The “Do”s and “Don’t”s of Freshers’ Week

Do…

…make sure your small talk is smoking hot. Freshers’ Week is mostly drinking, small-talk, and small-talk while drinking. Prepare your go-to anecdotes, find some opinions to pass off as your own and know your phone number off by heart (or maybe make personalized cards with it on to hand around the JCR).

Think you don’t need advice on how to do small-talk without dying of boredom? You’d be surprised the amount of people who think A Levels is acceptable conversation.

Don’t…

…feel inhibited in Freshers’ Week. If you act like an idiot during Freshers’ Week, it’s Freshers’ Week. If you act like an idiot five or six weeks in, it’s probably because you’re an idiot.

Drank and wavy up in dis yolo

FW gives you a honeymoon period of being able to act weird, do stupid things or generally be outlandish, especially when you’re drunk. People will forget it later in the year when you’re actually friends (or don’t speak to them anymore).

So regret what you do this week, not what you don’t do.

Don’t…

…worry if you don’t have any friends on the first day because you probably will by tomorrow or the day after.

Within a couple of days (if not hours) most people latch on to someone else who laughed at the same joke as them, or who didn’t seem completely mental, to be their New Best Friend, their companion through a week of unknown and scary new faces.

Don’t…

…even worry if you end the week friendless or hating your college (LOL as if! #oxford4lyfe).

The reality is that people meet many of their long-term friends in Hilary (that’s the second term) or even later. Your degree lasts three years or more, a time when you and those around you all change a lot. So you needn’t pay attention to who you choose to shout drunken cliches at on the first few nights.

And don’t worry, if you don’t find anyone by Spring, it’s probably still not too late to transfer to UCL.