Ask the Trinity Collidge agony aunt

A guide for your college queries

Ive made some great friends in the first couple of weeks of college, but now I’m paranoid I’m being too clingy with them. How do I stop myself being the awkward hanger-on?


The friends you make in Freshers’ Week will be the friends you have for the remainder of your college life, it is imperative you hold onto them. People often make the mistake of trying to play it cool and act aloof, allowing these potentially lifelong friendships to slip away.

Stick to them like glue. Join the same societies as them, even if you have no interest. I don’t care if you drive a Hummer that only takes leaded petrol to college and have a personal loathing of coral reefs, if Patrick is going to a coffee morning with EnviroSoc, then you’re joining EnviroSoc.


Suggest activities to improve bonding. Go camping together and sabotage your means of transportation so you get more time with them. Read up on survival skills beforehand, such as which berries are safe to eat. Take charge and lead them to safety, a friend who thinks they owe you their life is a friend for life.

My housemate seems to be in a world of her own and leaves the house in a mess, she sometimes says hurtful things to us and I don’t know if she means to be cruel but two weeks in and we are already at wit’s end! Please help!


Directly confronting her could just exacerbate the situation, and true change needs to come from within. Cover her and her room with fake blood. Hire an actor from Players to dress up as her guardian angel and wake her up in the middle of the night. The angel will inform her that she has died, mauled in her sleep by a roving pack of meerkats that escaped from Dublin Zoo, and that she is now in limbo. Her actions in life prevent her from getting into heaven, but she is being offered a second chance at redemption.

The angel will lead her into your kitchen, which is spotlessly clean, where you are all having a party and talking shit about her. “Even in death, she left a mess for us to clean up.” Or something like that. Don’t acknowledge her presence, don’t look at her or react when she speaks. Only the angel will be able to hear her speak and she will truly believe she has died.

She will likely try and use her phone, but the signal jammer you bought from your Uncle Bill, who claims to have been in the army but gets evasive when you press for more details, will prevent her from using the internet or calling anyone. The angel will inform her that she must change her ways, clean up after herself – starting with the fake blood in her room – and be generally more pleasant to everyone. She will awake in the morning and you will listen to her version of events with disbelief. She will pass it off as a bad dream, but you will see a change in behaviour.

Hey agony aunt so me and my girlfriend have been seeing each other for almost a year and it was going great but since I moved from Cork to Halls it hasn’t been the same. Any advice please?


Trinity can put a strain on people’s relationships, platonic and romantic. Our academic year structure used to mean that our mid-term break took place a week after those of other colleges, which made it difficult to hang out with friends in other institutions. This has changed this year, where our midterm is now a week behind everyone else. Their friends will also refer to you as “the Trinity wanker”, gradually turning them against you.

This is by design, because Trinity loves you, and wants you to itself. You’ve been with your girlfriend for one year? Trinity has you for four, minimum. Each building a part of a 47-acre, beating heart. A heart that beats for you. You must make a choice, the love you shared before, or a new love, a love that is shared among 15,000 people without being diminished. Trinity urges you to choose.

Since coming to college I’ve only just realised how much I relied on my Mam’s cooking. Any handy cooking tips to get me off the Domino’s diet?


The Domino’s pizza diet was something I was stuck on myself for many months. Now I get Four Star, it’s better pizza and they do these really lovely warm chocolate-chip cookies.