We all know you were lying about yourself during freshers’ week

Freshers means being thrown into alcohol-fuelled bonding with absolute strangers – and apparently the best way to make friends is to lie through your teeth.

Everyone gets a fresh start when they arrive at University, a chance to discard the real you and transform into a perfected being overnight.

But if you met your best friend, significant other or current flatmates during Freshers, then the chances are that your relationship was founded on lies.

I had only just met these people but we are pretending to be best friends already.

You dealt with Freshers the way you would a first date; not necessarily lying but bending the truth to come across as the coolest version of yourself. Supposedly there’s no harm to a little self-editing, like in real life Instagram for your socialising.

A common type of liar is the chameleon. These characters are defined by their insecurity and need to fit in to feel safe around new people. They are most likely to be seen nodding furiously along with the loudest person in the room: “I agree completely”, “You cannot even understand how much I can relate to that”, “It’s totally insane how similar we are in every little thing.”

You didn’t want to admit that I had never been clubbing before so  invented a few stories about crazy night out drinking tequila, because it always seems to be tequila in movies.

Unfortunately this little fib meant that there was no one to watch out for poor old you on the first night out, separated from your new found friends and had trekking your way home alone.

At the end of the day, the world has sold you a fat, stinking lie about freshers’ week being the greatest week of your life. In a strange place with no safety net, or real dependable friends, how are you meant to achieve the peak happiness of your existence?

And yet because people buy into this idea and it turns them into devious little deceivers, maybe even without them even being aware of it.

Perhaps lying is just a necessary evil in the a string of never ending, not-so-fabulous nights out that is Freshers’ Week.

You’ll declare people your best friend, despite meeting them by chance and probably never again by reading week. You assure everyone in the freezing, hour-long queue, along with yourself, that you’re loving life.

It takes a certain doctoring of reality to be able to convince yourself and each other that you love spending every other morning bent over the toilet bowl puking up jaeger, kebab and glitter.

‘We’re not even drunk.’

Lying becomes a crucial defence mechanism for dangerous times. Fake names, numbers and imaginary boyfriends are fool-proof ways to send the persistent sharks in the Copper Rooms off to seek out another prey.

If you had a dark past pre-uni then there is no time better to cast off the tarnished reputation, than when surrounded by friendly strangers in a new place. Portray a picture of faux-innocence, don’t be that person again.

Be honest, though. How much of what your friends and ex-fresher-friends said during that first week do you remember? It’s all about who pulled the bouncer or who managed to set toast on fire.