Tip 10 – the secret to ultimate success

Ok, so the title is a bit of a marketing ploy, I admit.

But my final tip for freshers is to enjoy the amazing experience that university will be. Enjoy meeting new people, enjoy learning new things, enjoy being responsible for yourself, enjoy the amazing opportunities that education brings.

Smile. Laugh. Take joy in anything and everything that makes you happy (however small it is, and however much other people don’t think it’s worth finding joy in; the smaller those things are, the more often you will find them!). Spend time with people whose company you enjoy, but work hard and make the most of an opportunity to get an education at a level still denied not just to most children in developing countries, but also to many young people in the developed world due to financial circumstances or family matters. Education is a key to so many doors. Make the most of it. Cherish it. Use it. But for the next three years, more importantly, work at it and enjoy it.

Tip 9 – I did it my way: the Frank Sinatra approach to university

One of the things I remember being surprised about when I went to university, and one of the things that continues to surprise me now I’m here all year round as an academic, is that during term, everything is so FAST. People even walk really quickly. But anybody who’s ever seen Dead Poets Society will know that we’re not meant to all move in the same way at the same speed. When Mr Keating (the late and genuinely great Robin Williams) asks his class of teenage guys to walk around the school courtyard, at first they all fall into the marching pace set by the person at the front. Not because they want to walk in that way, but because they want to fit in and walk in the same way as everyone else (clip here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnAyr0kWRGE).

Because study at university is so heavily self-directed, there is always a temptation to compare notes with your fellow students about how much work you’ve done. Only do this if you have excellent self-confidence. Otherwise, you will spend longer wondering whether you are spending too long or not long enough doing the work than you will spend doing the work. Preparation for classes at university level is only finished once you have understood the topic. Not when you have read a certain number of or written a certain number of words (although you will have to do those things too). Most academic staff will set long reading lists, with a suggested minimum number of books/pages/articles/cases. Resist the temptation to only do the minimum; although it will save you time that day or week, you’ll either have to read more later, or, if you don’t, you will simply have less knowledge than the people who did read extra! At university you will get used to setting your own limits. The most frustrating thing I have learned as a teaching academic is that I can’t make students want to achieve. They may be excellent, but if they are lazy, and determined to be so, then I can’t change that. You will set the limit on your own achievement. Work until you have thoroughly understood what you’re studying, and read around the topic to pick up other people’s understanding and view points of it and you are going to be able to do your best, whatever that is. If you are happy that you have done all, then don’t stay in the Library because your colleagues are experiencing a fit of ‘competitive working’. There’s no shame in leaving because you’ve finished. Similarly, work in a way and pattern that works for you. If you work best in your room, then don’t feel that you have to be in the library just because others are (but be honest with yourself about where you really work best; it’s easy to get distracted without having realised it and spend more time on Facebook than on those problem questions you were meant to be working through). If you want to do work early in the morning, and go to bed at 11pm, do that! If you prefer to have a lie in and then work in the evening, that’s fine too. Providing the work gets done properly, it doesn’t matter if you do it in fancy dress at 2am standing on one leg on a balance beam. Don’t let yourself feel that university is a competition. It is about being the best that you can be. Not about your achievement relative to anyone else’s.

Remember the scene in Dead Poets Society. Remember the second half of it especially. Your university experience will be more fun, and more successful, if you learn and work your own way.

 

Tip 8 – Step away from the technology

I feel like an old fogey when I complain about technology. But, I am going to complain about technology (a bit, anyway). More to the point, however, technology is the point of this instalment of my blog posts on advice for freshers.

Many of my students would need to be surgically separated from their technology. For my part, I have a laptop, and a smart phone, and a tablet. But the thing I love most about them is the off switch. Electronic communication is just no substitute for spending time with real people. For talking to people in person. One of the worst social offences, in my view, is checking your phone whilst someone is talking to you. Put it on vibrate and put it in your pocket! Unless you’re waiting for an important call and have told the person that you’re speaking to that you might have to get it, leave it alone even if it vibrates. If you spend freshers’ week and the first few weeks of term constantly playing on your phone (even if it’s just ’cause you’re nervous!) you’ll look unapproachable and miss out on the chance to catch someone’s eye and get a conversation going. Resist the urge and leave it in your handbag/pocket – distract yourself by smiling at someone instead :).

