Six things to do while your tutors are striking

A guide to no-lecture boredom


 The rebels that you usually refer to as lecturers were once again trying to smash the system by dangerously holding a poster this week, causing confusion amongst students, who were desperately trying to think of anything more entertaining than watching somebody struggle with PowerPoint.

Fear not: thanks to The Tab, you will never have to wander round campus looking lost again. Here are six things to do while your tutors are on strike:

1) Sleep. This is my activity of choice. There’s nothing more satisfying than being warm in bed when you know some people are wasting their day on a freezing picket line.

2) Heckle. University staff are pretty bad at protesting – they stand around for a few hours and they seem to go home at lunchtime. Tell them how it should be done.

So threatening, the university has been scared into not giving them a pay rise.

3) Play a drinking game. Drink once for every person who crosses the picket line. Drink twice for every time the protesters chant. Down your drink in the unlikely event that a tutor you recognise shows up to the strike.

Well, since you don’t have lectures, what’s wrong with getting drunk in the daytime?

4) Ask for a refund. You’re paying up to £9,000 a year for these people, and they decide not to turn up to work. Surely that means you deserve a partial refund? Also, imagine the frustration when your university / the Student Loans Company / the University and College Union receives thousands of letters asking for a day’s worth of tuition fees back.

(Semi-interesting fact: some friends of mine worked out that every lecture they get is worth approximately 30 pence. Use that figure to work out how much they owe you back.)

Although, if you’re getting what you thought you were paying for in the first place, you’re probably not at university.

5) Demand more pay. Your maintenance loans/grants are also not rising enough to cover the increasing cost of living. If your tutors won’t put up with a 1% pay rise, why should you?

6) Study. This is the last resort. You are trying to get a degree, after all.

If this isn’t motivation I don’t know what is

It won’t hurt