What Aberystwyth actually teaches you

When you first got your offer, you were probably excited to embark on three years of living in the Welsh countryside, studying something you’re actually interested in.

Whether you’re on track for a first or scraping along getting your 40 per cent, this is what you’ve actually learned in Aber.

• Anything more than £3 a drink feels a bit expensive, and if it’s above £4 it just isn’t worth it.
• Every sunset everyone in town turns into an amateur photographer.
• For some reason the Geography and History societies have some of the biggest nights out. Nobody on them does the subject though.
• Going to the union for anything but Bierkeller, StockExchange and Blackhouse is nigh unheard of.
• “Put your hands up in the air” gives you flashbacks to the naff fresher nights at the union.
• You instantly adjust to living in the safest town in the UK, and everywhere else is terrifying.
• Despite being in every prospectus ever, you will never have anything to do with the Old College.

• The rest of the country is ridiculously flat compared to Aberystwyth.
• Academy-Yoko’s-Angel is some sort of unholy trinity, and you should never walk past there on a busy night sober.
• With Messy Mondays, Vodka Tuesdays, Sports Social Wednesdays, Gin Thursdays,  and Sunday Fundays there’s an excuse to drink every day of the week.
• If you’re English, there’s some pubs you just don’t go into, despite them actually being perfectly fine.
• Everyone’s obsessed with the EU so much that it’s actually a little bit weird.
• Ceredigion is one of the few places keeping the Lib Dem dream alive. There’s even still Lib Dem students!

• There’s North Beach, South Beach, and South South Beach. Yes it has a real name, no you’ll never learn it.
• Just because you can drink every day of the week though doesn’t mean you should.
• Everyone reads the Tab. Everyone hates the Tab.
• Yoko’s just needs to accept that it is called Yoko’s and move on with its life. There’s not a student in Aberystwyth that knew it when it was actually called Yoko’s, but we’re not accepting a shitty name like “Why Not”.
• Everyone likes ASM. Nobody reads ASM.
• Fusion King puts all other hangover cures to shame.
• Drinking out of a bin is perfectly normal.
• No matter what the evidence says, we’ll always be better than Bangor.
• We just can’t stop shagging, with lights up at Pier/Angel/Yokos illuminating a worrying number of mistakes in progress.
• Despite that, Tinder here makes your home-town look good
• Once you get past the 5 year mark, you’re here forever.
• The hill never gets easier, and you never seem to get fitter.

• And, most importantly, Aberystwyth is the most beautiful place in the country that you could have studied, and anyone who says they wouldn’t have traded the hustle and bustle of the city for our much more laidback life just doesn’t appreciate the important things in life.