h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They say never judge a book by it's cover, well the same can be said for the first two weeks of university.

The first two weeks are an assault on the senses like none other. You meet more people than you could even begin to imagine, you sign up for every club, society and sect that you think appeals (juggling, judo, Free Tibet, Bavarian Devil Worshippers Inc., etc) and then spend the next 4 weeks avoiding everyone just in case.

I can remember bounding up to everyone like an over-exuberrant puppy and introducing myself to them. 1 month later and the majority of them had fallen by the wayside with only the core group still hanging around although and the odd clinger on, lingering like a bad smell.

Each day was spent gallavanting around your chosen city of study, visiting the "sites". Every evening was spent in an alcoholic blur where you proceeded to inflict yourself on someone new. At least you think thought they were new. In reality you'd met them the night before (and usually the night before that) in an equally drunken state and bored them rigid about your fascinating collection of sub-tropical molluscs.

You didn't wash for two weeks as the one thing you forgot to bring in your University Survival Pack was a towel and soap. Clothes all adopt the pleasant aroma of lager filled ashtray. You soon realise that if you pile all your clothes in one corner of the room after you've worn them, by the time you run out and find yourself wearing the jumper that granny knitted and the jeans that are both three sizes too small and stone washed, those that are festering at the bottom of the pile have cleaned themselves - so you turn it over and start again.

The only problem now is underwear. You've worn all your clean pants, what now? Is this the beginnings of an International Incident? Of course not. Back to front and then inside out gives you at least another three days of wear.

This of course is what people tell their parents (just to let them know that Hippy-ism hasn't died). In reality, by the end of the first week, you were so exhausted you spent the next week sleeping which only demanded one set of clothes and a new liver.

Wild and crazy days they were, and so they should be. It's not school, you're free to do what you want, whenever you want ... just so long as you get used to the !