When it comes to lectures and tutorials, I know that many students prefer to take notes on laptops. My (controversial) advice is to handwrite (at least some of) them instead. I don’t suggest this because I’m a real dinosaur, but because students tend to regret being so reliant on typing when it comes to exams, which, in most universities, continue to be written by hand unless a student has special exemption. Furthermore, it’s just SO tempting to check Facebook whilst the lecturer goes off on a tangent. Only problem is, in the time it’s taken you to ‘like’ your schoolfriends’ freshers’ photos, the lecturer has gone back on track and you have missed something crucial. You can’t go on Facebook from pen and paper, so there’s no temptation.

So by all means take your technology to university. but don’t let it get in the way of what’s happening right in front of you. Don’t be tempted to be messaging someone 3 hours away, when you could be talking to someone three feet away. When you’ve left university, you’ll remember late nights, sitting with friends, laughing until you cry about the most ridiculous things. You won’t remember nights where you paid no attention to what was going on around you because you were pre-occupied with gadgetry.

Tip 7 – Why university is like a buffet

I love teaching my students. Every year I get some new students, and some who have taken a paper with me previously. A lot of students assume that academics only like teaching genii. That sentence is partly true; teaching very bright students can be great, and I have enjoyed having my own mind stretched by some phenomenally bright students in the few years I have been teaching (well, with hindsight I enjoy it. At the time I was thinking ‘that is such an interesting question, that I have no idea what the answer is’ and then laid awake that night trying to figure out the answer). However, the single word that means the sentence is not entirely true is ‘only’. Very clever students are not the only sort that I like to teach. In fact, I confess that they aren’t even my favourite students to teach. My favourite students are the triers. They try and they try and they try.

There are, in my experience, two types of triers:

1. Whatever their starting level of understanding or interest in the subject (one subject I teach is compulsory) they put concerted effort into getting their head around it. And they keep putting that effort in until they get it. Whether that’s tomorrow, next week, or the week before the final exams next summer. These students are often 2:2/2:1 borderline students, which is a really crucial borderline for employers; increasingly online application forms automatically filter out those forms that do not state a 2:1 as the final grade (unless there are extenuating circumstances). So for these students, getting over that borderline is so important. The difference between 59% (a 2:2) and 60% (a 2:1) is, in real terms, infinitely bigger than one percentage point. When you get exam marks through, and these students have got their 2:1, and all its concomitant opportunities, you feel so pleased for them that dancing round your office seems a totally justifiable activity. Just make sure the curtains are drawn…

    

2. The second type of trier are already very good students. They can comfortably get a 2:1 without really breaking a sweat. But they have a hunger for a First. And they go after it, not just by reading everything that they can get their hands on, but by going away and THINKING about it. Thinking is an under-rated activity amongst many university students. There is a focus on doing the reading, writing the essay, handing it in, and ignoring the feedback on it. Thinking between each stage makes learning much more likely to happen. Without reflection on what you have read, you can’t write a great essay. And without reflecting on the comments on it, you can’t consider how to make the next essay better; ‘if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got’. So if you repeat the mistakes, you’ll get the same grade again (and I’ll be frustrated because I spent an evening carefully reading and covering your essay in feedback that you have clearly ignored; I could have gone to the pub after all!). These students do a lot of thinking during the year, produce essays that make me jealous I hadn’t written them, and then, somehow, do even more thinking in the revision period and then blow the minds of their examiners. Cue more dancing when their results come through.

What unites both these types of students is that they are a joy to teach because they are actually making use of teaching. My role is not to spoon feed information to open, cavernous brains. My role is to lay out a buffet of tasty morsels of my subject, of which you should take a selection, chew over them slowly, and leave knowing which ones you liked and which ones were not your thing. Next time you come in, if you’re wise, you’ll probably take a couple of the things you really liked from last time, and a couple of new things, and repeat the process with the new things. Replace the idea of new things as food, and instead consider them as essay techniques and points, and you’ll see what I’m getting at (which you probably already did, but I have a habit of torturing a metaphor until it just looks like I genuinely confused essay-writing with fine-dining.)

