A university is a collection of buildings where in exchange for all of your money, time, and dignity,
you'll be rewarded with a clammy handshake,
some paper with a special ribbon,
and a lifetime of crippling social regret.
Subjects might range anywhere from beekeeping to crack pipe engineering,
but it is important to study something with integrity.
And by integrity, I mean whichever course is the one disproportionately populated with hot people.
If you remember anything at all from the first week of university, you're doing it wrong.
This can be solved with alcohol.
The typical student favorite is to mix in
three parts Bacardi,
one part lighter fluid,
and a sprinkle of parsley.
We used to refer to this as,
"The Neurologist."
Mainly because after drinking the thing, it became necessary to visit one.
Students practice a number of hangover cures, though I can recommend Aspirin,
two tablets should take care of a medium-sized hangover,
100 tablets should take care of anything more severe
including any other problems you may happen to have in your life at the time.
On your first day of lectures, you will meet your professors. It's their job to bend over backwards
to accommodate your belief that you know more than they do,
despite them having studied their entire lives for this job.
"Yes," they all say,
"Please tell me more about your groundbreaking idea for perpetual free energy.
As a physics professor, the concept is completely new to me and I'm sure a delinquent,
and frankly dubious smelling 18 year old is about to disprove the entire history
of fucking thermodynamics."
Lectures will consist of many students all sleeping at once, in a large room, with a clever person talking at the front.
Seminars will consist of much the same, but with only a few students sleeping as it's harder to get away with it.
If you are startled awake by the professor, and the sentence ends in an,
eh?
You have probably just been asked a question.
Do not panic.
If it's an English lit or a philosophy seminar you're in, answer that frankly you found the text problematic and simplistic in places,
wait for the applause to subside,
then readjust your beret.
If it's a maths or science subject,
try launching yourself out the window,
because you're probably fucked.
You may find yourself sharing a prison block with Lovecraftian nightmare creatures,
who use body odor as a primal defense mechanism.
Welcome to Student Accommodation.
In the coming years, you'll probably have the opportunity to move off campus.
Friends who you generally knew from eating lunch together, or partying, will suddenly occupy the room next door.
It will seem inconceivable, that someone so lovable only weeks before, is in fact,
such a consummate filth wizard.
No no, just like all the other objects in the house, plates are of course self-cleaning.
Please continue to stack them up in the sink, like some kind of elaborate circus performance.
Decency, what's that?
I simply love 'Rage Against the Machine' at 5:00 in the morning, top volume,
accompanied by the deafening, and discordant melodies of frantic shagging.
Most universities sport a number of recreational establishments nearby.
Many of the local discotheques will encourage standing epileptic fits to loud music,
and consumption of large quantities of alcohol.
If that doesn't sound like your thing, the library is usually open 24 hours
and they're happy for you to do acid in the archive room.
As long as you don't tell them you're doing acid in the archive room.
In your final year, you may be expected to write a thesis.
The first draft should be finished several months in advance of the deadline;
though it can be begun and completed the night before hand-in with access to strong enough methamphetamine.
If you're doing university properly, you'll probably go into it thinking you already clued up about 80% of your subject.
And you're here to learn the remaining 20%.
By the middle year/years, you may realize you in fact know about 20%,
and you have a short time left to learn the remaining 80%.
And upon graduation, you'll now understand that you understand almost nothing about your field,
and that there is an ocean of people more talented at and committed to it, than you.
So that's nice and reassuring.
Look...
it's got a special ribbon on it.
Paradoxically though,
graduating is perhaps the hardest part of being an undergraduate.
The world is quite different outside of university.
If you don't do stuff on time, you still get angry emails, but you also might find yourself unemployed,
and possibly impoverished.
Members of the general public often grow unreasonably annoyed if they notice you vomiting on their garden.
And quite by surprise,
you will notice you are now expected to be and quote,
"Actual Person."
Unfortunately, this is in fact, the real, education period.
You teach yourself, grade yourself, ultimately.
And the only tuition fee is exactly one lifetime.
Lectures begin when you wake up in the morning, and end when you go to sleep.
And what you're supposed to be learning, is not at all obvious.
Everyone else is also a student at Existence University.
Some of them appear to be perpetually enrolled in a course called,
"How to be a Total Cock Like All the Time."
Others are getting their Masters and PhD's in
"Just Being a Good Human"
and I humbly suggest you hang out with them.
Deadlines will not be extended.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated.
The answers will not be found at the back of the book.
In any case, the years after university are mainly for cultivating those qualities that may have been missing from your days as a student,
namely,
self-respect,
personal hygiene,
basic social skills,
humility,
and a tolerable personality.
Or, if those don't sound appealing,
why not make the most of that degree,
and catastrophically disappoint your parents by becoming a YouTuber.