December 19, 2016, by Siobhan

On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas My Uni Gave To Me…

With the first semester over, it’s fair to say these few months have been the strangest, most eventful, but most exciting ones of my 18 years. Seeing it’s Christmas, I thought of nothing better to write about than a nice little festive reflection of those past 12 weeks. I hope you like it, here’s my own personal version of the 12 days of Christmas, uni style…

The 12 Days of Christmas Uni

12 Drummers Drumming

Okay, so I haven’t really got 12 drummers locked up in my room in Broadgate Park. Rather it feels like I’ve got 12, or maybe 1200 locked inside my head pounding at my skull on a Thursday morning after crisis the night before. I don’t think I’ll ever learn that going out and 9ams don’t mix!

11 Pipers Piping

Perhaps not the best demonstration of what an ideal university student should be, but I’m quite proud of this achievement. I have successfully submitted six (yes, six! First year is not a doss I don’t care what anyone says) assignments this semester whilst just as successfully re-watched three seasons of Orange is the New Black. Dream and you can achieve.

10 Lords a Leaping

Perhaps not lords, but I most certainly have been leaping all over campus these past few months. I feel it’s been Siobhan vs UON since I started. 10 minutes to get from Coates Road Auditorium to Lenton Grove? Challenge accepted. And challenge won. Even if I do arrive each week to my seminar sweating so much that if you wrung me out, I’d probably fill the Thames.

9 Ladies Dancing

Time for me to get a little bit soppy and emotional. There not all ladies, and certainly not all dancers, but they are all of my new friends I’ve made here. As someone who was terrified of moving away from home and daunted by the idea of having to make new friends, I’ve been so lucky to fall into an amazing friendship group.

8 Maids a Milking

Apparently when you’re at uni, milkmaids don’t exist. For the last three or four weeks, perhaps once I’ve opened the fridge to find milk that doesn’t have real live mold growing in it. Or any milk at all actually. I think everyone’s mentality is along the lines of ‘someone else will obviously buy some’ and yet that ‘someone else’ never does. It really is the simplest of tasks we all struggle with the most. Or maybe we’ve just grown fond of our ‘use by: 18^th Nov’ and all of it’s curdled, smelliness.

7 Swans a Swimming

Much like the milkmaids aren’t milking, the swans most definitely aren’t swimming. More like drowning. Drowning in essays and reading and more essays. Oh, the shocking realisation that when you come to uni, you do actually have to do work.

6 Geese a Laying

Okay, so the geese genuinely do lay here. In the middle of the road. When there are three buses trying to set off. The sight of a hoard of geese unknowingly, but unprecedentedly holding up traffic will never not be hilarious.

5 Gold Rings

Gold rings? If I did own any gold it would be straight down at cash-converters in a desperate bid to climb my way out of my overdraft. If I learn nothing else in my three years here at Notts, I’ve most certainly learnt the value of money. I wish I could say the same for my brother who’s at uni in Sheffield, who has spent the majority of his student loan on fancy dress items and Christmas jumpers.

4 Calling Birds

Since being a university, I have wholeheartedly realised just how much I love and appreciate my family. Without (I hope) sounding like too much of a loser, sitting down and calling my parents is one of my favourite parts of the week!

3 French Hens

They weren’t French, but last week for our flat Christmas dinner, we genuinely had three hens in the oven. Three. Whole. Chickens. For nine people. ‘It was 3 for 2!’ they said. I can’t deny that it was a good deal, but when the deal requires having three ovens in three separate flats on the go, the stress it amounts to is almost not worth it. I felt more stressed running around with my oven gloves checking nothing was burning than I did being an hour away from a deadline with still only 162 words written.

2 Turtle Doves

I wondered why I was running out of money so quickly, then I realised. The extortionate price of toiletries. A bottle of Dove Original roll on cost me £2.50. I could buy 5 notepads from Wilko for that amount. I would protest and refuse to buy any, but I also don’t want to stink of B.O. So, I guess I’ll just have to submit myself to the toils of capitalist culture in order to smell good. It’s a small price to pay really.

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

I’m afraid I don’t have even a mildly witty metaphor or dreadfully corny allegory to put here. So, I’ll just wish you a very Merry Christmas and an even better New Year instead.

 

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