I cannot suggest strongly enough that, whatever you study, you TRY YOUR BEST. I know it sounds twee, and by 18 you might be so sick of hearing it that it has lost any real meaning. But putting in effort is the only way to make the most of your university education, and because university is so much more self-directed than school or college, if you drop the ball here you’re much more likely to fall behind badly without anyone noticing. If you try all along, however, you are not only at less risk of falling behind, but if you do, your lecturers and tutors are more likely to feel more inclined to help you, because effort does show. If I know you’re really trying to understand something, I have more motivation to help you try harder; you’ve put down a solid foundation of effort and I can help you build upon that with the technical stuff.

Tip 6 – Timing is everything

Research today from Warwick Business School (@WarwickBSchool) told us what anyone who teaches in higher education has known for quite a long time; last minute essays are not the key to success.

I have had students who, I can only assume, think that I am either very silly, or was never a student myself. If your essay is two thirds of the word limit, with no coherent conclusion, no referencing, and you’ve spelt your name wrong on the title of the Word doc, I’m pretty sure that this was not a carefully considered masterpiece. Every now and again, we all drop the timing ball. As a teaching academic, however, if it happens more than once in the year from the same student, I start to feel that you have no respect for the subject or for me (I spend a long time marking each essay; if a student has invested time in writing it, then they deserve me to pay it my full considered attention when I read it for marking).

Slapdash work not only compromises your grades, it also compromises your supervisors’ opinion of you ability to manage your time, and that is not a good impression to give.

It is, however, possible to fit an awful lot in at university. For examples, just look at the University Boat Race crews; as well as doing full time degrees in a variety of subjects, these guys and girls train for around 1200 hours; 6 days a week over 7 months. I marvel at their time management. In fact, I wish I had half of it (I have studied at Cambridge and know the workload well). Some students claim they don’t have enough time, that reading lists are too long and essays too frequent. I resist the urge to tell them they have 1200 hours more of free time than a Varsity rower. For many students, they do not intentionally waste time, but leaving home means learning a whole new efficiency. For many of my students, their stumbling block is planning.

Here are some (really easy) tips;

1) Buy a diary

2) Write the things you need to do in it! (so many of my students fail at this step)

3) At the beginning of the week, look at everything you’ve got on, and try to foresee where you will be short of time and what you can do now, when you have a bit of spare time, to get things ready for when you will be busy. Teach yourself to multitask; if you’re leaving the house knowing you need to get milk, go to the bank and post a letter, then you can do all three. If you leave the house to get milk, forgetting to take the letter and not having realised that you need to go to the bank, then you’re going to have to go out again later, when you could be doing something else.

4) Do work in the order it is due in, not in the order it is set. This may sometimes mean stopping one thing part way through to work on something more urgent. Don’t be afraid to do that.

5) Subject to 4, if you’re given a piece of work, do it as soon as you can. Even if it isn’t due in for a while, and you have nothing else due in before it, once it is done you can out it out of your mind and do something fun, without it hanging over you.

I can’t promise that excellent time management will give you a 25th hour in the day, but it’ll probably make you feel like it has. You’ll get super-efficient much more quickly than you expect, and that’ll set you up well for life, not just university.

 

 

Tip 5 – Talking: it’s like vegetables, but for your brain

So I am now half way through my more unusual tips for this year’s Freshers. I couldn’t quite decide whereabouts to put this tip; first, last or middle? The reason I pondered about where to put it is because for some students, it won’t be important to them at all. For others, they will think now that it isn’t important, but will sadly turn out to be wrong. So in the end, it is marking the middle of these tips.

A lot of students suffer from mental health problems during their time at university. These may take any of a vast number of forms, all different, but all equally debilitating and deserving and needing of support. For those students who do not themselves suffer from a mental health problem whilst at university, many will have friends or others they know who do.

Having a mental health problem can feel scary. Knowing someone with a mental health problem can feel scary. For both parties it’s often because no-one’s quite sure what to do about it. I am a big believer that the single biggest hurdle is talking about it, hence the title of this post. In the same way you need to eat vegetables for good physical health, talking is good for mental health.

