It is somewhat unnerving to find that the door handle of your new home comes away in your hand the first time you use it. It is even less reassuring to find the lights in the kitchen don't work, there is graffiti on the wall in your room and the TV insists on putting fuzzy lines across every channel except - for some perverse reason - TnaG. With this in mind, I was only mildly surprised when the oven door clattered to the ground the first time I opened it. (Let's just say it wasn't quite what I had expected from reading the literature, which appears to have been advertising a different house altogether.)

Living away from home is a major part of most students' college experience. Cooking and cleaning become things you actually do rather than things you tell your parents you have done. The sudden change from perceived oppression to absolute freedom can have strange effects on students. Some know the locations and pricelists of all the local off-licences within minutes of arrival. Others make finding the library their primary concern - dedicating themselves to four years of unremitting solitary struggle with college texts. Still others (like me) spend their first few days after arrival wandering around the campus, hopelessly lost and unable to find anything.

Speaking of the strange effects that sudden freedom has on students, I may as well admit that last week I was overcome by an insane urge to dye my hair blonde. The reasoning behind this is that it is better to be known for having weird hair than not to be known at all. It wasn't long before I found myself in Limerick, standing in an expensive- looking, heavily-perfumed pharmacy - nervously eyeing boxes of hair dye plastered with pictures of happy blonde women. The uniformed shop assistant took one look at my battered shoes, tattered jeans, and admittedly, rather curious hairstyle and asked "can I help you?" In my hurry to get out of the shop as quickly as possible, I grabbed the first bottle of dye which came to hand - "Ash Blonde Loving Care by Clairol". Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the hair dye - which "gently covers grey in minutes" - did not work. However I am not deterred. Next week I'll find some peroxide.

There is, of course, a serious side to college - lectures and all that sort of thing. However, so far, UL students have had a gentle introduction to student life in the form of orientation week - one long disorientating rush of drink and documents. Most students seemed to have adopted the motto that sleep is for the weak (or the weekend) and sobriety is for the . . . er . . . sober. The week really was quite helpful and I have the empty beer cans to prove it. (Incidentally, for those of you doing technological courses and planning to save money for drink by buying earlier editions of books, don't. A helpful second-year told me that it doesn't pay.)

Fitter? Happier? More productive? . . . Blonde? No. But I'm working on it.