you get up to.

You begin to comprehend that before long, you will be desperately scrolling LinkedIn, trying to secure a serious adult job. Horror. And as you have this mortifying epiphany, you wish all of your problems, for the rest of your life, were things like Blackboard being confusing to navigate, or circuit laundry being a total pain and whether to hit up Meadowhall, or go to Golf Fang for this weekend’s activity.

It all just seems too much for someone in their early twenties to navigate. It was hard enough deciding on a uni course in the first place, let alone deciding on a future past the sickening age of thirty.

You haven’t seen your first-year friends for a hot minute 

When you arrive in Sheffield as a fresher, the realms of possibility are endless. You have friends coming out of your ears, so many it’s hard to keep track. You met Anna at the Societies’ Fair and promised to go for a walk around Endcliffe Park together. You met Chris at Fresher’s Bar Crawl, and said you’d stop by at his for a flat party – it’s all a lot to manage.

You had so many encounters with these people, endless group pictures, arm-in-arm, flooding your Snapchat memories. You might have even considered signing for a second year house with them.

You really did think they’d be friends for life, stories for family in years to come. But, you’ve already drifted apart, and now your most significant interaction is a weak smile across the lecture theatre.

You need somewhere to live after uni 

You’ve become ever so snug in all your little uni homes over the past few years. From your tiny first year flat to your rustic third year house, it’s been a great journey. But what about paying rent that isn’t out of a government-funded loan? It all seems terrifying.

Do I leach off of Mum and Dad for a few more years, and take advantage of fresh laundry and dinner every night? Do I milk Sheffield for all it’s worth and stay a little longer?

It’s a vital decision, and one that you would rather not make, but it has to be done, your fairy lights and cleaning rota will be things of the past in no time.

You’ve got to do some work experience

It’s a work of art. A masterpiece. You’re so proud of your CV. You feel like with all your achievements you may end up like Lord Sugar one day.

That is, until you realise, the biggest takeaway from it might have to be doing the Duke of Edinburgh award at school.

You end up scrambling to differentiate yourself in any way you can. You apply for the uni magazine, email every business in the city, and you might even apply for a society committee or two.

As much as you’d like to sit back and wait for it all to happen, you can’t sit there passively. You have to chase your dreams. Although with each passing day, it feels more like your dreams, or rather the constant anxiety that you won’t achieve them, are actually chasing you.

But at the end of the day, through the doubts, it’s time to get over that finish line and win the race. And wow, it’s been one hell of a run.

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