Poll: Freshers Week: The Hell that Never Ends.

[Mr F.]

So, as you can guess from the title, I am a first year student. Just got here, started having a laugh, made a few friends.

Then the Universities official policy of "Binge Drinking Is Awesome" began to kick in. For a while it was fun, it was good to feel young again (I am older than most of my peers here, I understand that they are going through what I went through when I was their age) but, after walking someone home who had fallen down the stairs, was bleeding slightly and had just committed several minor acts of vandalism (Who, at this point, had forgotten falling down the stairs mere minutes prior), someone who was insisting he finish his drink it hit me.

Is this some trial by fire?
Is the aim that everyone has a lot of fun and sees people who have taken it too far?
Is it a shock tactic?

Because right now it seems more that it is like some form of hell. The dissonance between the Universities moderation policy (We all have measuring cups in our room and things up telling us what our limits are) combined with organized pub crawls, drinking competitions, the glorification of fucking stupid acts does not go over my head.

Am I just some old fogey?

Is 20 years old really too old to enjoy freshers?

Or are other Freshers going through the same?

Seeing the state that some have been in is enough to make me avoid alcohol for life.

Does this hell ever end?

 

[GistoftheFist]

Ok, so you used the word freshers a bunch of times in this post but I still have no idea what you're talking about or what that means.

 

[omega 616]

As far as I can guess, alcohol is THE thing to do! All the cool kids have been doing it for decades ... Fuck, Marty Mcfly went back in time and they were taking booze to the prom.

Alcohol is so deeply ingrained in every 1st world culture, combined with people in there teens to mid twenties thinking there immortal and want to party/keep up with there friends always take it far beyond there limits.

'cos you know the typical statements made about nights out, "if you don't remember it, it was a good night out" and "the sober ones are always the boring ones" ... what real choice do you have? Plus there is getting swept up and not noticing how drunk you are.

I am just guessing, I have never been drunk and I haven't had any alcohol in 4 years (5 years on 1st Nov).

Ok, so you used the word freshers a bunch of times in this post but I still have no idea what you're talking about or what that means.

Freshers is the start of Uni, bars drop the prices of booze to insane prices and every student gets dangerously drunk ... to the point were stomach pumps are used.

 

[Dags90]

Am I the only person seeing the immediate discordance in the sentence "Fresher's Week, the Hell that never ends"?

Which is it, OP? Does it last a week? Forever? Or something in between? Are you stuck in some sort of time loop? Please, explain this seeming impossibility.

 

[Marter]

I didn't even know "freshers" was a thing, so ... yeah. I spent that week moving stuff from house to house, as I was going through a living situation transition at the time.

I don't know if I would have enjoyed it anyway, but it might've been nice to at least have the option. Oh well.

 

[Lionsfan]

I'm guessing it'll end after classes start. People will still be partying all the time, but with school work piling up, it should cut it down from crazy excess

 

[corvuscorrax]

Binge drinking is not awesome, it takes time to learn your own personal "line" and I'd imagine you want to avoid humiliating circumstances until then.

 

[Tanis]

I love it, as a DD.

I can't recall how much MONEY I've made because some wasted rich punk 'tipped' me a 50 or 100, when he only met to give me a 5 or a 10.

 

[renegade7]

I started at university 6 weeks ago. Freshman move in week SUCKED. Way way way way WAY too much shit going on. I think what happens is that they see their newfound freedom and think "ZOMG I CAN DRINK BEER!".

As an aside, 4 students tried 'bumming' alcohol (a practice by which one inserts a tube into one's own rectum and pours the drink into the other end of the tube) and all had to go to the ER. They were then summarily expelled when they woke up.

I actually kind of like the drinking culture at my school: every dipshit who gets expelled for drinking, it becomes one person easier to get to the top of the class.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Binge drinking is not awesome, it takes time to learn your own personal "line" and I'd imagine you want to avoid humiliating circumstances until then.

More to the point, it seems like the OP is witnessing people who are learning their limits the hard way. Drinking, even to pretty serious levels of drunkenness, is one thing. Drinking so much you black out is something else. The former can be fun, the latter is dangerous. I mean, you're effectively OD'ing on a drug when that happens. That's never a good thing.

Basically, don't judge the entirety of Western drinking culture by a few underaged (assuming we're talking about the US) idiots who don't know their limits and are going hog wild. That's like judging all gamers by the racist 12 year olds on Xbox Live.

