After weeks of rain so heavy that men called Noah were starting to look a little apprehensive, Monday morning was joyously bright and sunny. It could only mean one thing: college was back in session. Now before the outraged student populace in UCD floods me with letters, let me just point out that I know they went back a couple of weeks ago, but, as a former Trinity student, my circadian rhythms are more naturally in tune with that university.
But whether in UCG, Maynooth, University of Limerick, or wherever, Freshers' Week is usually a joy to behold. From the first posters shouting "Get Wasted On Us" to the ingenuity demonstrated by the Philatelists' Society in making teenagers think that stamp collecting is the new pornography, a wander through the stalls of Freshers' Week normally inspires great wodges of nostalgia and reminds me of just why I like students despite their bad PR. Admittedly, my annual walk through the stalls of Freshers' Week is also partially inspired by vanity - on a Monday morning when I've decided that I can hear my liver ageing, it's nice to be hailed as "Hey first year." I'm sure they know damn well that I'm a good eight years away from first year, but hey, there's always a chance that I'll part with £1 in an attempt to regain my lost student days. But this year there seemed to be something distinctly different about Freshers' Week - and something different about students. All the stands seemed to have jars of lollipops, cans of fizzy pop or stuffed animals involved somewhere along the line, but in contrast to the huge wealth of juvenilia on display, the students were like advertisements for technological advance. People screeching about free hemp cookies had to compete with endlessly ringing mobile phones. I noticed one guy put the details of the society he just joined into a Psion organiser. Student parking facilities are becoming a serious issue.
This is all to be expected - I'm sure when I started college there were people shaking their heads over all these new-fangled notebooks and wondering why a slate wouldn't do me - but the abundance of technology was accompanied by an absence. Among all the stalls, posters and hawkers there was a peculiar lack of something for which students have always been known - issues. Societies have always relied heavily on the complex psychological trick known as Free Drink to encourage new recruits - "I drink therefore I am? Join the Brewing For A Better Brain Society and find out". But I also remember acres of posters and swathes of hugely impressive-looking people shouting about causes - both local and international - and student rights and lively topics for debate. It was considered the done thing to compete with other societies on your right-onedness - banners saying things like Save Endangered Lesbian Molehounds From Extinction fulfilled every cliche about students and I was delighted to see them. Like many other students, I joined about 14 societies, shuffling my new membership cards like an experienced poker shark and filling my Students' Union diary with dates and times of meetings.
I don't think I kept up with any of them, so I'm hardly in a strong position to talk about student malaise, but even after falling by the wayside, it was good to know the agitators were out there, agitating on my behalf. But from the look of the societies lining Trinity's Front Square this week, entertainment - not politics - is now the order of the day. "Radicalism?" moaned one lecturer. "I'm much more radical than my students these days."
To be honest, it's not entirely surprising. Popular culture is now so all-embracing and time-consuming that it doesn't leave much mental space for issues. The points race has escalated to such a ridiculous degree that if 18-year-olds care about anything other than the usual clutter of boys, girls, friends and the Debs, it's not saving the world but getting ahead in it themselves. The hottest issue in many colleges around the country is the one of library seat shortages - if students are fighting, it's for their right to study.
Many software companies in the US are now creating a workplace that's more reminiscent of campus life than a multi-national corporation. When I first heard this I didn't get it - why did they want their workers dossing around smoking spliffs, organising keg parties or organising rallies, for god's sake? Of course, this hedonism wasn't the idea of the campus model at all; instead, companies found that by encouraging people to dress casually, work in open plan, dormstyle offices with soft drinks on tap and so on, they would work through the night, replicating their study patterns at college.
How terrifying is that? Students are now the epitome of high productivity rather than just being high. What's happening in America is slowly happening here. With the introduction of semesters in many colleges, the days of last-minute cramming once the cherry blossoms came out are coming to an end. From the first day of first term, your output is being assessed and will contribute to your final grade. Companies are beginning to recruit from first year in college, ensuring that the cream of graduates are kept to the grindstone.
It all seems a bit of a shame because what you learn at college is nothing to do with what you're taught at college. I still feel grateful for my time in Trinity and the lessons learnt there - not the ones about the timescale of German agriculture in the 16th century or Donne's use of the comma, as interesting as they were at the time. No, in college the real lessons were the extra-curricular ones - what with managing my social life, friends, exams, hormones, cash flow, romantic intrigues, and assorted various ligs, I developed a great capacity for communication, team-work, focus, diversification, administration and self-motivation - all qualities that crop up again and again on job advertisements. Funnily enough, they never seem to be looking for anti-social holders of first class degrees.