Comment writer Nicole Harmer looks at the outsider's perspective on the often-criticised student lifestyle.
Going home to a warm house, an endless supply of clean cutlery and cooked meals that include a good old pile of greens used to be all I expected from my trips back home. However, the longer I am away from my blessed home town, I receive more (arguably affectionate) abuse from my beloved friends upon my return. I now can no longer take out my purse at my local pub to buy a second glass of wine without one of my nine to fives exclaiming from behind their casually opened collar, “Not on my taxes mate!”
Students are notoriously disliked by a lot of society. I've lost count the amount of times I've had a so called normal person have a good old vent at me for descending upon their town. We drink, we sleep, we make cheese toasties and then we riot when this glorious life is grabbed so monstrously from our unwashed hands. I'd like to propose the simple idea that, some of us (albeit most likely not all of us) aren't just at university to spend our days hungover and watch back to back episodes of Jeremy Kyle, although we are all guilty of this every now and again. Some of us are here to study. This involves not being the lazy layabouts who are supposedly draining government money.
"Students are notoriously disliked by a lot of society."
My degree is literature-based (cue: “That’s just reading books, isn’t?”) This involves reading three to four novels a week minimum, and that’s without any research or any critical reading. On top of this, I have to cope with paying a silly amount of money for seven hours of contact time a week. In fairness, I need time to be reading the tower of books that doubles as a useful draft excluder in my bitterly cold house. Then there are commitments to societies, birthdays and visits. Finally, ice this slightly bitter, cliched cake with the hours I work on days off, something I have to do to pay for an education I can’t really afford.
I manage to do all these things with a perceptual hangover because it is possible to play hard and work hard. So, I will have another glass of wine because I can safely say I've never felt so busy but never so fulfilled. I you’ll excuse me, I have to spend the afternoon reading Shakespeare in a coffee shop.