November: the month of the house hunt sweats

If you’re a fresher, it’s got to the time of year when that dark cloud of fear encloses in on you, a deadline moves in closer and closer, and you’re constantly borderline hyperventilating, clutching your estate-agent’s brochure for guidance in this equivalent of Sophie’s Choice. For most universities around the UK, this mysterious Chinese-whispers, probably lubricated by money-hungry estate agents and dickhead second-years, informs wide-eyed freshers that they ABSOLUTELY need to sign up for a house, like right now. In fact, you’re probably already too late and will have to live in a shit-hole like the back-end of Heaton.

What you think your house will be like

I’m sure some of you have already rushed into signing up to the first semi-decent maisonette you see, with some of your course mates and their flatmates that seem "really nice". If we fast-forward a year, Kim’s dropped out of uni, Bailey’s got a girlfriend who whips him harder than a jockey does a stallion, you had extremely awkward drunk-sex with Ben so every time you look at him you want to die, and Lilly is just really, really odd. Here’s a mind-fuck though: you don’t actually need to go through this turmoil. Log out of the panicked group chat, unclench your wrists, and close-down the millions of tabs of the Google search: "legit estate agents near me". There are thousands of student houses, so many that in fact, around February, some estate agents lower the price out of sheer desperation to flog ‘em. They don’t suddenly run out of six bed houses by the end of November, it’s a complete myth constructed only to panic you into making terrible decisions, like living with Matt from freshers who is actually a little bit racist but he’s a laugh.

The ultimate punishment for living with sesh-heads

However, the key to doing this well, is to work out what everyone’s doing, because if everyone you’ve ever liked at uni start organising a house together, you need to get involved pronto. Think about who you actually want to spend time with on a lonely Tuesday afternoon, dipping hob-nobs into black tea, because the milks gone a bit off, and discussing whether you should stay in or inevitably get shitfaced and go to Soho to make bad decisions. Do you actually want fit Jake from Economics to see you first thing after a mad night, or see his hairs block up the shower drain? And surely you will be denied access to your precious GBBO and First Dates if you live with all six of the lads from rugby? These questions are just some of the few that you need to seriously consider before signing up to live with a group of people for a whole year.

Do you want fit Jake from Econ to see you wearing socks and sliders?

Think about your priorities for second year too. If you want to smash a first, learn Mandarin, become captain of the badminton team and write for the student newspaper, then make sure you’re with at least one person who is similarly ambitious; otherwise, you might find yourself sliding down to their level and just getting stoned every wet Wednesday whilst watching Deal or no deal. But the most important piece of advice is: don’t panic. When you panic, bad decisions are made, much like when you don’t have time to pregame and proceed to down a 75cl bottle of supermarket own brand vodka. Only this time, the consequences aren’t a throbbing headache and an embarrassing video of you twerking to Skepta, they’re a torturous year of being the third wheel, as you're forced to watch your two other flat mates dry hump in the kitchen, as you eat your chicken korma.