If you are feeling ‘down’ (and by that I include everything from routine transient miserableness that happens to us all, to serious mental illness) at university, please talk to someone about it. Many universities have a fully confidential and anonymous phoneline which is answered all night, so even if it is the middle of night, there will be someone who you can speak to, who will not judge you or tell you what to do, but will listen to you for as long as you need to talk,  and whatever you need to talk about (they are usually called NightLine or Linkline). For those at universities without a NightLine/Linkline, or if you need someone to talk to at a time when those lines are closed, the Samaritans run a 24 hour anonymous and confidential telephone service on the same basis; non-judgmental listening.

If you are worried about someone else, then there is no shame in going to your university’s pastoral/welfare support service (whatever form that takes) and telling them that you have concerns. This is not ‘snitching’. If it is someone who you know, even a bit, make an effort to include them if they seem lonely, but be wary of putting too much pressure on them to participate, as for some this may exacerbate their distress. If you yourself are suffering, don’t be afraid to go to welfare/support services and ask for help. If you don’t get the help that you need, keep asking until you do. Many universities offer counselling services internally, and you also have the option of going to your GP for help. Don’t be afraid to be honest with those who teach you as well, especially if the pressure of deadlines is exacerbating the problem. Although many students feel embarrassed by discussing personal issues with academic staff, when it comes to universities, there is nothing new under the sun. Should you encounter unhelpful academic staff (which I sincerely hope you wouldn’t) then, again, mention this to welfare/support services, as this person is probably being unhelpful to more people than just you, and they need to be pulled up on that.

I am not an expert on mental health. But I have seen and experienced first hand the huge difference small acts of reaching out to people who are struggling can make. I encourage all of you to talk. To someone, anyone, if you are feeling low. You may be amazed by the support that fellow students are willing and able to give you; some may even be able to identify with the way you are feeling (whether they say so or not) .

Everyone will have a struggle of some sort at university. It may be major or minor (wanted to put a music joke in there, couldn’t think of one). It may be trying to keep up with the work. It may be trying to get selected for varsity-level sport. It may be the end of a relationship. It may be friendship troubles. It may be family events back home. Whatever it is, DON’T KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. For some people, they will seem to cruise over life’s disappointments, others will become stranded on a speed hump of despair. Don’t judge people for how they react, just because you would have reacted differently.

But my final piece of advice is for everyone. Keep talking. About things that matter. About what is going on in your head. Be honest if you feel sad or homesick or worse. You never know what is going on in a person’s life that they are not telling you. By keeping channels of communication open, and by being honest, we can all set up communities where people can be open about their struggles, and be supported through them. The more people there are offering support, the more support there is to go around.

We can’t all keep calm. But let’s keep talking and we’re half way there.

 

Tip 4 – And then, in the 25th hour, I rode my unicycle up the biggest hill to a Q&A with the Lord Chief Justice

The point of going to university is to study (or, if not, it’s a really expensive way to improve your social life). For most people studying most subjects, there will be quite significant amounts of work. As this is the reason for getting saddled with significant debts, it goes without saying that it is sensible advice to attend all your lectures and seminars/tutorials/supervisions, hand in work on time and revise hard for exams.

It’s unlikely, however, that studying will take up all your time. In fact, I tell my students quite forcefully that it shouldn’t; if it is, they either need extra help with the material, or they are overworking themselves to no useful end. But then, what to do in that spare time? My answer?

EVERYTHING

Well, perhaps not quite everything, but as wide a variety of things as you can. Whatever floats your boat (literally, for anyone who joins the boat club), there are likely to be other people at your university who are into it too. From Gilbert and Sullivan to Winnie the Pooh, rugby to extreme ironing, you’re unlikely to be alone. There will be clubs, societies and teams, many of which are free or not very expensive to join. Try a different one every term or year if there are too many to choose from. There will be student politics, journalism, activism, religion and volunteering. There will be music, drama (both planned and unintentional) and choirs.

