Undercover Fresher: The Week 9 Blues

It’s been another uneventful weekend spent revising (and avoiding the Situation), and I’ve got the blues. You know the ones – the Week 9 blues.

I’m about as burned out as an overused lightbulb, and the absence of any sort of break (thank you to the geniuses who got rid of Reading Week) has me crying myself to sleep.

My first exam is about four weeks away, and I know that I can’t be the only one who can’t believe how fast time has passed. The Bubble has effectively popped, and I am realising how close I am to heading home for the holidays. The “since-when-did-it-become-Week-9” attitude has taken over the mind of many a fresher, as most of us can’t believe that we lived through Raisin, much less that it was a whole two weeks ago.

After all, it seems like only yesterday that we were soaking our livers in alcohol and enjoying the orgy that was Freshers Week.

Now, everywhere you look, there are people tearing their hair out over the stress of impending deadlines. There are people who have been awake for so long that they are going to Dervish sober and before 10 p.m., which should indicate either the end of the world or the sheer amount of studying that they’ve gone through.

Realising that I’ve been living in the Bubble for 10 weeks now is like realising that my baby sister has just obtained her provisional drivers license…a prospect that is simultaneously scary and inconceivable. I still haven’t even been to the cathedral ruins, nor have I attended the Bop or Sin City. I’ve gone on the Pier Walk exactly once, and I still have no idea where Ma Bells is. I have graced the Lizard with my presence multiple times, though, so I might as well be a local (oh wait, most of the regulars are locals…).

Right now I am knee-deep in plans for when the library becomes open 24/7. There are plans to stay there for 48 hours straight (yes, I am one of those), and I’ve been scouting out the best places in the library in which to hole up and call my own. It’s wrong to barricade one of the group study rooms and make it my den, right? Thought so.

Before you know it, kiddos, exams will be over and we’ll all be whisked away to Barbados or the Swiss Alps. Or at least 1% of us will. The others will return home to drown our post-exams sorrows in the highly toxic (and alcoholic) egg nog that is present at family Christmas parties.