Diary of a Fresher day two: making Halls a home

For her second day of Fresher’s Week, Dearbhail tries to make Halls a home and shakes off some of her initial nervousness

COMMENT
I’m sitting in the Arts Café, typing busily on an obnoxiously large laptop – in other words, I’m feeling rather metropolitan today.
When you’re in public, a laptop and an open Word document can entirely change your demeanour. Instead of lost and awkward, I feel purposeful.
The Bank of Ireland representatives floating around campus don’t see me and think: “oh, she’s an impressionable fresher – I should shower her with leaflets and promises of free stuff”, they think “she’s either a writer, a postgrad or a journalist – I’m staying as far away as possible.
Humans are funny creatures. We’re like worker ants and bees – we constantly need some sort of job, a purpose to reassure ourselves with. If you disrupt our paths or give us too many choices at once we mill around hopelessly, seeking external direction.
I think that’s why so many of us freshers are confused and impatient to start lectures. We need that structure and motivation in our lives.

Socialising and partying have always been the activities that fill the cracks in our schedule, not the central focus of our days. It leaves you feeling rather listless. According to my roommates, it also leaves you feeling obliged to get drunk every night. I’m praying that their livers make it to the end of the week.

I’m staying in Trinity Hall, so regardless of whether I’ve been partying or not I haven’t been getting much sleep. There’s a person in the flat directly above me who is not a very good singer or dancer – but insists on singing and dancing well into the wee hours of the morning.

I’m not going to say anything. I’ll get used to the noise eventually, the way you get used to the ticking of a clock in a room. In the meantime it makes for good bedtime entertainment, and I’m curious to see whether their skills will improve as the year goes on.

Maybe I should slip a DU Dance leaflet under their door.
Other than that, my experience in Hall so far can be summarised as such: I can’t find my keycard. I break into a sweat and ransack my room looking for my keycard. After about an hour of searching I find my keycard tucked in a ‘safe place’ that I had forgotten about.

I breathe a sigh of relief. I put my keycard into a new ‘safe place’. I promptly forget where that ‘safe place’ is. The cycle repeats. On a less flippant note, Freshers’ Week has been getting a little easier and a little less overwhelming as each day passes.

I’m slipping into comfortable daily rituals, I’m becoming less awkward and stilted in conversation and I, as an unashamed nerd, am incredibly excited to start my studies here. I want to dive into familiar waters: I want to learn new things, read books and develop my thoughts.

There’s plenty of time for socialising in between all that.