I remember, at the age of five, watching two teenage girls stealing chewing gum from One Stop. This was possibly the first time I realised people weren’t either children or adults, but that there was a middle bit between not having boobs and having sad droopy boobs, and that it was really cool. Really cool to be big, to wear shoes that make you fall over, to have pert breasts and not have to share your shiny coins with the nice man behind the counter if you didn’t want to.
Since developing boobs myself, I have discovered life isn’t quite how I imagined. If you don’t share your shiny coins, a man in a uniform gives you a criminal record. In fact, it turns out, once you’re big and know how to play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs without your parents’ help, YOU JUST CAN’T wear your ballet tutu to school, ‘have an accident’ down your legs or demand someone puts their nipple in your mouth. Oh yes, life as a big person is awful.
Well, teeny tiny first-years, you may not have realised this, but you are currently squashed into the high-chair of life. The large and droopy University of York is burping you regularly, feeding you mushed veg and wiping down your face dribble. You may, if you are as foolish as I was at your age, think that getting bigger means that you’ll miraculously know what kind of career you want to step into once you leave the high chair.
You may think moving out of halls into a house will make you a real grown up, with sofas, a double bed, a working front door, and a safe place to keep your laptop and stop people fraping you. Well, if you’re very lucky, these things will happen to you. If you’re very lucky, you’ll live in the one house in York in which you don’t have to pay for your heating, so your knickers don’t shatter when you prise them off the frozen clothes-horse. Maybe you’ll be like my housemates at this time of year, applying for graduate schemes and knowing, in your soul, you’d be happy in management consultancy… and by jingo I hope you are.
My experience of third year so far has been total panic. It’s like waking up and trying to run the London marathon with strawberry laces for limbs. It’s actually worse than that. It’s the London marathon/strawberry laces metaphor with your family, friends and the old man from One Stop cheering you on, so the pressure of failure makes you sweat until your limbs melt off all together.
Thus, little lovely first years, wear your tutus, do those extracurricular activities and be as well acquainted with that Willow floor as possible. Perhaps even demand someone put their nipple in your mouth. Because once you’re out of that high-chair, you’ll discover it’s horrible being big.
Why do you keep putting her column on distracting and dark backgrounds? Her writing is funny, so stop trying to disguise it amongst flowers in print. Clearly the editors are jealous of Helena’s wit