Welcome To The (College) House Of Hell

Any students out there who have at some point in their lives lived in student accommodation will know the sheer horror that it can sometimes bring. Yes, at first the joy of being free to live your life as you see fit is the best feeling in the world but then the absolute filth and poverty of the situation begins to take hold and wear down your basic human instinct bit by bit. Here are some scenarios you will inevitably find yourself in during your college years:

1) You Filthy Animals

Student houses are renowned for their lack of hygiene and general upkeep. The vast majority are in shite condition to begin with, overpriced and under ventilated, mould will be the only decor you'll be seeing from now on. Carpets that'd take the skin off your back, beds that seem to have been previously inhibited by a man weighing thirty stone and with a bed bouncing fetish, bathrooms with no windows, kitchens with black patches on the walls from where the previous tenants decided to cook whilst drunk and nearly burn the house down to the ground. After a while of living in this squalor you begin to cop on to the fact that walking around in your bare feet is about as smart as paying so much to live there in the first place. Black soles? Check. Overflowing bins in the kitchen? Check. More hair in the plughole than on your head, check.

2) Numbing Nights

You have never experienced Winter until you've experienced a student Winter. Student houses seem to be built in order to maximize bone crushing numbness and induce as many colds as is humanly possible. Move into one of these houses and expect to be sick (and not just hungover) on a regular basis. Malnourished, wearing seven layers of fleece (onesies, snoods, hats, blankets, more blankets...) Your best bet is to find somebody to hold you in your times of cold cold need.  How I wished I'd followed my own advice and I wouldn't have had to resort to wearing  a scarf to bed. TRAGIC.

3) Gourmet Delights

It has been said by nobody that the Michelin star maestros of the culinary world were inspired by the staple diet of the typical student. Open the fridge and expect to be hit with an odour so beautiful that it's in the process of being bottled and bought up by Boots. Fridges in student accommodation generally tend to have very few shelves which just means that you and your four housemates can expect to have a lovely mixture of fresh and dying food. Men in particular are notorious for not throwing away old (antique in some cases) food. Perhaps it's their inner interior designer coming out, perhaps they grow attached to the festering mulch they once bought with their limited budget. Either way it's not good for ANYBODY.

4) Bottled Decor

For some reason unbeknownst to anybody who has never been a student (and to some who have been), bottles seem to adorn the walls/shelves/ windows/ desks of many the poor, simple student. Walk through a student block or a housing estate in close proximity to a college and you can bet your bottom dollar that you'll see those symbols of forgotten nights out, glistening in the sun.  Just one thing people, wash out the bottles first, you really don't need another lingering scent. Even Oust can't deal with that.

5) Stairway To Hell

Why God, why must you make the only available flat on the fourth floor and no lift to carry us there gracefully? Moving days are horrific to the extreme, lugging suitcase after suitcase up or down, grocery shopping needs to be planned with an OCD-ish precision to ensure there is someone to help you carry the crates of beer up those blocks of torture and getting home drunk is a task in itself, never mind the obstacle of not taking a nap before you begin your ascent. You may just have to resort to finding a first floor friend. It's asking for trouble really.

6) Paper Walls

There is no greater need for a decent set of earplugs than when one moves into student accommodation. Between hearing your next door neighbours having their fun time (we could regularly hear the people in the flat across the hall, fairly awks when we met them in the mornings), parties downstairs (which always resulted in something broken, windows, doors, dignity), the house next door and its inhabitants who thought they were a sort of Celine Dion meets Johnny Cash band (negative) with their out of tune guitars or a housemate of mine from forth year who used to practice his choir songs at 3am in the morning (he didn't drink which made it all the more disturbing.)

7) Infestations

Depending on how disgusting your house is (or was to begin with) you may at some point experience the joys of an infestation. We had ants. I'm not just talking about an ant or two or ten, I'm talking a fucking swarm. The bastards first started appearing from the fireplace so my housemate took the West Dublin approach to things with a can of Lynx and a firelighter. That seemed to work for about an hour. Then they multiplied faster than a family in 1930's Ireland. The worst day came when they got into our food. The last drips of our lovely cheap food. We didn't sleep much that night. We just lay there and waited for the ants to come. *Shudder*

8) We Have A Garden?

If you live in an actual student house you may have a four meter square of what was once greenery at the back. If you are the type of students to actually use this wisely then I applaud you. If however, you're like 98% of the student population to reside in this county you won't put it much use, that's if you can even get out to it. Some landlords out there are so wise to the dirty little shits that are leasing out their houses that they keep that back door locked. They might just be right. Otherwise it just becomes a sort of dumping ground for shit you can't be bothered to bring out to the skip. I heard of a house where there had a broken window overlooking the garden so they used to just fire the black bags out the window. Imagine how sick that smelled after a year. Oh vom.

9) Bathrooms

Pull on the mask and get out the hand sanitizer folks, college bathrooms are a special type of vile. If you're in any way a clean freak than they'll have you running for the buckets of bleach and the nearest bus out of there. Women's bathrooms tend to be overun with 16 different types of shampoo, hair all over the shop and fake tan marks on the door. How, why? Men's bathrooms are sparse and decorated mainly with shaving foam and toilet paper tubes. Except for the bathroom I was once in where one of the housemates ran face first into a car while pissed and then proceeded to bleed all over the place. Apparently blood isn't worthy of being cleaned up. Who knew?

10) Televisions (Or Lack Thereof)

Student houses and on campus accommodation in particular tend not to have TVs. We can only stab a guess as to why, money saving option perhaps? To make us study in between drinking and stuff? Too bad bitches, you seem to have forgotten that in this day and age we have the joyous invention that is the laptop and all of the wifi. Which when you think about it, is actually great because instead of watching one episode of a series at a time like a civilized human being, you can binge like a kid at Christmas and watch the entire series in a day. Which, when you've got three assignments to do, is the best idea ever.

 11) In Good Company

One last thing point for the innocent unsuspecting souls moving into student accommodation for the first time, please note that you're rarely going to get peace and quiet from now on. This is not like being at home where every visitor and overnight guest is planned with a military precision, oh no, here you will wake up to god knows who, sleeping god knows where and on anyone or anything. Waking up after a heavy night out is like a 3D version of 'Guess Who' but with contestants who smell like a bottle bin in a backstreet pub, more discarded clothes than a jumble sale for Grannies and more squashed cans than spirits. So long as you remain calm, cool and collected all will be ok. Just don't be the token mature housemate (by that I mean they're usually actually mature, masters students and the like) who rings the landlord when someone lights a fag or lets the neighbours dog in to play. Shit craic.