A Guide to Why Everyone Hates You
Wont as we are to reach out an avuncular arm, clasp you just a little too tightly to our Old Spice scented bosom and tell you of the grand adventure of higher education ahead, we are duty-bound to do the in loco parentis bit with less hugging and more 'straight-talk' that begins with 'at the end of the day, yeah?' and ends with a paternity test result.
Outwith the bubble of sensory-numbing euphoria that is Fresher's Week, you'll soon find that the only adults that seem to have any time for you are carrying fliers or clipboards. The rest of them, I'm afraid, won't carry so much as a cold sore for you, and consider you to be scum of the hygiene refusenik, pissing-on-poppies, sock-wank variety. Time for some home truths, kids.
Hair
Youth – and any signifier of such – is wasted on the young, and this is especially true of hair. By the time you figure out that basting your dome with Deepwater Horizon-grade hairgel makes you look like an endangered flamingo, you'll be a 37 year old IT infrastructure manager with a wacky dolphin tie wondering how all that hair straightening and conditioner-shunning hasn't prolonged your now-thinning plumage.
Protest
Once upon a time, protest was something to be taken seriously by governments of the day. Suffragettes, miners, trade unions, pro-democracy movements and the rest rallied against contemptible state policies. Skyrocketing tuition fees are similarly deplorable, but frankly, if the Children of the Future reckon that a game of fireman's frisbee is the way to go about it, then the Aldi graduate scheme is too good for you.
Sex
Another reason why most adults hate you is that they think you'll be having lots of sex. Whether this is true or not is entirely besides the point, since even the vague impression that you'll be charging about like Don Quixote on a cocktail of crack, viagra and Pro Plus (usually only to find windmills, with boyfriends who play rugby and possess fists like bowling balls) is enough to drive the Daily Mail reading public to apoplexy.
A fetid pit of hyperlink trash, woes-me status updates, self-aggrandising arseholes, corporate spam, homogenous photo albums labelled 'random' with unwitting irony, and a sea of 'friends' that you never speak to.
And you agree, but it's still your homepage, isn't it?
Daytime television
A student's typical televisual diet consists of laughing at the poor (Jeremy Kyle) and food porn (Come Dine With Me), most of which is completely unattainable because it's made from food grown from the ground, and not mystery powder. So, if it follows that TV is the medium of aspiration, then it seems that contemporary undergraduates dream of being fat Tory wankers. So much for idealism.