As a student fast approaching the end of my time at university, I can now look back on my experiences with both a fondly nostalgic, yet acutely critical eye. Luckily for me, it’s nothing worse than ‘Maybe I should have gone to that seminar’ or ‘I probably should have done more reading,’ but nonetheless there have been times where I feel I probably should have been a bit more on top of life. Depressingly, nothing has really changed midway into final year, and I know many of my fellow students are also swamped with the same feelings of inadequacy and, quite frankly, panic.
But then, I remind myself, that we just can’t be too hard on ourselves. While many of our CV’s aren’t as brimming as the graduate jobs market would like, and we only have about two connections on our LinkedIn, we have nonetheless gained many skills and powers that no other group has and, once we leave, will probably never be able to regain. So rejoice in student living and count how many super powers you have, but just remember: with great power, comes great responsibility (unless you’re hungover in which case don’t worry about it!)
1. The power of money manipulation
Great magicians never reveal their secrets… or at least that’s what I say when asked incredulously (often by parents) ‘Where on earth did all your money go?’ As that government loan rolls into the bank account at the beginning of each term, it is effectively entering a mystical realm where students have the magical power to make it disappear and reappear at will. While, it is true, we are often doing the former, when it comes to the issue of that extra Jagerbomb in Ocean it is nearly always possible to conjure that extra £10 from the ether.
2. The power of napping
To paraphrase a poem by Eleanor Farjeon, students sleep anywhere, any table, any chair. Whether it be that post 9am snooze in the warm embrace of your bed, or the accidental doze at the back of a particularly dry lecture, we have the ability to nap in almost any situation. In a student house it is not unusual to see an exhausted human draped across almost any surface, usually accompanied by some form of blanket and a soothing David Attenborough documentary in the background. Embrace the napping power – if you can retain it, it will come in use later in life for your soul sucking 7am commute to work.
3. The power of fancy dress
Before university, I had naively thought my days of extravagant fancy dress costumes were over. My World Book Day costumes had slowly become less inventive, the same going for my Halloween costumes, as my teenage self became far too cool for any of that rubbish. Student fancy dress, however, is on another level. You only need to see teams for the Seven Legged bar crawl to realise a lot of students put far more effort into their fancy dress costumes than their actual courses, often at a ridiculously low cost (see here the power of money manipulation). Conventional pairings also go out of the window; a Smurfette making out with a man in drag is not an unfamiliar sight in the club – yet another testimony to the weird yet oddly wonderful power that is student fancy dress.
4. The power of squalor endurance
Never again in your life will you be able to accept and live with the fact that the place where you live is slightly shit. Every household appliance is just a little bit broken, the cupboard doors are half hanging off and most of the light bulbs are blown, yet you accept it, because that’s just the student way of life. Some may call not replacing a light bulb laziness, but those people just don’t appreciate the pure creative skill that is involved in living in a house where half the lights don’t work. Far from being lazy or plain inept, we are the Bear Grylls-es of the modern age; fighting against the damp, cold and darkness for survival. Comfort is for the weak.
5. The power of optimism
All joking aside, being a student can be tough. The pressure to do well is enormous, especially in final year, and this, combined with the normal stresses of the average twenty-something year old graduate to-be, it is a wonder that more of us don’t crumble. The ability to stay optimistic and to carry on believing that everything will somehow be okay (fingers crossed), is a power that, when used properly, might just stop a person going mad. So if you too are stressing about only having skills that you can’t actually put on a CV, just remember everything will work out in the end. Probably.
Edited by Lucy Jackman
Sources:
http://giphy.com/gifs/money-disney-aladdin-3Jhdg8Qro5kMo
http://www.scrapbook.com/poems/doc/8991.html
http://www.academyofenergy.org/students-intro.html