Everything that happened in your first week at Brookes

Countless nights spent on the bathroom floor, an MNB hat and thirty five games of Never Have I Ever later and you can finally say that you survived your first week at Brookes. Your Freshers week probably went something like this.

Arrival

After the journey to Brookes, which lets face it, feels ages when you’re listening to muffled sobs from your parents, the last thing you want to do is unpack. This is supposedly made easier by your flatmates’ presence, as you’re told time and time again that ‘you’re all in the same boat!’ Heading through to the kitchen (which you have no idea how seven people will ever fit in) you shove tin upon tin into your respective cupboards, planning how to become the next BNOC. Shove some fairy lights up, set expensive books up on the shelf, hang up clothes and pin photos of home-friends on noticeboard so as not to forget what they look like.

First pre-drinks

Expectations come from American films about crazy student parties and the Inbetweener’s episode: ‘Trip to Warwick’. You will then congregate to the kitchen and drink far too much straight vodka (because not one person remembered mixers, but you all remembered knife blocks). The flat Lad will persistently ask to play Ring of Fire, and his request gets more and more aggressive  until you all eventually give in out of fear of being glassed. The wardens walk in at awkward and inappropriate moments like mid-strip poker which is terrible for all involved. Particularly one poor girl in just her underwear. Your flat will most likely call round multiple taxi firms at about 10:00pm, realising that you should have booked earlier, but hey! Oxford is famously well linked together, with a bus to every possible destination – The Ashmolean, various university colleges, the Botanic Gardens – so why is there not one to Atik?

Working the pole at MNB

First night out

Its been hyped up since the beginning of Summer and the night has finally arrived. Pre-drinks has ended and you’re out in a taxi to O2. In my experience, we were faced with a second year house trying to sell us cigarettes out of their living room window. We joined the seemingly never-ending queue and spent longer in it than in the actual club. This was mostly because there was a good inch of liquid around our feet in every part of the club, and we could actually feel Syphilis creeping into our bloodstreams with every sip of vodka-lemonade. Kebab King was Oxford’s saving grace, with their cheesy chips and nuggets pulling it back. Rudely interrupted on the Odeon steps mid-pizza, the feds and an ambo turned up to give one lucky boy a free ride to the clink.

Nice to see even locals getting in the fancy dress mood!

The hangovers

Writing this catastrophically hungover, I think I speak for everyone when I say the days are so long and the pull of Netflix is all too much. At around midday, someone will request tea on the flat WhatsApp. You’re not making it, so leave it to Lovely Katie as always. Biscuit too please x

Two flat mates will realise they were made for each other and fall really hard

No he doesn’t love you, please don’t sleep with him, oh wait you already did.  After a really messy breakup with his shit girlfriend from home, she seems like an angel when she rocks up in the kitchen wearing her old school uniform ready for Emporium. They shagged and its messed up your flat dynamic for the rest of the year.

Someone’s friend from home will visit and its really awkward

Just as the flat has got a really chilled, familial-like vibe to it, your mate’s friends from Harrow come visit and they’re just not as great as they’ve been made out. Wild Josh threw up after one blue VK and Always-Up-For-It Milly really just isn’t that up for it. They take your rationed food and your last shred of hope for a good night out.

The weekly shop

How exciting! You’re in a new city, no one knows what they’re doing but you do know you can’t survive much longer on pesto pasta and cereal. You have a flat bonding trip to the local Tesco, and after checking last night’s damage to your bank account, you realise all you can afford is more pasta (and another litre of Sambuca).

Yes mum, promise I’m eating properly

Stealing unnecessary things

1. Shopping trolley
2. Traffic cone
3. Your flatmate’s milk (sorry)

The true signaller of a good after party

Lectures

A post fuzzies DMC was held in which you all talk about your course and past academic prowess, agreeing to all get at least 55% in first year so you have the option of doing a semester abroad next year. A week in, and secondary reading may as well be the flat washing up for all the attention you’ll give it. A seminar skipped ‘now and then’ is socially acceptable, as is attending none of them. Speaking with other first years, everyone seems to just want that golden 40% to pass. ‘You can still get a 1st in 3rd year’ seems to get higher and higher pitched the more you say it. Albeit I was hanging out my arse, I managed to pick my head up off the desk in one lecture and note down an enlightened one liner from  the lecturer: ‘ I don’t suppose Shakespeare is that well read in Africa. They have more pressing matters to attend to, such as finding enough beans and water to live.’

Freshers’ Flu

You think you’ve missed it, as you can hear even Steve who doesn’t drink coughing his lungs up, door barricaded shut by piles of kleenex, whilst you appear unaffected. When you wake up the next morning however, after 6 days on the lash, you can confirm that you definitely do have the flu as you struggle to breathe, and your eyes are streaming so badly from a mixture of being tragically hungover/ill, missing your Mum, and being unable to move from your bed apart from to get more food.