The Hist or the Phil? Food or drink? The Pav or the Buttery? Bavaria or Tuborg? It's only his first week in Trinity College Dublin, but already Seamus Conboy faces some tough choices
Freshers' week in TCD began on Monday, October 4th, the start of a new life. The night before Freshers' Week, my team was knocked out of the championship and my sorrows had been drowned. Instead of arriving on campus full of glee, I was on a mission for a cure. My main concern was the search for the cure. My college ID photo is a disgrace.
I was due to register at 10.15 on Monday morning and was faced with far more choices then I was fit to handle. Appearance - contacts or glasses, hair up or hair down, shoes or runners, clean-shaven or not? First impressions can be quite important, but I decided to take the easy way out and go for the dirty, hung-over college-boy look that I've seen so often before but never actually tried.
After going through the motions of registering, I was confronted with even more difficult decisions. Do I join the Hist or the Phil? Do I eat or do I drink? Do I go to the Pav or the Buttery? Bavaria or Tuborg? The list goes on.
With regard to my search for the cure both the Hist and the Phil, the two big debating societies, let me down. Both promised endless amounts of beer and food to those of us foolish enough to give them a few euro for membership. Both produced pitiful amounts of cheese sandwiches and even less beer, all of which was greedily snapped up by the few people who had obviously brought a hip flask with them to help them register.
One society that definitely didn't let me down was An Chumann Gaelach. As I wandered through the front square, lost, alone and starving, I saw a very welcome sign. "Lón saor". I followed the signs to a small, comfortable room in the Atrium, where I found a feast of ham sandwiches and a few friendly faces. Having been educated through Irish since the age of four, I felt totally at home, and signed up immediately.
The first evening ended with Tuborg and comedy in the Buttery, where I found that the majority of the audience was not attending Trinity at all. I met all sorts of people - from UCD students to other bums who just decided to come along for a laugh.
Leaving aside all the formalities of registering, faculty meetings, college tours etc., the next day or two were spent wandering aimlessly, meeting people and being harassed mercilessly by everyone from the St Vincent de Paul to Bank of Ireland while trying to cross front square. Hot whiskey receptions and other such boozy events were the norm. Time was at a premium, and I'd say I participated in about half the things that I had planned. I think I can be forgiven for forgetting a friend's birthday amidst all this fun.
Wednesday marked the second big milestone in my life in a week - moving out of home. Despite my love for my parents and brothers, I have been looking forward to getting out for a long, long time. I had planned on packing on Tuesday night, but needless to say I was distracted by the allure of a college party. Long story short is I was left to cram my entire life up to that moment into a bag in 15 minutes on Wednesday morning. By midday, I was totally at home in New Square, and had almost forgotten about my old roommates, and that place where I used to live. Until the phone rang! I didn't need to guess twice as to the caller. I was bombarded with "Is everything ok?" questions for about half an hour. The fact that I'm a half-hour bus trip away from home doesn't seem to comfort my mother at all. I eventually managed to persuade her that I was ok, and that I would more than likely survive my first day alone.
Living on campus in first year apparently just doesn't happen, and I've been told to consider myself extremely lucky. The people in my house are all older then me, which at first I thought would be intimidating, but in reality it's a little comforting. I'm just left to wonder what it would be like had I been thrown in at the deep end with a bunch of people my age, all fresh out of home and just as immature as me.
Being in college, I have also met a few specimens of that previously unapproachable and utterly terrifying race - college girls. They have a very interesting, worldly charm incomparable to anything I have previously experienced. At the same time though, it's hard to forget about the schoolgirls, the girl who is only a year younger then me, but is living in a completely different, stress-filled world. The fact that I'm a smooth-talking, sophisticated college boy makes me (almost) irresistible to her, while the college girl will hardly give me the 'time of day. Women. Such beautiful yet complicated creatures.
I have a lot to learn in college.
Seamus Conboy wrote The Irish Times Exam Diary during the Leaving Cert
