Throughout all of my adolescent life I have heard the tall
and fantastical tales of freshers. The crazy parties, the monumental nights
out, the stories of experience and pleasure shown not only through the words of
the person telling the tale, but through the nostalgic look that takes a hold
of their face when pressed for information. The anecdotes of alcohol induced amnesia,
the frivolous flings and multitude of mysterious strangers who, after a week of
getting shitfaced together, become your friends for life. These were the tales
I was told; the expectations I had when I arrived at uni and yet my experiences
were something altogether…different. Now I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the
week, or that I avoided heavy drinking and socialising; I went out for 7 days,
ate little, drunk lots and overall did everything that is expected of a child
coming into adulthood – the brunt definition of a fresher. But the feeling I
was left with afterwards was not that warm glow of memory, it was not the
feeling that that week had changed me as a person in some irrevocable way, and
improved me in some form or another. No, instead there was a grand feeling of
nothingness. A void, not melancholy nor sad, but equally not warm and nostalgic
– fresher’s week appeared as any other week.
The truth of fresher’s
is that you meet a lot of faces, talk to a lot of people from a lot of
different places and begin to feel like you’re some kind of prom king from an
American film, a popular person who knows and is known by everybody. But you’re
not; for every 15 people you talk to you will be lucky to form one lasting
friend, and this friend will in all likelihood not be someone who is as close
as the friends you had at home. The truth of fresher’s is that these crazy
stories that are created are the majority of the time born out of over-exaggerations
and the anecdotes of other people. The main benefit of Freshers, and the main
friends that you will make, are those of your flat and the floor of your halls.
These are the people that you will most likely grow close too, not the hundreds
of people in other halls and in the clubs, but the people you first meet. This
is the only benefit of fresher’s, the rest of the drunken stories are either
hyperbolic, or idiotic.
Now this may sound like the rambling of some 21st
century hermit, living in seclusion from the world. You may also think this is
written by somebody who isn’t social and who doesn’t enjoy clubbing, and to a
certain extent you would be right to think so. I go clubbing frequently, yet I
would not class myself as somebody who ‘enjoys clubbing,’ and I have plenty of
friends, but I am by no stretch of the imagination a socialite. I am merely
putting forward my opinion on fresher’s week on the whole. It’s fun, and people
undoubtedly make memories and friends by participating, but in 30 years’ time
when I reach my mid-life crisis and send my mind back through the mists of
nostalgia, will I see fresher’s? I think the answer to that question is
abundantly clear.
Now I’m not trying to persuade any upcoming undergraduates
that it’s terrible and you won’t enjoy it, on the contrary most people, myself included,
thoroughly enjoy it. But it is not fundamental, you will not cherish the
memory; you will most likely never forget the events, but you will not cherish
them. They will be anecdotal, the same drunken stories that I myself heard and consequently
built up fresher’s to be this utopian week – this ‘utopian’ week – and therefore
the cycle will be repeated. Despite this, I shall not hold onto the feelings of
Freshers as an epitome of my youth. What I will hold onto are the feelings of fulfilment
of my adolescence; the private rooms in my head where the most precious
memories rest, more valuable than any materialistic venture, more valuable than
love and hate and companionship – my gold.
Freshers is unique. Filled with the mystery of new people
and the possibility of new futures, yet all of this appears to be a masquerade
of vanity and false niceties, with the true friends you make boiling down to
those you would have made whether you threw up in their kitchen sink or not.
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