Don’t get me wrong, my first year of university was pretty awesome. Now having reached third year I more than occasionally wish that I could be a Fresher again. However I have to admit that I spent a large majority of the daylight hours of my first year tucked up in bed, fast asleep.
I think I must have been a typical Fresher. Fortunate enough to live in Furness, I was pretty much in the centre of campus; I was able to get up fifteen minutes before a lecture started (no matter how late in the day that may be) then just about manage to get through the fifty minutes of learning (I have been known to leave halfway through if the lecture lasted any longer), and then go back to bed. I’d pull myself back out of bed to eat, and then, more often than not, go out. I suppose you could say I was more of a night owl than an early bird – after going out I was basically too tired to bother getting up again.
I have to admit that I have nothing but good memories of this sleep filled life that I led, but it did have its disadvantages. For one, I was permanently ill. Maybe it was the lack of sunshine and vitamin D in my body, or the severe lack of exercise, (that, to be fair, is still not a problem I have managed to remedy) but seriously, the walk to the doctors became a weekly occurrence for me, and I was getting the most random illnesses I’d ever had – my ear even swelled up at one point. My sleeping habits seemed to have given me the most severe case of Fresher’s flu anyone’s ever had, it was unpleasant to say the least.
As well as the plague that I was apparently living with, sleeping so much meant that I did miss out on rather a lot. It may be blasphemous to say this, but even SCAN meetings were forgotten about when it meant I could spend that little bit longer in bed. I did the typical thing of joining about a million societies in Fresher’s week, but not one become a regular habit when I realised it meant getting out of bed.
I suppose the lesson to learn here is that you shouldn’t let going out every night become the sole purpose of your existence in your first year. Believe it or not, there’s more exciting things at university than those that can be found in a bottle, or (no innuendo intended!) in your bed.