There will also be lots of one off events. Often talks by the political, rich, famous or downright notorious happen in universities, and often entry is student-only (or reduced price for students). I can’t encourage you enough to make the most of these. They’re usually advertised on email or noticeboards, so keep an eye on both, and put things in your diary if they look interesting but are advertised a long way ahead. You will get chances to see in real life people who are having a major impact on your subject, your life, and the whole world. The most exciting such events are often those that also involve a Q&A afterwards; a wonderful opportunity to ask that question that’s really been bugging you about the speaker’s theory or manifesto pledge. Opportunities to interact with powerful people and engage in mature debate are precious, and certainly something that reduces outside of university. Although you might feel like a bit of a swot heading off to these sessions in evenings when you could be going out, you have the rest of your life to go to the bar, but probably not so many opportunities to see Katie Price in debate; if you look at the poster or the email and think ‘wow, I bet I’ll never see that happen again!’ then GO TO IT NOW! Because you probably never will see it again. And then you’ll wish you’d gone now.

University is about so many more opportunities than just academic ones. It is an opportunity to broaden your mind, experiences, and friendships in every direction. You will meet people at these things who aren’t on your course, don’t live in your halls, and who you might otherwise never have come across. Although it may not feel like it, you probably have more free time whilst you are at university than you will again before you retire (which, at this rate, will probably be in your 80s). Make the most of it. Go and have experiences. Some of them will be great, some of them will be so boring you will start counting the ceiling tiles. But you never know unless you try. And this is the time to try.

Tip 3 – This plan has been suspended until further notice

It is likely that you will barely have set foot through your room at university before you disappear under a barrage of careers’ leaflets. If you’re lucky, there may even be a free pen, or more exciting goodies (I still have a yellow, pig shaped, Ernst & Young stress ball somewhere…I felt mean squeezing it). All of these companies and firms hope that you will pick them for your burgeoning career, and the sooner they can woo you, the better. Depending on your subject, some of you will encounter more concerted attempts from firms to get you to commit to them. This happens especially in the subject that I teach, and many of my students feel significant pressure to commit early to a certain career path, or identify themselves as ‘someone who hasn’t chosen yet’, which tends to feel like a scary no man’s land of little prospect, even though it isn’t, as firms feed students’ latent insecurities about their futures and their plans.

My advice to students is thus a little unorthodox; don’t obsess over planning. If you have plans, don’t obsess about sticking to them.

During your degree the two best things you can do are do well academically, and make the most of the amazing other opportunities university offers (and on this, see a post later in the ten days…). If you know what you want to do, then it makes sense to try to get work experience during your degree and then apply for jobs towards the end of your degree. However, many application forms now are of a length to rival War and Peace, and consist largely of questions such as ‘Describe a time when you single-handedly threw a penguin backwards over your left shoulder into a swimming pool filled with custard.’ To fill them in properly to make yourself a competitive candidate takes time and energy. And that is time and energy well spent, unless you spend so much on it that you let your studies slip.

If a form requires a 2:1 to let you continue to fill it in (an increasingly common filtering process), then if you don’t have one (and no extenuating circumstances) you’re not going to get very far. On the other hand, however, get a good 2:1 or a First and you will have the option to fill in as many forms as you want for as many years as you want. A good grade opens more doors than filling in application forms alone will.

Secondly, during university, you may entirely change your mind about what you want to do afterwards, or you may not have known at the beginning. DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU THAT THAT’S A PROBLEM. Three years between being in our late teens and your early twenties is a long time (but it won’t feel like it). If you have had a career plan since you could say the word ‘professional occupation’, then you may feel very uneasy if you get a creeping sensation during your degree that you don’t actually want to do that thing anymore. If these doubts go on for more than one essay crisis at a time, more than a few drunken ‘where is my life going?’ conversations, or start to make you actually miserable, then the best thing you can do is have a long hard think about whether your ambitions when you were 6 are still your ambitions aged 18/19/twentysomething. If they are not, then admitting that is hard, but also a very brave and sensible thing to do; you will have a long career (hopefully!) and the sooner it is in something you enjoy, the better. For most degree subjects, you are probably no worse off for a change of plan; most subjects have so many transferable skills that a change of long term plans is not a logistical problem (albeit that emotionally it may feel like a very big problem). If in doubt, go and talk to the University’s careers’ service; they tend to be an under-used fount of knowledge about all things occupational.

