Here’s your entire first year as a London student told in Taylor Swift lyrics

‘Long story short, it was a bad time’


With her tenth studio album around the corner, Taylor Swift has been charming swifties worldwide for nearly two decades. 

A woman of the people, she’s apparently spent a lot of that time crying, losing sleep, and giving up. This makes her perfectly relatable to London students. (The only difference, sadly, is that you probably won’t be swanning around Hackney with Joe Alwyn.)

Nevertheless, to welcome our freshers, The London Tab presents the ultimate description of a London student’s first year through our favourite Taylor Swift lyrics.

‘Screaming, crying’ – Blank Space

Classic, universal, evergreen: Taylor’s rarely been more relatable than she is here.

In the trenches of exam season? Rotting in the back of a 9 am Thursday lecture? Having to evacuate your halls in the middle of the night because of someone’s botched cooking attempt? Screaming and most definitely crying.

Look at us pretending to be sane (image credit: YouTube)

‘The road not taken looks real good now’ – ‘tis the damn season

Look: your gap year friends will be all over Instagram with their Costa Rica photo dumps, and you will regret turning that paid internship down. 

Don’t worry, though. The glorified JSTOR membership is definitely worth it. Right?

Every London student by the end of first term (image credit: YouTube)

‘I’m so sick’ – The Man

Between freshers’ flu, regular flu, remnant Covid, and whatever’s evolving on the surfaces of your halls’ kitchen, it’s time to stockpile those multivitamins.

*cough cough* No (credit: YouTube)

‘I enjoy walking Camden Market in the afternoon’ – London Boy

Definitely somewhere to visit when you first move in. Give it a week, though, and you’ll be barrelling up the middle of the road, coffee in hand, muttering darkly at the glacial tourists like the rest of us. Still, the cheesy naans are good.

‘Wasn’t it easier in your lunchbox days?’ – Innocent

It absolutely was, Taylor. Turns out first year is as much about warding off scurvy as it is about passing classes.

Rumour has it: the first one to trigger the fire alarm at 11pm with their burnt toast will have to live off crisps for a year

‘Rebekah gave up’ – the last great american dynasty

The fateful day has arrived: you’ve received your first “???” on a coursework essay. 

You’ll get this sooner or later. Simply unavoidable.

‘Now I’m begging for footnotes’ – tolerate it

The summative is due on Moodle in less than six hours. Maybe if you just stare at the screen long enough, those references will write themselves. (Or you can wait for that bad mark if you can tolerate it.)

‘Darling, I fancy you’ – London Boy

This is the polite but excruciating chat-up line you can expect to hear from private school lads at the pub. Later they’ll switch to more comfortable ground: telling you about their investment portfolio until you keel over.

The worst pick-up lines always come from a certain population (image credit: YouTube)

‘Oh my God, she’s insane’ – I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version)

You’ll find yourself muttering this one pretty regularly – both for the flatmate who lives at the library and the one who can skip any club queue but still needs directions for their seminar rooms in week five.

‘We’re all so tired of everything, we wait for trains that just aren’t coming’ – New Romantics

What you’d write to your early morning seminar leaders when RMT and TFL strikes hit again. 

Strikes are just something you’ll have to get used to in London

‘Long story short, it was a bad time’ – long story short

Group projects. Enough said.

It’s all chill though. You’ll (hopefully) end up with a degree like Taylor did (credit: YouTube)

Cover image credit: YouTube

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