Maybe you thought university would be like it is in the movies? If you did, you might be entirely wrong. One thing is true though: you’ve become trapped in the patterns of a cartoon character whether you like it or not. Don’t believe me? Here’s why.
1. Every morning you sprint to your first class like an anime character. Think I’m kidding? Google any opening scene to a shoujo anime and you’ll see yourself in the main character immediately. The constant ringing alarm clock, the overwhelming anxiety you feel as you literally spring out of bed, and the rush to get out the front door with a piece of toast in your mouth as you run to the bus or the lecture building. These are all things you and any anime character in a shoujo anime share. If this isn’t you, there’s definitely a chance that you’re a magical girl who teleports herself to class every morning instead.
2. You only have, at maximum, five main outfits in rotation. Maybe you’re not quite as basic as Velma Dinkley, with six hundred matching sweaters and skirts, but you’re getting there. You’ve worn the same t-shirt three days in a row, you’re getting sick of your favourite pair of jeans, and you have to sniff your generic-looking socks to check that those aren’t the ones you wore yesterday. Especially if you live in a more rural location, affordable clothing shops are a once in a blue moon deal, so either you do your shopping online or you suck it up and wear the same pokemon sweatshirt you’ve been wearing since last Monday.
3. The sports club genre is real. So, okay, there aren’t as many sports anime series focused on female sports teams, but if you’ve ever seen Kuroko’s Basketball or The Prince of Tennis, you’ll know just how intense it can get and how attractive the different archetypes of the teams are. University sports teams are a lot like this. Sure, nobody collapses in an emotional heap on the floor when they miss a goal, but the team spirit is certainly there. As somebody who is a part of the Falmouth University netball club, we have some fun and bond as a team (even if I’m only present for the social practices) and everyone is beautiful, vibrant and has a good spirit! Even if we’re joining sports clubs for different reasons, the kinship is there, and that’s something I identify with a lot when watching sports anime since joining a team at university.
4. You can eat massive amount of food. Maybe back home you had a semi-normal diet but it’s inevitable once you start living and shopping independently that you’ll end up deviating away from your parent’s shopping list in order to indulge in your favourite foods. Before you even have time to process what’s happened, you’ve turned into the reincarnation of Shaggy Rodgers himself, packing away pizza after cake after sandwich. I’m sure he’d be proud.
5. You arrived here as Spongebob, but the chances are you are now Squidward. By the time November rolls around I’m sure that the hype of university has worn off for most of us, especially as deadlines for the semester are drawing closer. Whereas Spongebob manages to retain a positive outlook on life regardless of the circumstances, it’s inevitable that now we’ve had to adjust not only to the increased work but the life-sapping tasks I’ve affectionately nicknamed ‘adulting’, we are sympathising with Squidward now more than ever. Remember that episode when he moved to a new town and everything was perfect for him, but as time went on his joy gradually drained away until he was sighing and frowning through things he enjoyed immensely? Yeah, don’t even pretend you haven’t been feeling that from time to time.
6. (Almost) every day, you learn something new about yourself and the other ‘characters’ around you. So life is harder now! So what? At least the advantage of being completely helpless and feeling super overwhelmed is that there are at least 1000 other people around you feeling equally as helpless and overwhelmed. Much like the plot of any cartoon, your day to day routines are constantly clashing with new problems, but when you take them head on and accept your responsibilities, things have a funny way of working out (not a guarantee, but at least be optimistic about it). At the end of the day, you can walk off into the sunset to the track of Don’t You Forget About Me, and deal with tomorrow’s problems as they come.