The trials and tribulations of student living

If you’re living like a proper student – i.e without a 3D plasma TV screwed to the wall in your bedroom, living room and kitchen – your house is probably a bit crap. ‘A bit crap’ is a fairly wide ranging statement; it could be arranged into a sort of Top Trumps style card game:  the damp in your ceiling might be a slightly worrying feature, but the fact you have no fridge is potentially worse, et cetera, et cetera.

The best thing to do is accept any minor problems and moan about the big ones. They probably won’t get fixed but it’s always worth a try.

If you’re one of the lucky few to have the luxury of a TV, you might as well face the fact you are about to get well acquainted with daytime television.  If you haven’t sent a text, while in a lecture, asking who of the five potential father’s baby it turned out to be, or whether that woman on Jeremy Kyle, who had more than a vague resemblance to Jabba the Hutt, had indeed had six threesomes in the space of four days, you should be ashamed.

Equally, if you don’t know the names of the Real Housewives of Orange County, New York or Tehran, or the Eggheads (and hate at least two of them, especially that C.J) then you should really re-evaluate your life. You’re obviously working too hard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psNAGm5Wpx0[/youtube]

While living in a house you will also have to do your own cooking and cleaning. For the majority of people who have relocated from Carnatic and Greenbank, this is all new. You may have spent last year moaning about the incompetent cleaner but at least she occasionally did your washing up for you.

Some of you will realise it was probably for the best that culinary action was restricted to a microwave and toastie machine (particularly when one of your housemates attempts to make a poached egg without any water). You may even consider abandoning the kitchen until it dirty enough to be featured on Grimefighters (another pinnacle of daytime TV).

If you have a basement – go in it. Our friendly internet installation man told us crackheads used to live in our house. I’m not entirely sure this is true, but even if they did, at least they had the decency to leave behind a host of road signs, a set of crutches and a toy monkey for us in the basement, along with an assortment of broken desks and some slightly unnerving graffiti.  And if you find a rat, you’ve won the basement lottery. Who wouldn’t want a free pet?

Being a student you’ll probably also live in a less than salubrious area. If you’re not sure whether this applies to you, if you have more than 4 takeaways in 1000m radius and at least two late night shops then yes, yes it does.  The positive note to this is that most of your neighbours are students. The negative note is usually that there will be some kind of dubious short cut that gets you where you want to go around 15 minutes faster than the normal route but also presents a 80% chance of getting mugged or heckled by your friendly neighbourhood alcoholics. Just think of it as an alternative type of PBL.