The tragedy of the “Student Lifestyle”
Adam Brooks
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Name:Adam Brooks
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Joined: Oct 2011Occupation: English Student at Leeds UniversityAdam's Full Profile
The student today has been caricatured. Claims of education are scoffed at by those all-knowing elders, who imagine your life as a string of hazy scenes in a squalid room lined with industrial carpet and empty beer cans, as you crawl toward your week overdue and half-finished essay. Just mention the fact you’re a student to anyone over 30 and they’ll recoil, afraid of touching whatever insidious filth is coating you from last weekend’s atrocities. This is unfair. There are some who live for the night, spend their evenings vomiting on walls, scrawl genitalia on their mates’ foreheads, roll in late to seminars and sprawl gasping and reeking onto chairs. But the majority strike a happy midway, successfully balancing work with pleasure, only occasionally partaking in phallus-scribbling, and never on a weekday.
Adam Brooks grapples with Foucault after a night of Basshunter and paint stripper
However, there is a persistent, niggling fear. As the blue half of the coalition drowns the yellow, the lure of lethargy and alcohol threatens to pull down any noble intentions that students may cling to. No matter how great the desire to do well, the fluorescent leaflets and special offers of the nightlife always intrude, with promises of money-consuming benders. Every single night of the week (rendering the concept of the weekend fatuous) nightclubs boast events with “cheap” drinks, slut-inducing themes and music with basslines to shake your face to pieces. The real tragedy is that this is tempting.
Suddenly, personal tastes seem to disappear in a whirl of conformity. That essay gets forgotten; you want the face-breaking bass! You want the industrially mixed vodka and paint-stripping spirits! You want the three AM spewing spree outside your flat, where your seminar prep sits mournfully watching you from the window. It is a feat of staggering psychological persuasion that would make Derren Brown contort in envy.
What induces this terrifying slip of standards? It’s not as if those leaflet waving promoters are the Thought Police of the Ministry of Fun. Rather, it seems to be the conscious effort to fit into an imagined state of being: the shunned “student lifestyle.” The fact this is a completely artificial concept, created by comedians and ignorant adults, seems to be irrelevant – it manifests as something real and desirable. It is dangerous in the power it holds.
An example from a freshers’ event I had the misfortune of attending. A typically dingy hollow of a nightclub was crammed with people: the sequin-clad nightmares that clawed at you and at their drinks, the jostlers and shovers, the drunken embarrassments and the awkward shuffling would-be dancers. It was a night specifically for English students. We were the artistic minds of our generation, and we were all crowded around the bar. No one was on the dance floor, which, being around two thirds of the place, created both practical and aesthetic difficulties. The mesh of human livestock knocked drinks out of hands, crushed everyone’s feet and generally rendered enjoyment a physical impossibility. But the aversion to the dance floor was not surprising. The music punching forth from every cavity was some awful chart remix with the bass whacked way up. Grimacing, I looked to the DJ and noticed with shock that he was wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt. This was too much. Such a tragic oxymoron, brought about undoubtedly through the repression of the individual by the notion of “what the kids dig nowadays,” – I had to talk to him.
“What happened to the cultural revolution man? What happened to taste, to art, to quality?” I slurringly opened. He explained, with all the emotion of a lobotomized student clone, that he was told to play this music, regardless of his tastes or of his audience’s. After minutes of painfully chipping away the shell of conformity, he finally played some good material, out of his own personal collection. The Beatles, Bowie, The Dandy Warhols, Velvet Underground all streamed forth in waves of sonic pleasure, and steadily the crowd shifted from the bar to the dance floor, shedding preconceptions and disappointment as they went.
It was wonderful. To have a room full of people realise for an instant that their night doesn’t have to consist of trying to dance to music you pretend to like, you don’t have to smother your brain with alcohol to feel any enjoyment. With a supreme smugness in my one-man revolution, I planned world-wide clubbing domination; takeovers of the nightlife industry, shoving those fluorescent flyers down the throats of those who invented what we as students are supposed to enjoy.
