Here is the WORST day you could have as a Durham University student

‘Tis the season where everyone is struggling through summatives, formatives or, most tragically, their dissertation. This article will provide you with a remedy to your summative sadness by showing you an alternative reality where things are even worse, so you can perhaps be grateful for the deadlines upon you.

The bad beginning

The morning after a terrible night in a certain Durham club – where you drank significantly too much and, although you can’t remember what it was, you know you’ve done something really embarrassing – you wake up at 7.30am for a 9am in the world’s ugliest building: The Student Union. You have an absolutely banging headache and feel extremely ill, but your department has already emailed you this week telling you that you’re on your last warning for poor attendance. So you get up anyway and start getting ready.

When you go to brush your teeth and wash your face, you realise the bathroom is occupied by your flatmate’s boyfriend, who has decided to have an everything shower – and he’s singing Friday by Rebecca Black on repeat and out of tune. You brush your teeth at the kitchen sink and get ready to leave the flat. Oh, and your outfit just isn’t hitting.

Although the weather app said the temperature would be dry and fairly moderate (as far as Durham goes), it starts to sleet once you’re ten minutes into your journey to the SU. You have no umbrella, because this was a surprise attack, so you just have to accept that you’ll be dripping wet in your seminar. On your way up the hill – which feels steeper than ever before – you see an ex “situationship,” your actual ex, and that one ex friend from first term within the span of ten minutes. They definitely all saw you and your lacklustre fit too…

The seminar

You arrive at the SU ten minutes early (entirely unintentionally) and check your phone to see an email from your seminar leader saying the seminar is cancelled. You feel like you’ve wasted your time entirely, but at least you can go home. As you’re passing Elvet Riverside, you receive another notification.

This one reads: “Apologies: The previous email was sent in error and was meant for one of my groups that I cannot meet tomorrow. See you soon!” You scream internally and walk back up the hill to the SU (in which time someone smacks you squarely in the face with a corner of their umbrella). You do not receive an apology.

You get to your seminar and everyone is already there. The only free seat is next to the seminar leader. Obviously, you have not done the reading – in fact, you don’t even know what the seminar is on if you’re being honest.

You zone out from sheer exhaustion after an elapsed six minutes but, because of your proximity to the seminar leader, you get asked a three part question. Not only do you not know what to say, but you actually don’t even know what was asked except that it was very long and you have no response. Yay.

You make up some bullshit. Minty and Tarquin actually laugh out loud at you – and then your seminar leader asks you to expand. This excruciating cycle repeats five times across your two hour seminar. It’s so bad that you feel like you may as well just drop of Durham. How did you get in anyway? You’re convinced you must have inadvertently cheated in your A Level examinations.

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“A watched clock never ticks”, they say. Today is the lived expression of this sentiment, because the moments drip by like water torture.

A lunchtime lament

When you arrive at home, you decide you want macaroni and cheese, so you boil some pasta and make a roux (which ends up being really clumpy…). After completing these tasks, you prepare to grate cheese before realising it has a usual blue fuzz growing on it. You steal your flatmate’s cheese (which turns out to be a certain really vile vegan brand) and continue to cook.

There’s a knock at the door of your home, so you go to answer it. Some random social sec has decided a good way to boost society membership is to go door to door trying to convince you to join their society. As you try to think of a way to get rid of this unwanted visitor, something actually goes your way for once. A high-pitched, shrill noise is heard, which sends the beg away.

Upon returning to the kitchen, you realise that your excursion has caused your already pretty shit roux to burn, along with a roll of kitchen roll you left nearby. How silly indeed. You put out the minor fire and bin the entire pot because it’s irrevocably melded with the roux of doom and despair.

You have no other foodstuffs. I hope you’re hungry – for nothing.

The essay feedback

You open your phone to two notifications. Your most horrible flatmate has written: “Be quiet, you twat. P.S. you can’t cook.” The other notification is two chilling words from Blackboard: “Mark posted.”

You open Blackboard and see your summative has been awarded a whopping… 33 marks. One of the comments reads: “Did you attend a single lecture or seminar on this topic??.” Another reads: “This is objectively and laughably false.” This was the essay you told your friends you were convinced you’d get an 80 on because you dedicated hours to it. Unfortunately, you have failed the module as this was worth 100 per cent.

As you open your phone, you see through tears that your weirdest flatmate has liked you on Hinge.

It is not even 12pm…

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