Doing Post-Freshers the second year is easy. Of course it is. You just have to make sure you catch that bottle of milk before it goes sour, wave the tea towel at that fire alarm when you burn your first non-catered accommodation meal. Everyone pretends they know what they are doing with bills, when nobody truly does. Make sure you all fight to understand the Career Zone website for the first time since starting University, 12 months ago. Discovering what the Exeter Award is in the process, despite having had this explained to you in the chaos of your start to your original Freshers, last year.
Post-freshers means …making crazy plans for this, your second attempt at everything Exeter
You realise that you love your flatmates even more. Somehow, despite being in close quarters for a second year, you seem not to have gotten tired of each other. You have all given up your first year pretences of being perfect students, who know what they are doing (as if anyone ever believed that anyway) and lapsed into your true, barely sane selves. Cut to two weeks later, yelling obscenities at each other over a game of Ultimate Werewolf. This peculiar situation has arisen because you all got a shock when seeing the monthly rent for a now landlord-owned house leave your bank account, despite knowing how much it would be. Therefore nights out have drastically decreased in favour of a new form of fun. Drunken board-games. These might actually be even more fun, weirdly. Provided your competitiveness doesn’t make you kill each other first.
Everyone pretends they know what they are doing with bills, when nobody truly does
Deliveroo is making a killing. For some reason your noble resolve to avoid dominoes has been replaced with a need for a “cheeky Wagamamas” which turns into a weekly Wagamamas, much to your shame. Nobody can actually afford Deliveroo. But the app and your swearing stomach after the 30 min walk or 10 min cycle uphill from campus, seems to think you can.
Furthermore, because the New York times is having a blast publishing photos of burning trees in an effort to communicate the climate issues which our meat eating is causing, you start aggressively dog-earing the entirety of your vegetarian ‘NOSH for Students’ cook book (every student owns one of these NOSH books, and if you’re telling me you don’t, you’re a liar).
You watch with amusement as TP closes an entire road, trying to remember if that happened when you were a fresher
There is a marked increase in the amount of Freshers this year, and they seem to know far more about what they are doing than certainly we ever did. You watch with amusement as TP closes an entire road, trying to remember if that happened when you were a fresher. Or if there was such a queue for campus cinema that all their tickets were bought 40 minutes before the showing even started.
Ultimately you love university. Really truly. You now know a lot more than you did, and are a lot more relaxed, hopefully, than your scatty stressed self, eager to make friends, last year. Post-freshers means relaxing into the term, into everything familiar, after catching up with as many people as possible and making crazy plans for this, your second attempt at everything Exeter.