Living with animals: A guide to living in halls

As we make the great transition from living under the influence of our parents to becoming fully responsible adults, it becomes evident that this whole “adult” thing isn’t as easy as our parents made out. 

Once leaving home for the first time and moving into university accommodation, some people regress back to their animalistic tendencies. By this I mean, they decide to move away from cleaning products and personal hygiene, and ultimately closer to their cavemen ancestry roots.

If you are not one of these people, here is your guide to surviving with those who are.

Shower shoes are a must

If you have a shared bathroom, it is often that you find yourself sharing two wet rooms among twelve people, thus making it a hot bed for that of warts and verrucas. Although they’re cleaned everyday, why take the risk? Adidas sliders are a personal preference of mine, and have so far saved me from all of the above.

It’s probably worth wearing them in the kitchen, as similar infections are also likely to be caught from such a breeding area of bacteria and fungi.      

Personal sanitising methods

I personally would suggest a surgical mask when even setting foot into a kitchen. Apparently, once acquiring your own living space, it means everyday tasks like doing the washing up become simply too mundane and beneath that of a student.

Lock away your alcohol

When left with nothing to do and after having finished procrastinating from writing that coursework due in the next day, you often find yourself drinking to pass the time.

Due to being a student and living in London, nobody has any money. So one must do what one must have to do in order to get completely wasted, therefore if you leave your bottle of vodka out on the counter, it will be drunk.

I’ll never let go

Invest in a good set of headphones

After leaving home, a lot of us return to our animalistic ways, including the primal instinct to fornicate with each other. I don’t know whether it is because we have entered a world without social conventions, or because simply there is no responsible adult telling them not to sleep with everyone in their building, but it happens.

Speaking from the experience of living between two sexually active couples, I have found that a pair of noise resistant headphones have been the absolute necessity to receiving a decent nights sleep.

The passive aggressive response

One must never actively confront a fellow house mate out of fear of being labelled a bore or buzz kill. Instead, the use of sticky notes or an angry letter sprawled on a spare piece of loo roll should be the way forward. That’ll teach ’em.

Aside from all this, living in university accommodation has created some of the best memories of my uni experience so far.

These messy and disgusting animals will be the people who you sit up with all night just chatting absolute crap, those who will help you work your printer at 2am when you haven’t finished your work due in the next day, and those who will always be there so you can steal their milk knowing that they will never know it was you.