Swiv's Idea of a University
Created | Updated Sep 18, 2002
Swiv's Idea of a University
As you may have gathered if you have ever visited my personal space, I've just become a third year history student at the University of St Andrews. This year, I've moved into a house with four friends of mine, and just to add to the fun, my exams now begin to count towards my degree (St Andrews degrees take four years, the purpose of the first two being to get into the second two 'honours' years). So to celebrate all this new exciting-ness I decided to let The Post in on it. This week, the introduction – in a fortnight things will inevitably have happened so there'll be more to write about.
To begin… the house. We've just begun to move in, at the time of writing there are four of us in residence, our fifth arrives tomorrow. This week is freshers week, so we have a little time to get used to things, and next time you will get to here about the 'w**king' side of my life. There are three third year girls and two second year blokes in this house: Mary, Clare, Me, Dave and Jack, just you know (I'll get confused if I call them Boy 1, Girl 2 etc!). Mary and Clare are medical students, the rest of us are historians – the boys have designs upon my notes from last year. Jack and Mary are a couple, which is fun for the rest of us – they got together after we signed the lease, none of us actually wanted to live with a couple, now we get to see how we cope.
So far, it's going well. Dave and I arrived yesterday, Jack and Mary already here, and nothings been too uncomfortable. They kind-of-promised not to be couple-y around us, which we appreciate, and so far they've been good. We're busy decorating – taking down the hideous pictures our landlord left us, and replacing them with film pictures. We have an internet connection (actually, that was the first thing I did – before unpacking!). We're unpacked, boxes are in the loft, shopping has been done, under parental supervision to get us off to a good start, and we've even cooked, properly, for ourselves. Now we just have to get used to being around each other so much.
Classes start next week – this week I have to run around like a headless chicken buying all the things I might need, and matriculating – from being advised about my classes, to standing in queues for forms, to hand over fee cheques and walk past the loans desk (I don't have a loan this year – my dad gave up on the forms and decided loan me the money himself, so I'm allowanced). I'm supposed to be taking courses on The First World War, Colonial Africa, Roman Historiography and the Roman Republic from the Gracchi to Sulla. However I'm always hearing rumours that everything changes over the summer break – new staff are employed, new courses offered, old ones removed, but I home mine stay put, I'm looking forward to them.
