Go unto the world of good music...

Music is almost the most important aspect of common room life.

Originally, at the beginning of the year, you start out by playing modern anthems - Tenacious D, Less than Jake, the Foo Fighters and the rest of the new rock revolution - alongside the classics that have influenced them. Hendrix, Queen, Nirvana, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Beatles, The Who and all the other favourites past and present are there for us to make fools of ourselves to.

But then as the year progresses towards Christmas you realise your childhood is slipping away. That's when the old, frighteningly redundant and absurdly catchy tracks of your youth start to re-emerge. They haunt you as they reappear from that selection of CDs you refuse to be parted with, but had hidden away, out of sight, until such times as they would be needed.

The Macarena. Saturday Night by Whigfield. Trouble by Shampoo. And of course the classic boy bands - Boyzone, Take That, East 17 and the Backstreet Boys. Shame and embarrassment are badly disguised by sheepish laughter and painful confessions of knowing the words as you sing along. Endless dance and Party albums, the Ibiza party anthems, remix after remix of some band's one hit wonder, which we strive to remember the dance moves to. Repetitive, formulaic crap but at least the shame is almost drowned out by the sheer volume of the sound system.

But where would our musical tastes be without these diabolical diatribes and dire tracks we listened to in Primary School?

More to the point, why does the prospect of the end of 6th year - the end of our high school careers and the beginning of the rest of our lives - terrify us so much that in order to keep grasp of what little time we have left we must resort to reliving these painfully awful pieces of memorabilia?

To the class of '97 I would make this one heartfelt plea...

Leave the past as a pleasant quiet memory and go into your future not playing such bloody crap music!!!