The Freshers’ Guide: making friends

The things The Stand wishes people had told us about making friends during Freshers’ Week:

1) You’re a Fresher. You’re Keen

Leave your pretensions at home. You can reclaim them second semester (and, since this is St Andrews, by then you will probably have picked up a few more) but it is imperative that during Freshers’ Week you have none. This is important, because your newly lowered social standards will enable you to follow the golden rule of Freshers Week: You’re a fresher, thus you are keen. You will say yes to everything. It doesn’t matter who you are back home: you’re still a fresher, which means you’re not too cool for anything (yet). Karaoke night in your hall? Great news, you’re going! Why? Because you’re a fresher, and you’re keen. (More importantly, hall events = free alcohol).

2) BFFFs – Best Friends For Freshers

Don’t worry about making friends during Freshers’ Week. You’ll emerge on the other side with a close group of best friends. While they may seem like your new BFFs, they’re actually BFFFs: Best Friends For Freshers. As Evelyn Waugh said in Brideshead Revisited, “you’ll find you spend half of your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first.” In St Andrews this phenomenon tends to begin in October and lasts through second semester.

Because you won’t remain with your BFFFs forever it’s important to stay smart, just as you would if you were undercover with a Mexican street gang. Just like a gang, it’s a fiercely loyal group that soon will be busted (although instead of being busted by law enforcement it will be broken up by regular uni life and actually getting to know them). With this in mind it’s probably not the best idea to share your deepest secrets. Nor is it a good idea to fail to maintain social ties outside your BFFFs. In order to escape a dissolving group of BFFFs (or a street gang, for that matter) you will need a solid external support system or else you will be left with no friends at all!

3) Freshers Goggles

As a fresher, everyone you meet will seem far more attractive and intelligent than they actually are. Yes, St Andrews is full of the brilliant and beautiful, but freshers are in no position to judge this. They are oblivious to the fact that they wearing something far worse than beer goggles, as it plagues the sober too: freshers goggles.

The atmosphere of Freshers’ Week is both euphoric and manic. When this is combined with a full week of heavy drinking, it results in freshers goggles. Keep this in mind when deciding whom you will and will not pull. A note to international students: the novelty of the accents and ‘Britishisms’ has the potential to dangerously enhance freshers goggles.

Basically, everyone might as well be rolling during Freshers. They definitey act like it.

Image: Ed Noel