[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When I came to LSE I had a dream. I had a dream deeply rooted in many a student’s dream. I had a dream that I would found my own start-up by the age of 20, be living off innocent smoothies and expensive whole foods, and potentially be running against Trump in the presidential election.
But no. Life happened. Reality kicked in. And reality has a thing for making you spend all your precious money on washing up liquid rather than innocent smoothies, and forcing you to ring up Thames Water in that precious 2 hours you could have spent schmoozing with venture capitalists or wooing potential delegates.
Reality also enjoys throwing rat infestations at you, making you wash bin juice off your hands, and lumping you with bills that really should not represent the price of a few cold showers (Jill at Thames Water- I’m talking to you). Instead of being best friends with Cara Delevingne, the only time I feel close to celebrity life is when I decide to splash out on some £2 grapes or wear a pair of tights which don’t have a hole in.
Sometimes, at that end of that dark, LSE tunnel decorated with quadratic formulae and Machiavelli quotes, I see a gleam of light. This gleam of light comes when Islington Council are playing some inspirational Mozart down the phone while I’m put on hold calling about council tax exemption.
I realise that this is the student life. And student life can be fun, in a cheap, Co-op £6 cava kinda way. We can make the best out of it, because we are young, and we are all in it together. And that sounds like some sort of High School Musical cliché, and what is better than a bit of High School Musical to cheer us all up after a 9am lecture.
Term has started, so welcome back to that student life. Get ready to swap mum’s roasts for the Tesco discount aisle, and sunset views on the warm Caribbean beach for nights at Zoo, which are also warm but in a sweaty, being unavoidably pressed against a half-naked rugby player kind of way.
Shake off the shackles of last year. Throw away that banana costume you bought when drunk and thought was funny but actually cost the price of two weeks’ worth of couscous. You don’t need that banana costume. No seriously, throw it away.
Forgot the sour memory of being hungover in a Peacock Theatre lecture and leaving half way through to go nap on a beanbag. Let your mind run naked and unburdened into the new term.
Buy something wild and crazy that you would never have expected to buy. Like a textbook. Embrace that textbook. Give it a name that isn’t quite as daunting as ‘Complex Concepts of Linear Algebra’, because that name is scary and threatening and it would much prefer to be called Bob.
Love Bob, because Bob could get you a first this year.
Enjoy the student life, because soon you will be thrown into the daunting world of jobs… feeling more claustrophobic on the rush hour tube home than at an LSE Investment Banking careers fair, and sacrificing that distant, nostalgic thought of downing jagerbombs at XOYO Monday nights for your 7am start the next day.
But ssh, forget that for now, and bring on the new academic year.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
