The Frustrated Finalist: Dear Freshers, I Hate you

Harry Hodges shares the trials and tribulations of being a finalist.


For starters, you all look so bloody young.  I went on a ‘Bring a Fresher’ crew date last week and, far from being an enjoyable break from revision, it was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. 

I am so old and jaded and you freshers are all so enthusiastic and excitable.  I’ve got news for you: IT WON’T LAST.

Exhibit A: From matriculation bop to library flop

You all look beautiful and fresh-faced now with your other halves from home and your bagless eyes and your functioning organs.  Enjoy it while you can you smug little bastards; they’re going to leave you and those all-nighters will take their toll whether you spend them in the Bod or in Park End.  Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I got ID’d in Tesco and it’ll happen to you too.

Recently I got an e-mail about alumni benefits.  Until today my biggest e-mail worry was trying to work out who signed me up for incessant missives from the ‘Marxist Communication Society’ way back in Michaelmas 2010.  Now I have my impending bod card relinquishment slapping me in the face whilst you youngsters get the relative joys of wrangling with an overly zealous comrade.

Worst. E-mail. Ever.

You’re stressed and I loathe it.  You need 40%. Some of us need jobs and we need them soon.  I have friends with £40k a year riding on the next four weeks so shut up about your stupid prelims; I don’t care, your tutors don’t care, your mates don’t care.  Spend your whingeing time doing something useful and make some coffee for those of us with actual grown-up revision to do.

This man needs a 2.1 to get his job, please don’t make it harder than it already is

On a related note, get out of the library.  We need that space for important books and revision stuff not for your airheaded and puerile assaults on the foothills of knowledge.  If you absolutely must be in the library don’t you dare take any books away, make a noise or even look at a finalist.  This is our holy sanctum, our inner temple of intellectual nirvana; it is not to be contaminated by your only mildly annoying workload.

Finally, stop going clubbing.  I miss it so badly.  The sticky feel of Park End’s floors, the inevitable suited tossers in Camera, Old Man Bridge’s kindly smile, the drunken trip to Ahmed’s/Mehdi’s/Hassan’s and the joyous reliving of the previous night’s antics over a medicinal breakfast are all long gone.

You all rub it in with your ‘Shuffle Nights’ photos on facebook, bedraggled walks of shame and the inevitable screaming into college at four in the morning when your elders are trying to either sleep or concentrate.

I was in the library…

In fact, probably best to just stay away from me until the end of sixth week.  I promise I’ll at least try and cheer up then.