This lasted around half an hour. A large man, bald-headed and the embodiment of all evil, approached my DJ friend. I could almost imagine him saying: “This isn’t what you’re supposed to play! This is not what these people want; what they like! This stuff of substance is reserved for me and my contemporaries, here, play some Basshunter.” With a swift re-lobotomization, he slapped on some dance and with his headphones dangling miserably round his neck, shrugged apologetically at me.
This is the danger, the terrifying power of the idea of student life. Its connections are too deeply rooted, its influence too strong. Regardless of its groundings in fiction, it has become (through the minds of either businessmen or idiots) a tangible force of suggestion that one by one I see students, including myself, succumb to. It is a tragic example of…Oh but what’s this flyer? Monday nights free entry and £1.50 mixers? DJ Dancehound plays bass remixes? School disco theme? Well why the hell not, it isn’t like I have anything better to do.
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As a perfectionist I realised I was always aiming to fulfill this impossible standard of being the ‘perfect student’, ie fitting the caricature (and good grades, popularity etc) and enjoying it all. but it never satisfies because it’s just stupid, that’s if you can reach this perfect standard at all. It makes me feel like an outcast for not conforming ‘enough’. Yet when I think about it, none of my friends (bar one) fit this caricature, and it’s not like I’m friendless.
So thanks, you expressed my views well
I loved this article. So very well written
yes I’m an English student and I included a smiley face in my comment. Very descriptive of me…
I enjoyed this article. Particularly the phrase “slut-inducing themes”.
But why don’t you just got to an indie night – if you like The Beatles, Bowie, The Dandy Warhols, Velvet Underground.. There are loads in Leeds, some of which are legendary (e.g. Brighton Beach) – and I don’t mean in the LEG-END meaning of the word.
This is one of the most honest articles I have ever read. I think you completely hit the nail on the head! Your status as a student justifies everything you say, and I honestly believe that you have a far wiser insight than most others.
It is sad too that this tragedy is sort of present in most areas of society, not just being a student.
Brilliant article…. Some good responses by readers, and some good responses to those responses – it’s just I know that even you (and I would like to class myself in the caste of ‘the enlightened’, and therefore also myself) cannot but help be dragged in to this whirlpool, as you rightly point out. Don’t tell me your ‘arse neuron’ doesn’t go completely off on a dopamine high when you get out there though…
btw, well done on getting to the front page
I think ‘arse neuron” is my new favourite phrase
Ah David! The thought of you sitting at home reading me at 2:42 in the morning, gives me tingles of pleasure, and yes, some are in the arse neuron. You are correct in mentioning the dopamine high, although I only truly enjoy it if I am absolutely off my face, or if I have the company of a lovely female. God, give me whisky or a woman!
My tuition is at a partner college and as for the night lifestyle of a city/town full of student activities we have a student bar open from 4-10:30pm and one small town with shit nighclubs and 2 major towns with even worse clubs. i am the student president of my partner college and i have many duties involved with that, i have many assignments as well which take long hours of research and studying animal behaviours in the field, i am currently job searching (due to the government screwing me over) and i can be a lot of the time a social recluse yet i still go out atleast 2times a week to release the stress that all this invloves. i fully agree that these clubs now play crap music that not even the artists like and completely agree that the ‘old school’ tunes should be played more. most students here are like me and would love to see the nightlife in the towns and cities you are refereing to but we would completely agree to the states of student in these areas, but what can be done about it?
Oh how I wish someone would dare to approach the Dj like that in Birmingham!!!!
The standard club music has just become an abomination only enjoyable through the blurring of the mind! All this truly grieves me
The week in Lancaster goes something like this: elements, revs, the carlton, revs again, and sugar. With all doing specials it sure is tempting to go out and ignore all my work, thats not to mention 9 bars on campus, hustle, lounge, toast, mint and the biggest pub to person ratio in the uk, and this is lancaster! Supposdly a little historic town, I dread to think what somewhere like manchester is like.
Then of course theres all the society socials, and the college specials – Fyldes yard challenge, Furnesses 15 hour bar crawl. Seems all I can do is join in!
You’ve captured exactly the student/fresher experience. I hardly drink, maybe a glass of wine with a meal once a week (god help I had two glasses last night when watching Downton Abbey with friends!), and yet there is such undeniable pressure from universities themselves to force alcoholic culture onto us; I hate it! I feel like every night is something different somewhere, and that alcohol does essentially fuel many peoples lives.
