Well, as you know, I am a student so it only seems fitting that my next topic should be university.
I currently attend Leeds Trinity University College, and I am studying for a BSc in Forensic Psychology, and from what I've gathered so far, it's not bad. In fact, it's brilliant if you compare it to my last university. Yes, I have been to two different universities and due to dropping out of the first shambles of an education establishment, I am currently retaking my first year.
Now my old uni was quite a well-known, even prestigious, central London university. On paper and in the prospectus it was brilliant, but in reality it was a big bag of shite. The entry grades for my course were BBB, I got BBBB. Now I know that these grades of mine are pretty average and not exactly Oxbridge standard, but I worked my little arse off for them and I'm proud of that. So when I got to said university and discovered that only about 5% of the people on my course had actually achieved the required grades, I was a little bit disappointed. Some people had even been accepted with as low as CDD. I'm sorry but what is the point of even setting entry requirements if you're just gonna let anyone in?!
Also, the uni was big, unfriendly and impersonal. Reception staff were rude at best, lecturers cared more about money and reputation than the students, and my lectures were taught in a shabby room that contained just rows of tatty chairs with no tables, meaning that you had to balance your notes on your leg, in a listed building on one of London's most iconic streets, and was constantly having construction work done on it so lectures and seminars were constantly interrupted by the sound of banging and drilling. When I'm paying over £3k a year to be at a 'top' university I would at least expect a table to lean on.
Now as I was living 200 miles away from home I stayed in halls of residence. These again were located in the heart of the capital, and cost me £148 a week for a room that resembled a shoebox with an 'en-suite' bathroom (it was a toilet and a shower in a cupboard) and a kitchen/dining room shared with 5 other people. Now I met one of my flatmates within the first few hours of moving in and stayed friends with her for the rest of the time I was there, but I just wish I could say the same for the rest.
I made friends with another girl that lived there too but she moved out and left university after a few months (not that I can blame her, to be honest I wish I'd gotten out sooner), but the 3 guys I lived with can only be described as arseholes.
On the first day I met two of them. Let's call them Country Boy and Apu (namely so for his Indian accent very similar to that of The Simpsons' character). My first impression was that Country Boy was a nice guy. I'd only met Apu briefly as he was going for dinner at The Ritz with his parents. Yeah, exactly.
The next day Cliche Indie Guy moved in. My first thought was 'wow, he is fit'. That night was the halls welcome drinks in the SU and after way too much alcohol we ended up in bed together. Bad, bad idea. This 'arrangement' carried on for a few weeks until I found myself doing his washing and cooking his meals. Hence him soon afterwards saying that he felt like we were an old married couple.
In order to be civil though, I accepted the invite to go to a random house party with Cliche and Country. It ended with Cliche pulling a Swedish prostitute, me swigging straight vodka stolen from a stranger's fridge, being the 'crying girl at the party' in an upstairs bedroom whilst a couple shagged on the bed and a beardy man gave me a tissue (for my tears of course) and leered at my breasts, me drunkenly screaming at Cliche and telling him exactly what I thought of him (which was that he was a spoilt little rich boy who thinks he can treat people like shit, and I hope he'd caught HIV off that little Swede whore), and then me stumbling into a cab at 2am and not being able to remember my own address. And the next morning, when I emptied my handbag, I discovered that I had also stolen some fridge magnets which spelt out the word 'poo'.
But anyway, me and Cliche, and Country for that matter (the two of them had some gay bromance going on), never really saw eye to eye again for the rest of the year. I clearly had feelings for the prick and seeing him bringing different girls back every night didn't exactly makes things easier for the first few months. In fact, by the time it had gotten to the last term, I'd made several complaints about him to halls management as he'd always 'coincidently' decide to have a party in our kitchen the night before every single deadline of mine. And if I politely asked him to turn the music down I'd get the reply of 'suck my cock'. Nice.
And Apu...Don't even get me started on Apu. In the first week in halls my iphone got stolen. I'd only had it 5 months as it was a birthday present, and I absolutely loved that phone. The sat-nav on it was getting me around London and my whole life was on that phone, my numbers, my photos, my music. So...I'm in the kitchen with my flatmates and I leave my phone on the kitchen table whilst I pop into Cliche's room for 10 minutes. I then return to the kitchen to find that the door to our flat is propped open, our kitchen is full of randomers and my phone is nowhere to be seen. Now, it was Apu who had opened the door and had invited all of these strangers into our flat, so it was his fault that my phone had got stolen, and that it wasn't covered by insurance because the door was open, so therefore it was his responsibility to buy me a new phone. He insisted that he couldn't afford to replace it but he gambled away £550 at the casino the following night.
Now, imagine being 200 miles away from home, your first experience of being completely alone, and your phone, your only primary contact to your family and friends, being taken away. It was heartbreaking.
Don't get me wrong, I did have some amazing times in London. I met some lovely people and made some great friends, and I love that city so much. But the university itself, a place where lecturers take a month to respond to an e-mail and still don't know your name after 6 months, ruined my experience, along with with my wanker flatmates.
As much as I miss London, I'm a strong believer in fate, that things, no matter how shitty they are, happen for a reason. And I think I've done the right thing moving back home and going to Trinity, but I am glad that I got the independence and experience of living in the best city in the world.
At the end of the day, whichever uni you go to, whether the lecturers give a shit or not, if you get tables to lean on or not, they're all a huge rip off. I didn't expect to be paying over £3k a year to watch someone prance around reading off of a powerpoint presentation. I'll be honest, I did expect more for my money. But I suppose you have to make the best of what you've got right?
At times I get severely stressed about my workload and just think that I'm not cut out for uni at all. But then again I think, why let it get me down? I'd rather come out with a 2:1 at the end of it and have had a good time, rather than get a first and have had no life at all.
Because really, what good is it being clever if you don't know how to handle your Jagerbombs?!
