The mystery behind Maclay Halls

When I applied for accommodation I was asked to choose six choices and rank them from highest to lowest.

I got Maclay. Which wasn’t even on the list.

It was then revealed that my comrades and I had been put into the only undergraduate block in an otherwise entirely postgraduate halls for reasons that have never really become clear.

We were pretty much isolated, so we christened ourselves the “forgotten freshers”

These are our struggles.

No one knows you exist

“I live in Maclay.”

“Sorry, where?”

This punctuates every night out.

For those who still aren’t sure, we live the opposite end of Byres Road to Murano, right near the Kelvingrove. Actually some taxi drivers aren’t 100 percent sure either, in which case you say Cooperage Place and hope for the best.

No, we didn’t all get in through Clearing.

Just most of us.

But that’s not the point, we got the shit end of the stick.

Murano is fucking terrifying

Seriously, who knew there were that many first years at Glasgow?

The first time I went to Murano will always be ingrained in my memory as the time I had to wipe with a receipt as there was no toilet paper.

I then drunkenly told Maclay it was beautiful as I stumbled into my ensuite at the end of the night.

Attending Murano flat parties makes me feel immediately out of place, since there’s usually more people attending than actually live in Maclay.

Plus being so close to a kitchen shared by 10 people is enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.

Freshers’ Week was a nightmare

To us, GUU and QMU helpers may well have been unicorns the amount we spotted at our halls.

Instead, it took us an hour to walk to the GUU on the first night of freshers, even though it’s one straight road. To this day I have no idea how or where we went.

I distinctly remember a GUU helper promising to send someone to our halls before the end of Freshers’. Iain, wherever you are, you let us down.

Seeing someone on campus is a big deal

There’s only 40 of us, so when you see someone you know it’s a momentous event that must be marked by at least three texts and a five minute conversation.

Living with postgrads is an experience

They will usually ignore you, but one tried talking to me while I was watching the Great British Bake Off Final and I’ve never really got over it.

Trust me, it is not a fertile ground for potential rich and/or successful husbands, I’ve already checked.

They also report our parties.

Yes, we do have parties 

Contrary to popular belief, Maclay Halls are actually good craic.

The “Maclay Hill”

The trek to uni involves walking up what can only be described as an unnecessarily big hill.

In fact, one particularly hungover morning I had to stop and retch at the top (sorry mum).

We do have friends outside of Maclay

But when you do, you feel exotic and rebellious.

Maclay folk are always friendly though, even if they ask friends from Queen Margaret if they are my friends from home because there is just so little possibility that I could have actually made friends outside of Maclay.

No man will love you as much as your shower curtain 

Watch as you go from horror to tired acceptance of the fact that during each shower you will be cocooned by this seemingly useless bit of cloth.

Plus no matter how careful you are, your bathroom floor will always be soaked, but I like to think of that as an extra foot bath.

The Common room is a blessing and a curse

It’s comforting to know you can pop down for a bag of mini cheddars when it reaches 9pm when you realise that your tea was deeply unsatisfying.

Plus they have sofas in, which is a bourgeois luxury missed by standard student accommodation.

But you have never felt true pain until you pay for a Rubicon which then fails to fall out the machine. Or eat six packets of crisps in 20 minutes.

We like to think we know everyone

We don’t. The top floor is an enigma, only to be ventured into by the bravest and most heroic of individuals.

Farmfoods will save your life on a regular basis

Frozen food was never so convenient.

Plus where else can you buy three litres of Diet Coke for £1.75?

Do tell, I’d love to know. Anything to save me from buying another frozen Farmfoods pizza.

We are like one big family

Sounds cliché I know, but we actually are. If families consistently share bodily fluids and are partial to displays of other people’s vomit.

We go on nights out together, wander into each other’s flats at a moment’s notice and occasionally argue and end up taking trips to Loch Lomond at six in the morning, strange, I know.

Your business is everyone’s business, so forget about being sneaky after the walk of shame because you’ll be followed in by three people eating cereal asking where you were last night.

So, when someone does the deed with another person from Maclay, that news travels faster than a student after a promise of free pizza on campus.

But at least someone will always be there to make you toast when you get in from a disastrous night out in Viper with the terrors that are Murano freshers.