To me though, its an expensive, wasteful, health-damaging and strangely legal drug- to be taken in very moderate amounts!
The only reason it is promoted is because of the money it brings in.
What a fresh, clean style of writing you have, I enjoyed this very much. You’ve summed up entirely my opinion of Uni. But you might take into account, Adam, students such as myself who don’t drink at all and have to eat, study, sleep around a continuous cacophony of artless, generic music; loud sex and shrieking at 4am from girls dressed as Neanderthals, wanking off plastic clubs. Far from wanting everyone to ‘have it my way’ I would be the first to wank off inanimate objects with everyone after a great night out, but that’s the thing – the night out. The night out lacks anything of ANY kind of genuine fun! Unless you love tuneless, talentless singers, or the thrill of trying to avoid the sick puddles, or having your arse groped by a sweaty hand that could’ve belonged to anyone, you’ll never know.
I would say all this because I’m a weed-smoker. I cause no trouble whatsoever in my flat, I’m 22 and entitled to my own decisions and I enjoy reading, writing, watching classic movies and listening to REAL songs with REAL substance and REAL talent, the Andrews Sisters, for example. And yet, the hilarity of the situation is, I’m the one that is judged the most! It doesn’t matter if my flatmates wake me up hoovering through the letterbox at 3am, or leave my pots and pans burnt and stained and unwashed after I’ve lent them out, or even if they wipe their blue-painted smurf hands on my clean white linen!! I’m the one that is ‘anti-social’, ‘boring’ and ‘naughty!’ Not true in the slightest.
My friends and I have the best times when we are together, quietly in my room, having some joints, watching some movies, cooking dinner together and having good, interesting conversation.
In my opinion, if alcohol was replaced with marijuana, University would be much more civilised and cultured and if night-clubs didn’t exist at all my eyes wouldn’t have suffered all that glutony, soft porn and testosterone-induced violence. They’re the worst places in the world.
Thanks Hannah.
I perhaps should have given you noble breed of students a mention. My twin brother is at Sheffield but lives at home as he doesn’t drink, hates going out, hates the entire lifestyle I’ve written about and yet has the balls to actually exclude himself. But he comes home with terrible tales of people like him: a girl who never speaks to her flatmates and never drinks, got her breakfast orange juice spiked with vodka and some sort of drug; a guy who stayed in his room all day working got his room broken into by the bastard living next to him and he got tied to a wheelchair and shoved around for an hour. I’m not entirely sure where the impulse fot this comes from. I’ve always had faith in the relative shit-ness of humanity, but university seems to trigger some strange and previously dormant “arse neuron” in the brain, causing all the lanky do-wrongers to shout and hit things and stop thinking, and the girls to do much the same, whilst opening and closing their legs like saloon doors. Someone needs to do a study on this phenomenon.
But I agree with everything you say. You sound like a strange rock of sense in the middle of a storm of absolute inanity. I actually encountered these neanderthally attired girls of which you speak (the bastards must be breeding) when on a night out and under the influence of various substances, and, far from feeling any kind of arousal whatsoever, I was terrified out of my wits. I thought I was going mad when I saw these half naked girls clutching femurs and slavering over them like they were giant members. Then I realised that although I was completely out of my head, I was the most sane person in the street that night.
Anyway, both you and me sound like we’re having a hell of a time. Unfortunately uni doesn’t offer much of an escape for us enlightened, short of dropping out, which is not really an option when the “real world” post-graduation is as much of a shit-storm as the sphere we currently occupy. I reckon grin and bear it, float past the madess on a marijuana cloud of common sense. And thanks for the comment, hopefully I’ll be writing more bits for this site.
Try doing a nursing degree, you get a night out about once a year because the work is so demanding!
“the sequin-clad nightmares that clawed at you and at their drinks, the jostlers and shovers, the drunken embarrassments and the awkward shuffling would-be dancers”
And somebody was giving booze to these god damn things!
Some of the grimmest scenes in the northern hemisphere must go down at university fresher club nights.
Exactly right Frank. Scenes so mad you don’t even have to be under the influence to think you’re crazy. Hunter S. Thompson would have had a field day.