Everything Leicester students will experience in their first house

Friendships will be tested and overdrafts will be rinsed


A mixture of fear and excitement: Those are the feelings I would use to describe moving into a student house. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of living in a student house with your mates from first year is great. The excitement of house viewings, planning out your room and eventually moving in is a perfect way to start your second year. You can just picture yourself having massive house parties, joking and laughing with your closest friends, and building memories that will last with you forever.

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this freshers – but none of this will happen. Everything will go wrong and you’ll be in debt for the foreseeable future.

And if you ever come home to find your door has been smashed, the best thing to do is just go to bed.

HOW

The Cold

It’s hard to truly describe how cold student houses actually are. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a part of the Game of Thrones universe and live north of the wall?

Just live in a student house for a week and you will experience this horror. Wearing socks and a jumper to bed becomes a normal thing to combat the cold (if you wear socks to bed normally you need to re evaluate yourself) and not being able to feel your toes is a common occurrence. You know things aren’t great when it’s actually warmer outside your house than inside and you can see your breath even when the heating comes on.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why don’t you just turn the heating up more, surely that will solve the problem?” Well my naive first year, this leads me on to the next problem with student houses.

Soon you’ll be sleeping in Chicken Cottage after Letsdisko just for a bit of warmth

Bills, bills and more bills

Keeping a house warm is expensive. Paying for internet is expensive. Buying food and cooking is expensive. Making sure you have running water is expensive. Electricity bills are expensive. Buying dominoes every Tuesday is expensive. You get the idea.

Bills are the reason overdrafts were invented and your student loan will barely cover the costs. Even turning the thermostat up slightly or leaving a light on will ruin all hopes and dreams of having money to do anything bar staying in and watching Step Brothers for the fifth time. Visiting your friends at other universities has to be checked and doubled checked to make sure that you can afford train tickets or petrol. Even Shabang might have to be missed just so that you can get to the end of the week.

Again, I can picture what you are thinking reading this: “But you’ve got a whole house to yourself why don’t you just have loads of house parties?”

“Yeah mate, I’ll obvs buy next round”

Cleaning up

This seems like the easiest thing to sort out, but do you know how long it takes to get out of my semi warm room to clean up my three days worth of pans in the kitchen? The answer is obviously too long and I’m going back to bed. House parties sound like a great idea on paper, but it takes ages to get the smell of alcohol out of literally every single part of the house. Again, I’d rather just stay in with a bit of Netflix.

Falling out over food

This happens to everyone, so don’t be alarmed when it happens to you. Someone will drink your milk and use your bread. It’s as certain as the earth turning and you still being cold. Just don’t panic – keep calm.

The real problem comes when you are a month down the line and that one mate who you kinda tolerate but actually think is weird doesn’t take the bins out. Any normal person would just sort the problem out, but you’re a student and let’s be honest, sleeping is far better than doing anything else in second and third year.

Every electronic item in house will break

I don’t think I’ve ever screamed “fuck” at random appliances more in my entire life. First the washing machine will break, then the internet will stop working, then the sink will clog. It’s just a never ending cycle of shit which happens day in and day out and you, a uni student, have no hope of fixing it. Again, just got to bed and wait for the whole thing to blow over.

Cooking

I hope you like pasta and kinda uncooked or overcooked food because the majority of the time that is what you’ll be eating. Putting random food items in the microwave is a standard thing in a uni house. The microwave is your saviour when things go wrong and you’ll slowly begin to appreciate your mum and dad’s cooking even more than you did first year.

Sounds terrible right? Welcome to the life of a second and third year. But don’t worry, everyone is in the same sinking, cold, dirty boat that you are.

fml