The struggles of living at home as a student in Edinburgh

The only thing lower than your phone battery is your chat

8 years ago

“You live at home?!”.

It’s the astonished question asked whenever you meet someone at a party. You look around at all of the people you don’t know whilst the person consults their thoughts to find a valid explanation for living at home. They can’t find one. You think of something to make you appear normal.

Because you’re not part of a sports team, don’t live in halls or don’t go to Potterow every Saturday your chat is in the red zone. The only thing the person can ask is why on earth you would live at home. They try to appreciate the hardships you face.

The small talk about having 9ams is fairly standard. You want to be cool and say “Screw my 9am tomorrow” but because you’re parents get up in the morning you have to as well. They tell you about how they are only in for a few hours one day and you explain that you are there 9-5 because you don’t have a flat to go back to in-between lectures.

“This banana is my only friend at uni.”

The person wonders what you do to fill your time at uni. You can choose to lie and sound interesting, or you can be honest and walk them through the daily struggles. You opt for the latter.

You can’t decide what to tell them first, that you are always the first person to arrive in the morning or that you have the most socially challenging lunchtimes. You explain that since you can’t just go back to your flat, you must find somewhere to hide between lectures. You don’t want to get spotted alone munching on a gourmet ham roll. What to do with all of this time in between lectures? You get good at pretending you are just waiting on someone.

First person in uni.

Common ground: Hive. The only thing as certain as death itself. Even stay-at-home students are not immune to the curse of Hive. This is something that parents just don’t understand. They don’t understand that “only one pint” inevitably results in Hive whether you like it or not.

Going out on a Tuesday night? An unfathomable concept. “Tuesday night is a strange night to go out.” Every time without fail. I’m in second year and that idea still hasn’t quite been understood. What makes a Tuesday night so fun of course is the bag you have on your back full of textbooks. You haven’t been able to leave the city after uni so you are carrying your really trendy life on your shoulders.

You realise that you have been talking for too long and just as the person gets bored of your one dimensional chat you see that the night bus in due in 2 minutes so you quickly disappear and sprint for the bus. It’s either that or a luxurious bedroom floor or a ‘cheap’ cab split just one way.

About an hour later after you’ve almost frozen to death you arrive home. Now the joke is on you guys. There is a full fridge and no noisy flatmates. You wake up in the morning to a heated room and ponder your positive bank balance.

Plenty of room for me and my banana friend.

Next time you see the guy with a backpack on in the club, just know he’s not being a creep or a weirdo, he’s probably just trying to remember when the last bus home is.