It’s time we all agree, school does not prepare you for uni life at all

Congratulations, you've made it to uni. After months of buying pasta in bulk, unnecessary cacti in IKEA and overpriced tickets to fresher's events, you're finally here, and everything is going just fine, right?

Wrong. It's that time of the year where we must all agree that uni life just isn't going well.

You ask yourself, where did it all gone wrong, so quickly? You thought you were ready for the real world, after all, you just spent the past seven years in education. Surely after all that time, you would think you’d be pretty well equipped to take on student life? Well, you only need to be at uni for about two hours, to realise that school does not prepare you for uni life at all.

You may know Pythagoras Theorem, but that's not helpful when you're trying to cook a chilli con carne

With an oven and hob to operate, this task can seem just as complicated as a mathematical equation for those of us who didn’t take food tech. Suddenly, all those relentless lessons on tectonic plates and Henry VIII aren’t much use, and that revelation is never more obvious than when coming to cooking for the first time at uni.

You may have been on the netball or football team, but you were never taught how to survive initiations

In school, sports teams are fairly innocent. You may have gone for the occasional pint after a successful match if you were in year 13, but it never got particularly out of hand, because there was that precious school reputation at stake.

Do not be fooled. Joining a sports society at University is a whole different ball game. The actual sport becomes almost secondary to the socials, and with socials comes initiations. These usually occur in the first few weeks and involve freshers being made to down straight vodka mixed with all sorts of vile ingredients. If you make it through the night without being sick, you’ve usually failed.

Those school lunches may have been grim, but at least they were free

Wait. Did someone say free? This is a word that you rarely come across at University. Leaving home means leaving behind luxuries such as free food. Who knew how expensive fruit was? And yet, parents will constantly remind you to eat healthily and have plenty omega 3. Well sorry Dad, but I can’t afford to be buying salmon when I’m paying £9,000 a year for a degree. Once my Domino vouchers run out I’ll just be having my £1 frozen pizza.

You may have been taught to put a condom on a banana, but why didn’t we ever get coached through the walk of shame?

Yes, knowing how to protect yourself is all good and well, but why scare students off with stories of STI’s like genital warts when there’s the walk of shame to negotiate?

No-one enjoys having to make the awkward conversation the next morning, and what’s more, no one even knows what to say during that conversation? “Good job last night, I see you payed excellent attention to how you put a condom on in those sex ed lessons, anyway see you about”. Let’s just say, it’s a less than ideal situation to find yourself in.

You may be able to recite 1 to 20 in French, but you don’t know how to wash your clothes

How is it that random red sock manages to wriggle its way into every bloody wash? After your first week all your whites become pink and you have to avoid the embarrassment of admitting you can’t work a washing machine by saying “pink is just my favourite colour”, even if you can say it in French.

Music may have taught you how to play Smoke on the Water, but making your bed seems like an impossible task

How do mums manage to get a sheet onto a bed without any help? After hours of trying to keep one corner down with your right foot whilst lunging across the bed and tucking in the other ends, it begins to come clear that all mothers have a special secret on how to make up a bed by themselves.

You may have had to stand up and present a speech for your speaking assessment, but why were we never taught how to socialise with new people?

At school you take for granted the fact that you’ve known all your mates since year seven. All of a sudden, at University you’re thrown into an environment of 30,000 plus students which you have to somehow attempt to make conversation with. Get ready to be asked your name, where you are from and what you are studying about 1,000 times during your first week. Apparently, these questions seem to be the best that the creative minds of our generation can muster up.

So, what was secondary school actually for other than a place for teenagers to go to during the day? Did we learn how to manage student finance? Did we learn how to set up a TV license or sign onto a house? Did we learn how to get rid of a spider the size of your hand which is determined to set up camp in your bath? No, of course we didn't. But hey, at least you know how atoms can join together to form molecules.