A fresher’s guide to second semester

Take our advice on how to tackle second semester, and pretty soon no-one will be able to tell that you don’t know Liverpool very well and you miss home.


So you’ve been in Liverpool for a few months and you think you’ve seen it all. Well you’re only a fraction of the way into your time in the city, and there’s still a lot to learn. So take The Tab’s sage advice, and soon you’ll be swaggering around campus like a grizzled third-year, not the fresh-faced padawan you are now.

  1. You Have Plenty of Time on Your Hands.

Like you haven’t noticed? There are, of course, many things that you can do with this time that don’t involve onanism. Some choose to spend it in the gym, getting fit for the sports they don’t play or to attract the partners that their personalities are incapable of snaring; others in the library, ignoring the fact that there’s a perfectly good desk in their room and everything they need is online.

Why not live the dream and watch Breaking Bad… in bed?

 

The vast majority spend it in bed, usually their own, but once in a while (if they’re good) in someone else’s. But why not do something out of the ordinary this semester? No one’s suggesting for a second that (God forbid) you actually turn up for a lecture, oh no, but rather than, say, indulge in a Breaking Bad marathon, you could perhaps live the dream and start your own meth lab in the kitchen? If not then maybe…

  1. Now is the Time to Learn a New language.

Or to be more specific, learn Scouse. Mandarin is also pretty useful, but start with Scouse.

  1. Keep New Year’s Resolutions Creative.

Do you want to be one of those aforementioned gym-goers with traps like a pyramid or sinew bulging unnaturally from your calves? Of course you don’t, nor do you wish to be one of those library dwellers who spend 500 years partaking in the academic equivalent of telling riddles in the dark, eating raw fish and referring to their dissertation as ‘my birthday present.’

New Year, New You.

Realistically, a new years’ resolution will only be kept if it’s outlandish enough to remember to stick to it, and from my experience, the more unusual, quirky a resolution, the more likely this is. Take, by way of an example, learning Mandarin, or starting a meth lab.

  1. On That Thought, Go Back to Number Two.

See the bit where it says ‘rather than… indulge in a Breaking Bad marathon’? Ignore that bit. In fact, why not watch it at the same time as running your lab, and in doing so create a slightly grittier, more perverse ode to Blue Peter? It will be fitting in a way; it’s a truth universally acknowledged that every 6 seconds Blue Peter presenters past and present inject heroin into their eyeballs, so you can pass this off as a tribute.

  1. Don’t Get Involved in Student Politics.

If you haven’t been let in on the secret yet, here it is; remember when your parents and teachers said that homework and school wouldn’t just disappear if you ignored them? Well, lo and behold, they did, so now we’re trying the same approach with politics, starting off at campus level, and eventually working our way up.

To be fair, you’re probably not enough of a Ladiator to go into student politics anyway

Don’t be that kid that has to run for Guild president or joins the Young Socialists. Just… don’t.

  1. Don’t bother with club nights.

Try Pause sans inebriant for a change. I dare you. You’ll probably self-harm. The Today Programme, even without John Humphries, is rather more cutting edge than Chibuku, and it is a perpetual wonder that the shipping forecast is in fact more exciting than The Shipping Forecast. Many people at this university will no doubt disagree with me; these people are the reason why the NHS spends so much on counselling and hearing aids.

They are also the reason why the rest of us spend so much on tuition fees, in order to accommodate their revelry whilst picking up a third. To you I have this message: Spend your money on vegetables, not Eat Your Greens; it isn’t sick, you’re sick. Get help.

  1. Come to Terms with Campus Misogyny.

It is a sad indictment of the world we live in that sexism is still so prevalent among us, but alas, until modern attitudes change, there is precious little we can do to stop it. It’s wrong, it’s demeaning, it’s degrading and it objectifies, and yet it is accepted almost as the norm. I’ve lost count of the occasions that, walking across campus, I’ve had gangs of women wolf-whistling, cat-calling, and leering at me in broad daylight.

Why is there no ‘Reclaim the Night’ for men? Also, why are there no non-disabled parking spaces, and no cemeteries for living people?

I can’t remember ever going to the bar in Heebies and not getting groped at least fourteen times en route by aggressive girls, and my most humiliating experience to date remains the occasion when, whilst auditioning for a role in Oedipus Rex, I had my figure analysed and rated, and was told I would have to ‘demonstrate willingness’ to the female director if I wanted to be a star.

One day chaps we will have equality, and the nightmare of our perpetual harassment will stop. One day.

  1. Avoid sex.

If you haven’t worked it out yet, the opposite sex are, by and large, a bunch of wankers. You may be one of the lucky few who has found their beau at an earlier stage of life, and to you I say congratulations and good luck to you, you repulsive bunch of prim, doe-eyed, vomit-inducing masochists. The rest of you, however, will come to realise pretty early on that all women/men are manipulating/lying, self-centred/emotionally stunted harlots/bastards, who will use you/abuse you, and probably have the clap/probably have the clap.

Better to take a vow of Chastity than resort to Tinder

 

Just forget that sex is something you’re genetically programmed to do; it isn’t worth the hassle. There’s a reason the French call the orgasm ‘La petite mort.’ God forbid it ever gets to the stage where you go online or use Tinder. At that point, all hope is lost, and you should take the entirely rational advice of everyone’s favourite role model, Richard E. Grant’s Withnail, to: ‘Throw yourself into the road, darling, you haven’t got a chance!’

  1. Don’t write for The Tab.

If you do, I’ll be out of this job they don’t even pay me for doing. Come on, I need this.

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