These innocent freshers are the BNOCs of the future

As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, everyone arrives at uni utterly clueless.

Even if you’ve taken a gap year and have come back a “changed” individual, you’re still not prepared for the unknown dangers and delights of university life.

With nowhere else to turn, this year’s batch of clueless freshers have taken to the internet to find answers to questions that range from the bizarre to the worryingly familiar.

Yes, reading them makes for great entertainment (particularly if you’re a smug second or third year). But remember this: every BNOC was a naive fresher at some point.

The fresher with the risqué fashion sense

A dress code? Really?

Sure, on the first day of uni, everyone makes an effort to impress and people actually bother putting on trousers that don’t come with an elasticated waist band.

By the end of second semester though, you’re lucky if everyone in your lectures isn’t wearing some form of pyjamas.

What this fresher is yet to realise is that they’ll reach a point where they either get an extra half hour in bed or they give a damn about what you look like.

Trust us when we say you’ll get to a point where there’s only one clear answer, and you shouldn’t need us to tell you which one it is.

What this fresher will be up to in third year

He’ll be the student everyone knows for their inappropriate and extravagant shorts and socks combos. Not that he’s gonna care what everyone else thinks.

Every year, there’s always one student who ends up dressed as if they have just dropped their kids off at school. I think we’ve found our guy.

The fresher who has never encountered ‘real life’ before

Everyone can pinpoint the exact moment they realised uni wasn’t going to be like an episode of Skins.

As it turns out, you have to deal with boring adult stuff that involves talking on the phone and reading letters that last more than one page.

It’s a rite of passage that Student Finance fucks you over at least once, so why not get it out the way before you’ve even started?

Trying to get Student Finance to help you now is a waste of time; you’d be more successful if you asked ask a mate if they have a spare £750 lying around.

What this fresher will be up to in third year

After years of being stuck on hold to Student Finance, this fresher will eventually decide the only way to fix the system is to tear it down and start anew.

When they’re not preaching revolution on campus and telling you how they didn’t receive their loan again, they’ll be living off 14p value noodles and bumming free drinks off you at every club night.

No matter how bad it gets, they’ll somehow never realise their problems would be solved by simply getting a job.

The fresher who thinks they’re Gordon fucking Ramsay

Every student remembers that one person they knew in first year who kept telling everyone how good at cooking they are.

This person isn’t in self-catered accommodation because it’s cheaper, they’re there because they actually want to cook.

What they don’t realise is that pasta and rice make up almost every student’s diet because that’s all anyone is able to afford after spending all their food budget on university meal deals and “spontaneous” nights out.

What this fresher will be up to in third year

By third year this student’s going to have taken things to the next level. Somehow defying the budget restraints that afflict everyone else (presumably by never going on nights out), they’re bringing proper home cooked meals to the library in brand new, high-end tupperware.

While you’re enjoying a nice casual packet of salt and vinegar Walkers, they’ll be biting down on Coq Au Vin and nailing that dissertation they’re working on. Do whatever you can to be invited round for dinner.

The fresher who never makes it out again after the first night of Freshers’ Week

Ask any experienced student and they’ll tell you they spend more time hungover and regretting life than actually attending lectures. Even saying they’re only occasionally hungover is pushing it really, unless that’s code for drinking the whole of Russia under the table before a 9am lecture.

What this fresher will be up to in third year

Wait, who’s that stumbling late into a lecture again? Oh, it’s just this student.

Having finally got to grips with hangovers, they’re now essentially a high-functioning alcoholic, able to produce the minimum work required while stumbling and staggering round the library, questioning if the night before was really worth it.

The fresher who thinks university will be an American Pie-esque sexual awakening

Credit where credit is due, at the very least you can’t say this guy didn’t try.

Depressingly, you can’t scroll down a Freshers page for more than two minutes without finding someone who’s trying to find someone to fuck.

While you’ve got to admire their (figurative) balls, the lack of replies are likely to be a bruise to this guy’s ego. Nobody wants to be known as the desperate guy who can’t get any.

Of course, what he doesn’t realise is that he’s jumping the gun. Freshers Week is full of relationships flourishing and imploding, he’s bound to find someone among the debris.

What this fresher will be up to in third year

Having had three years to refine and perfect his chat up lines, you’d think this student would at least have become a passable lothario. Instead, they’re out there in the clubs week after week, facing rejection after rejection.

By the end of third year they’ll eventually find success with someone who loves their elaborate pun-based wooing routine. Rather than make lightning try and strike twice, he’ll decide to quit while he’s ahead and make that person his partner for life.

They won’t ever get round to trying the entire karma sutra though.

The fresher who is already being way too organised

This is fresher naivety at its finest. Anyone who has been at UWE longer than a week can tell you the buses are shit.

This fresher will eventually realise the truth when they’re stood on the pavement in the freezing cold later this month. They got up early just to get this bus. Time passes, no bus.

More time passes, no bus.

Finally a bus does come but it decides to drive straight on by, ignoring the fact this student even exists. She shouldn’t worry though; it’s probably not personal.

What this fresher will be up to in third year

Waiting for the bus to arrive.