Five things you learn about student living

From ice cold temperatures to mould-infested ceilings, here are the top five things Warwick students learn from student housing…


When you looked around your potential house for the next academic year, it seemed like a haven of opportunity, an escape from the suffocating atmosphere of campus accommodation, a chance to be truly independent and mature. You saw cute movie nights in your tastefully decorated living room, amazing house parties and Sunday night roasts with your house ‘family’.

Then you moved in.

Cue the mould, damp, dirty housemates, unimaginable cold and questionable décor. Here’s some things we’ve learnt since living in student housing.

1)    Décor is not important

Having a well-decorated house is about as likely as catching a U1 from north Leamington for a 9am.

Most houses will look like the “before” part of ‘Total Makeover: Home Edition’, completely with stained shag carpets that aren’t actually attached to the floor (it makes hovering a nightmare…that’s my excuse at least), curtains that are a) stained and b) resembling something your Nan thought was ‘trendy’ in the 70s, and peeling wallpaper with some suspicious looking marks.

You can try and decorate with pictures of your home friends, a groovy duvet cover and a nice rug (to cover the worst of the stains) but it’s unavoidable: you will be living in a décor disaster.

A pit to nurse your hangover in doesn’t really need decor, anyway

2)    In a house, sharing is caring

In halls everyone had their own special cupboards that (unless you were one of the delinquents in Rootes) no one messed with. Cutlery, food and crockery remained separate unless you explicitly stated that your shortbread biscuits are available to share.

In a house, suddenly everyone decides you live in a hippie commune and what’s yours is theirs. I personally don’t mind because I am regularly too lazy/forgetful to buy new food and on occasion some granola-snaffling has rescued me from a killer hangover, but for those more uptight about their possessions, boundaries must be drawn. If you want to keep something safe, for goodness sake just leave it in your room. Don’t put labels on things; don’t be that guy.

Finders keepers

3)    Being cold is character-building

You have not known cold until you have lived in a student house. This is for two reasons.

Firstly, the houses tend to be somewhat old and decrepit, letting in huge amounts of draughts and letting out any heat garnered.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, we are all too poor/terrible at prioritising to pay for heating. We would all rather spend money on terrible drinks in Smack and overpriced coffee in Café Library than have feeling in our hands at home.

Fun fact though, being cold for long periods makes you develop a different kind of fat that actually isn’t as fatty (http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/health/to-lose-weight-just-turn-down-the-thermostat-20130808). Now go and spend an hour of heating on some Dairy Milk.

The winter months mean a flood of Snapchats like these

4)    Mould and damp will become your new house-pets

I am yet to enter a student house without damp. The worst I’ve seen so far was one with an entire bathroom ceiling covered in inches-thick mould, but a close second has to be my friend’s three pairs of mouldy shoes from her wardrobe. Landlords will insist it’s your fault for not properly ventilating, but my remarkably mobile curtains beg to differ. Damp is seen as the slightly more glamorous of the two: a typical conversation between two student house dwellers may be as follows.

Person A: Oh man, I have so much mould in my bathroom right now.

Person B: That’s terrible! We actually have no mould. At all. We just have some damp.

Person A: *dreamily* Wow, what’s that like?

Person B: Like a very moist, lung-damaging heaven.

In all seriousness though, get the mould/damp sorted, it can make you really ill. That and it’s ruining the great décor in the bathroom.

Those with delicate immune systems should maybe reconsider student housing

5)    Having a sense of humour is of the utmost importance

There is no point being uptight in student housing. Bad things happen on an almost weekly basis, and your landlord will fight until the cows come home not to be the one to sort it out. It’s simple economics. Problems need fixing, fixing costs money, therefore problems = less money for them.

This pragmatism (and by that I mean cold-hearted selfishness) is annoying to some, but ludicrous to the point of hilarity to me. Whilst my mum went mental when our door dropped in the rain meaning I couldn’t open it myself, I just found it mildly amusing that our landlord’s solution was to rip up the lino by the front door (which he managed with his bare hands) and leave it in our front garden. Even ‘funnier’ was when we didn’t have a working shower for a fortnight, resulting in me getting my full money’s worth for my gym membership through use of their facilities.

The problems you are faced with are so ridiculous, there’s almost no point getting annoyed. Just take it as valuable life experience. A very cold, damp, over-priced learning curve that we all have to face.

So before you move into student housing, remember this list and go in there with your hopes at an all time low and your tolerance at an all time high. And remember, to quote High School Musical, WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

Oh and buy some thermals.