What I Wish I’d Known Before I Chose My Student House
Remember when last year, as first years still new to the world of University, the only talk anyone was interested in was who you’d be living with and where you’d pick? I was one of the eager bunnies that wanted to have everything sorted before Christmas, both for peace of mind and for the reassurance that our house would be half decent.
Look how grown up I am, signing contracts, thinking about bills, I thought. At eighteen, and starting afresh in a sparkly new city with exciting new friends, it was all about feeling grown up. Especially when so many people insisted on reminding me that I look younger than my age — someone recently saw me drinking and asked if I should be, since I looked fourteen. Fourteen! I’m nineteen, buddy. What a joke.
If only I’d known then that being grown up is about so much more than just picking a house with a pretty fireplace in the living room. This I would soon come to realise after moving in at the beginning of my second year.
I was so excited to be back. Yes, the house is on a main road and yes, the window at the front of the house looked pretty grotty, but beauty is on the inside, right? It was going to be so cosy, the three of us cooking Sunday roasts and then settling down on the comfy leather sofas to watch ITV’s ‘Victoria’ together in the evening.
I hate leather sofas. That should have been the first sign.
Turns out, this house is bloody cold. It’s a three bedroomed terrace house, so you’d have thought that being sandwiched between our neighbours would allow us to conserve heat or something (I never was very good at science), but oh no. My fingers, toes and nose are perpetual ice cubes, and my bones feel like they’ll never thaw. See, half the issue is that, being poor students with empty bank accounts, we can’t afford to put the heating on until we reach the middle of winter.
It’s even worse on the third floor. As I climb the stairs to my bedroom, I can feel what little warmth there is falling away and by the time I’ve reached the door, I can practically see my breath rising in puffs in front of me. At this rate, I’ll have pneumonia by the time the month is out.
Ironically, the freezer, which is the only part of the house I want to be cold, is frigging tiny. Three drawers deep (if you can call it that), each one takes about three items and then its full. This disaster hit a low point when my roommate had to eat half a tub of ice-cream yesterday to make room for the food order that was arriving that night. Okay, so that wasn’t such a hardship, but the principle still stands!
Roommates. I suppose I can’t complain, really. At least we get on. It’s the roommate’s boyfriend I didn’t take into consideration. You think you’re spending the weekend just the two of you. But it turns out, no, they’re spending the weekend in the two of them, and you’re third wheeling in your own home! It gets worse when they start kissing on the sofa while you’re trying to eat your dinner. And don’t even mention the horror of trying to get to sleep at night. Every creak and murmur begins a whole new nightmare. I shudder at the thought.
Factor in your other roommate pulling out a week before moving in and you have yourself a student nightmare.
However, I’ll admit that I still love my house (and my remaining roommate), and this year will still be a blast. But these are a few things that I wish I’d known when I chose my student house, and they’re definitely things I’ll take into consideration for third year. Perhaps you might too.
With thanks to Toby Menzies-Sacher and Francesca Isabella Alice Mundy
