The sight of freshers mourning the end of their first year of hedonism has been one of the most endearing moments of the university experience thus far. Facebook montages, reflective glances at empty rooms and tears amongst friends confirms what we all wanted to realise when we came to York.
It has been brilliant.
We normally shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to bridging the gap between reality and expectations. If your summer funds had run out come September and most of your friends had begun their journey elsewhere, you probably spent most of those 30 days hoping university was everything that those family friends at barbecues said it would be.
A recent survey conducted by The Tab would have outsiders wondering why we love York so much. We were described as not “ambitious enough for Oxbridge” or “smart enough for Warwick”.
We don’t even do justice to our “leafy campus”, whatever that means.
It could have been worse, I suppose: Queen Mary University of London was described as a sixth-form college.
We decided to ask some freshers whether they thought that they were ambitious enough for Oxbridge, clever enough for Warwick and whether they thought they did justice to our grass.
“York was my FIRST choice,” said first-year maths student, Laura Cook “I worked hard and I knew from the moment I came here I would have a great time. There’s no bullshit campus divide between the jocks and the nerds.”
Daniel Gibson, another first-year maths student, concurred with Laura. “Take James College. They’ve herded the best sportsmen with the maths department. You’d think it’d be carnage, but it isn’t. James College is like living on a safari where the lions charge at the warthogs to tell them to put sun cream on. Some of my best friends are jocks.”
Many attribute this harmony to the college system and the positive outcome of a shared identity. First year sociology student, Claire Mather, says “I know everyone in my flat and they all know me. I have friends at Manchester and Leeds who know nothing of the people they live with. They’re all students, but they don’t share much in common.”
York should be given credit for this. People are grouped into colleges that they feel comfortable in and this lends itself to a strong group identity. If you want to move, the university will do all that it can to accommodate you in another college.
“I’m trying to work out if I could care less about what The Tab wrote,” ponders Claire, “How have they even measured this? By points accrued on University Challenge in the last decade?”
Students were as confused as expected when we showed them The Tab’s article.
First-years were outraged by flippant attacks on our intelligence and ambition, but it seemed to grate even more that we didn’t do our leafy campus justice.
Responses were as expected: “What does that mean!?” “Since when were leaves so important?” “Do they think I’m David Attenborough?”
Common complains among York students is that in fact the campus is not particularly attractive and that once Heslington Hall leaves the panorama, we are left with what the 1960s thought was cool. Anyway, the verdict from University of York freshers is clear.
They want more. They want it odd, they want ducks and they want colleges. If that isn’t good enough, they can live with The Tab’s verdict that we’re “just a bit odd, really”. And that’s exactly what they’re after.