 

[Dimitriov]

All I can say is that I have seen studies that show that current Uni students and alumni generally drink more heavily than the rest of the population.

Also students have pretty well been a very rowdy bunch (at least in the Western world) since the Universities were first invented a thousand years or so ago. Seriously, look up "town and gown" confrontations during the middle ages.

 

[bobbykins]

(sorry for spelling/grammer problems i have dyslexia)

I started my first week at hull last monday and yes it seems common that people do go out and drink too much for their good, as someone who dosn't drink (not that i have a problem with drinking people can drink as much as they want i just don't really enjoy it) then you can feel a bit left out. Also if your shy like myself then you don't really meet people although thats my fault in my case not anyon elese.

Still i think it will end people can't afford to do it infintly for one and the course does eventully get harder and people are going to have to put more time into studing or get kicked out, which in both cases reduces the amount of people drinking.

If you have made some friends, who are happy to talk to you even when your not out drinknig then thats something at least and im sure in time people will slow down.

 

[Colour Scientist]

Just wait until you reach postgrad, you won't be able to control the bitterness.

It's just because, for most students, it's their first week living away from their parents so the lack of supervision temporarily drives them insane. It will eventually calm down though.

 

[Doclector]

Usually it's fine. People get drunk, some of them really drunk, some of them do something embarassing, but mostly fine. Sounds like you just had some bad experiences with people who took it too far.

The first freshers week is a blur to me. In fact, it was longer than that. Three whole weeks in which none of the freshers had real lessons to worry about, and there were plenty of occasions going on.

It was good fun. I met a lot of people, I got to know about the local clubs and bars, got to know my housemates, which I say you always get to know better when drunk.

This year was good fun, but I didn't go out nearly as much. I was a bit better off financially last year, so it didn't really matter if I went over budget. This year I had to be a little more cautious, and perhaps it's the wave of paranoia and anxiety that I seemed to pick up over the holidays, or maybe it's not all that new to me anymore, but I simply didn't feel like going out every night in a week. I'll admit, there were even times during freshers when I could still feel the hangover of last night and someone invited me out and while I said yes at the time, in my mind I was just thinking "Oh come on."

I also missed the times I had in halls when we got smashed for pre drinks then couldn't be arsed to go out so we just sat around watching Arrested Development and talking shit while drunk.

I guess one thing I do hate about freshers is seeing some of the Freshers be dumb or naive, and realising that I was at one point, probably like that.

 

[One Shot wonder]

Down it, Fresher!

The point is twofold. Firstly it's essentially some people's first time managing their own alcohol intake over any timescale more than a single night out, Fresher's is a testing ground and a week that's not wasted if they accidentally give themselves a 24 hour hangover and can't get up that day. Secondly, it's a social lubricant, in the right amounts a few drinks makes it much easier to communicate with your fellow freshers as you're all on a level footing of mildly drunk. Some of your compatriots will not be at ease meeting this many new people at once normally, either because they're used to much smaller institutions, they're rather introverted or they're just not good with people. Some spend the entire week drunk, some forge awesome stories (have you ever carried a mattress across a university campus in broad daylight?) and some go to the Students union and see the freshers' fair, learning about societies and activities where they will meet people with a common set of interests (and possibly consume a more moderate amount of alcohol whilst discussing/partaking in these interests).

Some people are stupid drunks, who must have an eye kept on them and a hand ready to catch them should they fall towards something dangerous. On the other hand, those same people have the tendency to do hilarious things that will follow them all year and give silly anecdotes to tell in the crowd of waiting students before/after lectures as an icebreaker and means of introduction.

Furthermore, if you do physics you are literally required to become an alcoholic by the end of the first year. I've had friends who don't drink driven to the bottle by the workings of the universe and the only guys I know who dropped out were both non-drinkers. May well be correlation but I think perhaps there's something to the hypothesis yet.

 

[Random berk]

I quite like Fresher's week most of the time, and there's nothing like a good house party. You just have to drink a suitable amount, instead of whatever the hell your friend that you met on the stairs was doing. I'm in fourth year now, and I still drink the exact same amount on a typical night out that I've been doing since my first Freshers. I won't pretend that every night has been a good night, but I've only ever overdone it twice in that time, and one of those times was in extreme and bizarre circumstances, so I call it a victory.