Similarly, if you genuinely have no idea what you want to do when you leave university, that IS ok. It is not uncommon for graduates to initially take short term jobs in a variety of areas to fathom out what they want to do, or take a job that is not what they plan to make a career out of to keep them solvent whilst they decide what they do want to do. These are not less good ways of living your life than the person who went straight into a training contract with a Magic Circle law firm from graduation. Providing you are always working towards having a plan, it doesn’t matter if you have one right now.

Above all, my advice is to enjoy university as an experience, not just as a step on the road of a PLAN. Plans may develop, die or change, and all of that is ok. It is more likely that you will fathom out a plan whilst not deliberately trying to do so, than by sitting in your room and worrying that you do not have a plan. And if people with plans are harassing you about your lack of plans, stay serene – you are planning to make a plan in good time.

Tip 2 – A different species of BNOC

BNOC was perhaps my most hated phrase of last academic year. Firstly, it took me ages to find out what it meant. Then, when I did find out what it meant, I was no more enamoured. For anyone who has not had the pleasure of this phrase, it means ‘Big Name on Campus’. It seemed to have two uses. Firstly, it denoted someone who was well known on campus, although this seemed usually to be for their sexual prowess as opposed to anything else (double entendre on ‘big’? I don’t know). Its second use was more scornful; i.e. used to denote someone who wanted, and tried very hard to become, popular, without any success, and thus about whom the term was used in a derisory way.

It seems often to be the case that being a ‘big name’ on campus is not as great an achievement as it sounds in terms of personality traits. For guys, it seemed to attach mainly to those who had been with lot of girls or were very good at sport, and brash about these things. Although these were sometimes also very highly achieving young men academically, that was always shushed up in their BNOC status; being a BNOC was clearly not intended to be about brains. Interestingly, I never heard it applied to girls, although I daresay it could be. (Or does it have a feminine equivalent? Enlightenment appreciated from anyone in the know.)

Being popular does indeed seem to occupy a lot of time and energy for some students. For some, it seems to occupy more time than actually doing their work. Cultivating a reputation could certainly be seen as an additional module considering the effort that many put into it. And cultivating a reputation is not actually a waste of time at university. A lot of the people who are your peers at uni, will be so throughout your career. You’ll be amazed how often people who you knew at uni pop up again 6 months, 12 months, 5 years later in your life, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. And they may be doing things that you’d like to be involved in; professional projects or charity work. Maybe they run a company you’d like to work for, or head up a team in your firm that you’d like to get transferred into. If you made no impression on them at all, then you’re on a neutral; no problem. If you made a good impression, that will either be neutral or helpful (depending in part on their business ethics). If you made a bad impression, however, that is likely to be harder to move past; somehow, it is often the bad stuff that sticks. If you were a BNOC as a student, you might be remembered. But will you be remembered for the things that you want to be remembered for? Your fundamental traits as opposed to transient elements of student life

So how do you want to be remembered? And how do you get there? I suggest that the BNOC acronym cleans up its act; my alternative BNOC is ‘Be Nice on Campus’. This is an underestimated key to making university a breeding ground for good feeling which could follow you for years. This isn’t being a pushover, and it isn’t being nice to people who are being unpleasant to you. But it means not forming cliques, waging psychological warfare, or generally becoming involved in unnecessary personal politics. Due to the teaching structure at university you will come across a lot more people at university than you ever did at school; different people will take different papers, and there may be a lot of modules over your three years. That’s a really large number of people who you can easily annoy if you behave like someone who makes Aladdin’s Jaffar look like a perfect dinner companion. You might get known round campus (and maybe even other university campuses!) but you may well regret it in the long run when your contemporaries now are still your contemporaries when you’re 40, and can remember that thing that you did behind the Chemistry building with the girl from the Halls next to yours wearing an acid green mankini and which you took pictures of with your iPhone and published them on your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram (tasteful filter used) and blog before emailing them personally to the course convenor and your head of faculty with an x-rated invitational message attached.

