House Hunters: Stop Panicking & Leave Me Alone

A knock at the door? Of a student house? Surely this is some kind of mistake. Only postmen and people selling tempting but ultimately unwanted internet deals call at the door of a student house. This isn’t any of those. Instead its more students, unannounced and more than a little unwanted.

That’s right, it’s the house hunting time of the year again. It’s that time when freshers come to judge your living habits and poke around in the nooks and crannies of your room, ready to make them their own. The one time of year you are obliged to invite total strangers into the comfort of your home. It’s like the world’s most depressing house party.

From the moment they enter they’ll be eyeing up your space, planning to replace your week old milk with a shiny new bottle and use your sock drawer for pen lids and paper clips. It’s a little known fact, but you must not offer them a seat or a drink, or they will already legally own all of your possessions.

Get it sorted soon if you want to avoid this.

It’s the time of year when the mad dash for a house forces you into believing that its now or never. You must instantly latch onto the nearest group of people, most of which you’ve known for less than a semester. It’s easy to see why there’s such an air of panic about it. After all, the streets of Norwich are lined with students alone and cold in the woodland shack they were forced to build themselves out of mulched essay feedback. Oh, you haven’t seen them? Of course you haven’t, because despite the initial terror that you’ll end up renting a rat infested ditch, there always seems to be enough student housing to go around. I’ve yet to see any students settling a dispute over living arrangements with violence.

I know of plenty of people who worked themselves into a frenzy worrying about houses, and all of them have a roof over their heads and a floor beneath their feet. And at the risk of sounding like a particularly obnoxious self-help guru, it’s not the house but the people in it that matters.

For both of our sakes, just get out.

Nobody can blame you for wanting to get it sorted as soon as possible, and if you do then allow yourself a pat on the back. But if you don’t, I highly doubt that you will end you will end up outside the house of a friend, scratching at the door to be let in. House hunters: stop worrying, and let me sleep in peace.