Kealey’s Campus Confessions

When you’re at university, luck comes in ones and twos, and two-ones, but never, ever threes. A ‘third degree classification’ is a life sentence you’ll spend with your parents, on job seekers’ allowance, sobbing into your pot noodle. The ‘third term’ at university might be acquainted with the Third Reich – one and two not being all that bad really, in comparison. We don’t do threes well at university. And for those of us in our third term of our third year, life as we know it is about to end. The threes have found us, like Daleks of the number world; the joy-sucking Dementors. It’s some hideous Dalek-Dementor hybrid. That’s some really grim coitus I’m imagining right now. And so it is that the war with this number must be fought by most people, in the library cafe, and mate, we could really do with you as an ally.

There are some great things about the library. It’s pretty damn fine at the moment. Spanking. Beautiful. If I were Central Hall I would totally tap that shit. I have spent almost my entire student loan on “jacket potato with cheese and beans please”, and I literally do not have enough love for the people who work there – my new bezzie, Sam, who works at the Costa is the only reason I’ve been able to finish my past two essays without suffering a nervous breakdown. I speak to him more than my housemates. Or parents. Or boyfriend.However, there is one massive problem: Costa is a private company that wants the one thing we don’t have. Money. They want to make money out of us. Costa has made it impossible for us to get around their profit making. “We’re not service” we hear them squawk. As a result, Costa’s cup of tea is £1.40, which is obviously INSANE as we sometimes go for a few days without buying toothpaste or shampoo because our loan hasn’t come in. If we ask for some hot water something which costs you NOTHING to basically find out of the ground, you charge us 40p for the cup. And we can’t recycle the cup. We have to buy a new one each time. And there is nowhere to heat food. So we can’t bring in anything other than endless sandwiches EVERY DAY OF OUR LIVES. Help me.

I guess my point is this: it is our library. Where we have to battle against the threes in the slow agony of paper cuts and key texts fines. This place isn’t about you. It’s about us. Give us some hot water and a microwave so that we can bring our own food. You’ll still make a profit from the desperate and/or forgetful. If I crack one more time and buy another jacket potato and a cup of tea I will have no money. I will not be able to afford my printing costs. I will fail my degree. The threes will have won and it will be all your fault.