Being nice doesn’t require much investment; saying hello to people who routinely sit near you, smiling, helping someone pick up everything when the strap’s just broken on their bag. You don’t need to become best friends with everyone, but nice manners go such a long way. Similarly with your faculty staff; you may not know at 18 if you intend to stay in academia. I know I certainly didn’t plan to, but I have. I still receive offers of articles that need writing and ad hoc research assistance roles from people who taught me nearly 10 years ago. I was not a genius. I worked hard and I tried to be pleasant – both traits which I think got me much further than getting my name known throughout every College for something that was nothing to do with my intellectual abilities or employability characteristics. Never underestimate how much staff find out about what students are up to (and this is especially the case if you go to a collegiate university – Senior Combination Rooms are as much a hotbed of gossip as junior ones), and never underestimate how much attention many staff members pay to your attitude to their class (even if they make like they don’t!), and, sometimes, to your peers as well. If you ask me for a reference for your dream job, they’re exactly the sorts of things I’ll be thinking of and writing about. The HR people at the firm you’re applying to will probably be bemused if I simply fill in the referee’s form with ‘X is a total BNOC.’

Never believe anyone who says that any reputation is better than no reputation. Decide which sort of BNOC you want to be, but choose carefully. What goes around may well come around, and you never know who you’ll meet down the road.

 

Tip 1 – ‘No, I don’t want to be a banana, thank you’

When I look back on my university days I definitely regret the things I didn’t do. I’m now in my mid-twenties, and I watch my students doing things I would have done if I had been brave enough, or believed in myself enough to think that they might have been worth me doing. This is NOT a suggestion that you do everything, even if you think you’ll hate it. It’s a plea that, if you think you MIGHT enjoy something, you give it a go. Once. Need never do it again if you actually find it insufferable, but you never know what you might end up loving (Tiddlywinks team, anyone?). Similarly, trying everything you think you might enjoy is not a suggestion to give into peer pressure; do it if you think YOU might enjoy it, not if you think you’ll hate it but it will make you more popular/everyone else is/there’s a really cute guy or girl going.

And on the topic of peer pressure. Not giving in to it is hard unless you have the psychological skin of a rhinoceros (the brain of a rhinoceros? I’m not sure how to adapt that saying) and an absolute apathy to being drawn into social groups. On this, Glee is the slightly surprising site of some excellent advice. As Quinn says to Rachel when she’s considering appearing naked in a student arts’ film, ‘Use the 2-2-2 rule. How will you feel about it in 2 hours? 2 days? 2 months?’ A wise recommendation. And think about this carefully.

The best way to avoid negative peer pressure, however, is to suss out those people who fall into either of two groups;

• a) they don’t necessarily have the same ideas about what constitutes a fun night out as you do, but they’re willing to let you do your thing whilst they do theirs, and everyone lives and lets live (as a non-drinker I have had hours fun in this sort of situation; my friends are drunk as the proverbial skunk, I’m stone cold sober, but we mutually respect the other’s desire to be that way, and so we still all have fun).
• b) they are like you, and are likely to want to do (and not do) the same things as you. With either group you are likely to have a much nicer time because they won’t be putting you under pressure.

These are most likely to be the people whose weddings you’ll go to, children you’ll babysit and company you’ll still enjoy in 10 years’ time.

Meanwhile…there is also a third group;

•   c) who are best avoided, are those who cannot or will not respect your choices. These people are not friends, and are likely to give little care to your feelings on anything important. They might be any number of desirable things, but spending time with them is unlikely to have a happy ending if you are not the sort of person who enjoys spending your spare time as a doormat to other people’s ideas and intentions of questionable sensibility.

 Perhaps the best thing to remember during those awkward ‘are-we-going-to-be-friends-freshers’ encounters is that if someone respects you for who you are then they won’t be interested in putting pressure on you to do something once you have communicated a desire not to do that. And ‘that’ might be alcohol, smoking, drugs, sex or running down the street dressed as a banana.

 

(I do actually have a dear friend who once went to a costume dinner dressed as a banana. A FairTrade one, no less: She even had a label saying so. But that was entirely her own mad choice. Which is one of the many reasons why we’re still friends.)