The top 10 bad decisions everyone makes in their first year at uni!
A Levels are over - it's time for your first year of Uni. You're living by yourself for the first time, thrown into an environment where going out, having too much fun and drinking too much is expected of you before you’re forced to mature into a proper adult.
Making questionable decisions and (hopefully) learning from them is all part of the uni package. If you can’t make these 10 bad decisions at uni, then when can you?
1) Drunk dialling your new pals
For those of us who struggle to keep our drunk alter-ego in check, university can present a huge problem - a whole new selection of people available for drunk dialling and texting. Picture the soul-crushing moment when you wake up after a big one to find your phone filled with embarrassingly overenthusiastic messages to a range of people you have literally just met. You’ll be left hungover and ashamed, vowing never to drink that much again before you go and do it all again the next night.
2) ‘I’ll get this round’
These four words can empty a student bank account. The drunk alter-ego strikes again, screaming ‘drinks on me!’, in an attempt to impress your new friends. As soon as the words slip out of your mouth you’re suddenly everyone’s best friend and wind up at the bar paying unspeakable amounts, well aware you’ll never see any of these drinks promised to you in return.
3) Choosing your second year housemates in the first month of freshers
In a trend which appears to make absolutely no sense, student housing is deemed an issue to be sorted fairly early on into the academic year. Come November the freshers flock to the city estate agents in their thousands, excitably organising their houses for the following year with people they’ve known for approximately 5 weeks. Fast forward a year down the line and you’ll be one of the lucky few if you’re not sat dreaming of a better time when you can move into a house with your real friends...
4) Skipping your first lecture
Signalling the end of your days as a keen bright-eyed ‘fresh’ and the beginning of your journey towards becoming a true student, this is the first step in a downward spiral. Those infamous words, ‘I’ll just miss this one’, are long forgotten as days rapidly turn into weeks and 10 months down the line you suddenly find yourself sat staring hopelessly at exam papers which may as well be written in Chinese for all the sense you can make of them.
5) Ordering that Jägerbomb that just tips you over the edge
It may seem like a great idea at the time but ordering that one drink that tips you over the edge from drunk into a paralytic heap on the floor is most certainly one bad decision we’ve all made, and will probably make again. No one wants to be the one collapsed outside the club covered in their own sick as your friends check for a pulse, but hey, it happens to the best of us.
6) Going out the night before a 9am lecture/seminar..... Every week
If you have a 9am lecture on a Thursday morning its almost guaranteed that Wednesday will suddenly become your favourite night out. Whether the music’s better or if everyone’s birthday seems to miraculously fall on this particular day, there will always be some reason why it’s an unmissable night, every single week. And every single week you’ll wake up the next morning with a banging headache, a mouth drier than the Sahara and an overwhelming sense of regret as you stumble into your seminar - if you’re not still drunk that is.
7) Sleeping with people you shouldn’t
Regardless of how good an idea this may seem in your drunken state, sleeping with people on your course, in your halls or flatmates is always a terrible idea. Unlike any other conquests, chances of awkward encounters with ‘Alex down the hall’ are not only likely but entirely unavoidable. Similarly, after seeing each other naked, being asked to share thoughts on the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s with ‘Sam from your course’ will make you want to spontaneously self-combust.
8) Staying up until 3am on your nights in to watch Netflix
When the time finally comes that you decide you’ve been going too hard and need a bit of a break, it’s only fair that you treat yourself to Netflix and an early night. However the whole point of an early night is entirely defeated if you find yourself up at 2am anyway, vowing to watch just one more episode of The Walking Dead. You’ll wake up just as tired the next day even if you do have the added perk of being hangover free. Doesn’t stop us all from doing it though, not our fault they make these shows so addictive.
9) Spending your student loan on Dominos
When we’re forced to cook for ourselves a large Texas BBQ is just so much more appealing than yet another bowl of pesto pasta. Even though those Freshers Fair vouchers ensure you have discounted pizza for the entire year, something we all seem to forget is that discounted does not mean cheap. Not only a drain on your bank account, the combination of too much alcohol and frequent Dominos does absolutely no wonders for your summer bod. But let’s be honest - it’s so worth it.
10) Leaving coursework until the night before, or even worse the morning before
We’ve all done it, we’ve all been up until the early hours of the morning scribbling furiously to get it all done and we’ve all regretted it when we’ve been given our marks. At the end of the day though, it’s first year. Anything over 40% is an added bonus, enjoy it while you can.
