The struggles of being small at uni

As hard as it might be to believe, being small does have its advantages. At concerts people don’t mind you pushing to the front, when shoes are sold out there’s a big chance that they’ll still be available in a size 3 and there’s not VAT on kids clothing.

On leaving home however, one might begin to realise that being tiny is not something amazingly suited to uni life.

Daily life

You’ll never not be ID’d

Tiny people using their own ID can be as hit and miss as an underager using a fake ID. Bouncers can stand and stare at it for minutes and still question whether or not the 12 year old standing before them is actually the 18  year old on the driving licence.

Your friends will probably hate you when you go out for meals, as the waiter won’t bat an eyelid as they order cocktails until you order an alcoholic beverage and they ask to see all of your IDs.

Might as well get the ID out before you order

You are sometimes a source of hilarity

On nights out, your height can become a talking point if nothing else. If you’re wearing heels, which you often need to, people might even wonder how tall you are without them. They might comment on how you are the perfect height for an arm rest. They will definitely expect you to take this as a compliment.

Flatmates especially, once they get past the awkward first meeting, won’t take long to find hilarity in your height. Or more so your lack of it. If they’re describing you to anyone else, the first word they use will be ‘small’, hands down.

Free t-shirts? More like free dresses

‘Oh you only have large ones left? It’s okay, that’s an extra pyjama top.”

This is particularly annoying in Freshers, when you go to the fayre and get all caught up in the freebies. It’s not until you get home and sift out, amongst the junk you’ll never need but you picked up because it was free, the assortment of distasteful slogan t-shirts. They’ll never fit, so you might as well add them straight to your pyjama collection or maybe start figuring out how you could fashion them as tents.

It might work if there were 5 of me

Tutors will question your place in the class

No joke, in one of my first tutorials of first year, the tutor straight up asked me if I was old enough to be there. She followed this up with a class discussion; “Isn’t she tiny?? How old do we all guess she is?”

This does however provide an opportunity to pretend that you are really young and got offered a scholarship to go to uni early as a form of child prodigy.

Clubbing is more like getting squashed-ing

If you think underground feels busy when you can see over the crowds, imagine what it’s like when you’re literally buried amongst them. From a low height, you have to always expect nights out to be full of cleavage and back sweat. Friends of small people have harder jobs on nights out, as us vertically challenged are way harder to find and keep track of.

There are only so many ‘oops didn’t see you there’ that you can take before you start cursing tall people, not that they can hear you, because your sound waves won’t spread far enough to reach their ears.

Corner squash at carwash

‘Can you reach that for me please?’

If we, as a race, had a catchphrase, this would be it.

It’s highly embarrassing in supermarkets when you have to ask someone to reach something for you, or you knock down a whole stack of toilet rolls because you can only reach the bottom one that supports the structure.

If you’re really really lucky, you will live with people that like to motivate you to work for your food. They do this by assigning you the top shelves in the cupboards. If you want dinner you’re going to have to climb for it.

We have to find alternative methods

So, next time you look across a club to find your friend or buy booze without being asked to show ID or reach for some food on the top shelf, remember you are one of the lucky ones.