University challenged

Who wants a doughnut and a pint?

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Back to school vibes are in the air once more as I am finally fulfilling a long-held aspiration to go back to university and start a PhD. I am excited to become a student again and curious to discover what has changed in the 20-odd years since I walked away from my graduation ceremony with a three-year hangover, a similarly sized overdraft and a vow that I was never going to write another essay as long as I lived.

T is excited that I am starting Big University at the same time that she is starting Big School and has helped me choose a new pencil case for the occasion. I also have a new laptop, though I am more in tune with the pencil case. Lizzie is not interested in academic endeavours or stationery but insists we need an urgent conversation about my ‘look’, although I didn’t realise I had one. She is particularly concerned because Big University is in London which everyone knows is a Fashion Capital and therefore requires you to up your game. I didn’t realise I had a game either, which may be part of the problem, but it appears I do and it has been judged lacking. Lizzie has dismissed my theory that if you just hang on to clothes for long enough they will eventually become fashionable again on the basis that this only works if your clothes were actually fashionable in the first place.  I have to concede that, once again, Lizzie is probably right.

It seems that Lizzie’s fears are well founded because Big University’s enrolment system can’t tell the difference between a perky hormone-fuelled 18-year-old and a knackered single parent with no style or social life, which means that before I can set foot on campus I am required to complete a mandatory online training course in sexual consent. This marks a significant difference between the Gen X student experience in the 1990s and the one Gen Z are fortunate to be having in 2024. The only induction challenge in my first week as an undergraduate - albeit not one condoned by the institution - was an event called the Doughnut Run that involved sprinting between the dozen college bars that were spread across the city and attempting to drink a pint and eat a doughnut at each one. If you hadn’t already thrown up by round six someone would be on hand to force feed you tequila and roll you down a hill. Nobody was talking about consent after that. Nobody was capable of saying much at all.

I managed to pass the consent training without any help from Lizzie and am therefore not considered a dangerous sexual predator, despite looking like a serial killer on my photo ID. This means I am free to get to know my fellow students, who are a much more diverse bunch than I encountered in my first experience of university life. It was a shock for 18-year-old me to discover, having chosen a university in the north of England, that my companions for the next three years were mostly Surrey public school types called Rupert or Caroline whose interests consisted of rowing, necking champers, braying at each other like Ralph Lauren donkeys, and pretending not to understand northern accents. Big University is thankfully very different to the extent that, so far, I have not needed to deploy my Posh Work Voice, though I have avoided going Full Yorkshire just yet because inexplicably I do still occasionally encounter people bigoted enough to believe that female + northern accent = must be a bit thick. Ask me about that in four years’ time.

So I am all set for the start of term. T is sharpening my pencils. Lizzie has appointed herself as my stylist, and as a starting point has sent me off to Smart Works to donate a bag of Twat Wear that I will happily never wear again. T has suggested that we celebrate with doughnuts. Is that wise? Let’s just skip the beer and tequila this time.