‘Let’s go around and introduce ourselves’: The everyday horrors plaguing Edinburgh students

University isn’t just about lectures and essays; it’s a series of small, relentless horrors. From waking up wondering what you said last night, to discovering your group project has evolved into a psychological thriller, these everyday terrors are far worse than any horror movie.

Hangxiety: The morning-after horror

That special kind of panic that hits when you wake up in last night’s makeup, your head pounding, and your phone lighting up with a series of “???” messages.

You check your bank account, and regret. You check your camera roll, fear.

The photos aren’t blurry enough to hide your actions, but just blurry enough to give you false hope. You can’t remember what you did, but you’re 90 per cent sure it involved oversharing and shots you definitely didn’t need. Hangxiety doesn’t haunt you, but it does schedule weekly visits.

GET UP

“Let’s go around and introduce ourselves.”

The six most frightening words in the world. You instantly forget your own name, your hobbies, what humans even do for fun. You try to think of a fun fact, panic, and by the time it’s your turn, you’ve blacked out and mispronounced your own name.

Everyone nods politely while you quietly wonder how you survived childhood. No one will remember by tomorrow, but you will never forget.

Group projects

No one talks. No one listens. Someone panics. Someone else hogs the slides. Somehow, you end up doing everything.

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You spend hours perfecting the presentation, only for it to be derailed by one person forgetting their part, another misreading the instructions, and another mysteriously disappearing half an hour before submission. When you think you’ve survived, your phone starts buzzing. Ten notifications. The group chat is possessed. Every ping is a tiny existential crisis: “Who’s bringing what to the next meeting?” “Can someone finish the references?” No one knows. No one cares.

Laptop loud enough to summon the dead

A jump scare in real life. You think you’re safe, and then suddenly, the NYT Connections victory jingle erupts at full volume. The silence shatters. Every head turns, including the lecturer who now knows you weren’t “taking notes.”

Is there anything scarier than a 20 page reading?

You fumble with the keyboard like it’s a bomb, but the more you panic, the louder it gets. You finally slam the laptop shut, which somehow makes it worse. Your face is red. Your dignity’s gone. The shame will outlast your degree.

Lost and late: Walking into the wrong lecture theatre

You’re late. Head down, you sneak in, avoiding the lecturer’s look of pure disappointment. You search for your friends… they’re not here.

You shouldn’t be either.

Half the room stares, trying to figure out who you are, and you slowly realise you’ve stumbled into the wrong lecture hall. Retreat seems like admitting defeat, so you sit anyway, pretending to understand while your brain frantically scans for anything familiar. You check Outlook, nope. You’ve somehow ended up on the wrong lecture. Every word feels like a foreign language. By the end, you’re questioning how you even got into uni without knowing where you’re going.

The library during exam season

It’s less a library, more a battlefield. Every desk is occupied by someone who hasn’t slept in three days and now communicates exclusively through sighs and passive-aggressive glances. The air smells like coffee, fear and dry shampoo. If you so much as breathe too loudly, twenty heads swivel like owls in unison. Trying to find a seat between classes is its own form of torture. You end up sitting on the floor, pretending to focus, while equally lost souls wander past, looking exactly like you did half an hour ago. Arrive after 9 am or before 6 pm? Forget it. You’re not studying — you’re lurking the aisles, waiting to pounce as soon as someone even thinks about closing their laptop

With all the empty seats, you can tell this was not taken in exam season

An empty fridge and an emptier bank account

You make it home after a harrowing 9-5. You survived early-morning lectures and that painfully awkward group meeting where the silence was deafening. You’re starving, only to open the fridge and find… absolutely nothing. Not even a sad, wilted piece of lettuce. To make matters worse, your student loan just came out, leaving your bank account (and your heart) emptier than the shelves. This is the twin terror of adulthood and hangry.