First semester was loads of fun, wasn’t it? Everybody was off enjoying being a fresher, or a re-fresher, getting hideously drunk, skimping on work, and spending too much money on expensive clothes before stumbling home for Christmas to gorge on free food. That seems like a long time ago now. Now we are presented with the unenviable watershed that comes as second semester begins to gradually phase into the gloomy, troubled times of third semester; generally the time when shit officially gets real.
This presents itself in many ways. Firstly there is your money, or rather the lack of it. The temporary growth spurt experienced by your wallet in the post-Christmas wash-out has well and truly dissipated, leaving you with a wad of tatty receipts where your money should be; a collection of souvenirs from better, more prosperous times. It was fun acting cosmopolitan in coffee rooms for a bit, but all those milky cappuccinos don’t come cheap, and now the only hot drinks you’ll be drinking are the ones you pour for yourself in your miserable, shitty little kitchen. Public transport is similarly a thing of the past, and you now have to trudge about everywhere telling your friends it’s just a new found love of power-walking. But they know better, and look at you from the bus as you splodge through the mud by the side of Otley Road, a look of disgust and quiet amusement on their smug better-off faces. You have no money and long to be home where you can leech off your parents like the despicable squib that you are.
Second semester means one thing, especially later on; work, and lots of it. Regardless of your course, second semester is the time when module co-ordinators deem it an apt time to chuck out as many essay titles as physically possible. I do have some tips for essay writing though. For starters, always prefix your essay title with ‘Neo-Classical’, as this lends your work a sense of undeserved academia; do this even when the title is set for you by the teaching staff, you can trust me when I say they will appreciate your individuality and see that their original title totally blows. Furthermore, no matter how shit your ending is (pretty shit, I’d say), make sure you end your essay by taking a couple of spaces and writing ‘Fin’ in curly letters in the centre of the paper; bonus points if you underline it. Your examiner will be fooled into thinking it’s a moody French art-house piece and give you a good mark. I’d give you another tip but I feel like you need to at least pull some of the weight here.
Worse still, if you are a craggy old sack-face third year like me, then you also have a dissertation to contend with, unless your course requires no dissertation, in which case enjoy playing in the sand-pit. The strains of having a very large, very scary body of work to compose are varied and all devastating. Not only do you have to come up with it all yourself but it also has to be vaguely interesting, or if not interesting, then at least coherent. Framing devices probably aren’t necessary though. Still, the dissertation will probably be the single biggest and most impressive thing you will ever do, before you finish your university career, realise that the real world doesn’t give two shits about you and spend the rest of your days in a box of Styrofoam singing Wild Horses to yourself and weeping in a puddle of your own stinking urine.
It isn’t just lecturers getting on your case either; there may well be trouble closer to home. This is more likely in second year, where your flatmates were picked in a giddy whirl of poor decisions in your first year. This is the time where you begin to realise that your flatmates are secretly complete sociopaths, about as alive to everyday reality as Paul Gascoigne after necking a bottle of cod liver oil tablets. Bickering begins and resentment fizzes like dastardly Polo mints in a bottle of devious Coca-Cola. Terrifying day-to-day quirks are uncovered, like your gradual realisation that the guy who lives above you has an epitaph to Carole Smiley hidden in his sock draw. High workloads drive people to forgo everyday habits, making kitchens nigh-on impenetrable and bathrooms nigh-on unsanitary. By final year you generally make more informed decisions though, and it is quite pleasant coming home to the knowledge that nobody therein wants to dowse me in a boiling wave of holy fire. This is always a plus.
Still, pressure is sort of a core element to your time at university, the same way minor misunderstanding inform approximately 99.9% of all sitcoms storylines. And either way, for most of us it’s a bit late to decide we don’t like university. It would be a bit like if Cheryl Cole turned around and said she didn’t like L’Oreal shampoo after spending so long saying words like ‘limp’ and ‘lifeless’ in her lovely Geordie accent. First semester is generally amazing and second semester is generally a time when cracks begin to emerge in that wonderful edifice, but that does not change the fact that some of the most important events from my time at Leeds, good or bad, have happened in this awkward middle ground between second and final semesters; it’s like the 48th Parallel of university education. Generally this period of the year is a time rife with change and new experiences, and it can all be very exciting if you take a chance to enjoy it, which granted, is not always easy. It is best to remember that Leeds University is one of the top institutions in the country, and that truthfully you will always look back on it all as a fantastic time, when you are older and inescapably dull. One day, even the strife you experience now will amuse you.