BY DEBBIE LIEBENBERG
What’s the difference between a UCT student and the homeless beggar down the road? NOTHING!!! Think about it, we sit on the stairs in the sun for the majority of our day, R1 coins are like gold, we admire people who have caught a pigeon and shoes are rare! Ladies, gentlemen and students get comfortable because I’m about to take you down memory lane on a journey through the life of a UCT student. We’ll explore areas such as the cafeteria, the parties, res life, new friends and “family”, the parties, exam time, the different stereotypes you see on campus and oh did I mention… THE PARTIES! Basically everything that makes a UCT student what they are (note: it is likely that these patterns of behaviour may easily be recognised in students from other universities) so sit back, relax and let’s get started!!!
Remember the first week you arrived, O- week. It was in that week you made a friend for life only to discover that she is possessed by the dark lord Lucifer and is here to purchase your soul! You met your new wonderful roomie who later became the $@#(*&@%) thing you live with and moms kitchen was replaced with the cafeteria. Unfortunately, it was only in second week that you discovered that the word cafeteria comes from the two Latin words “café” meaning “place to eat” and “teria” meaning “to vomit”… Co-incidence? I think not…
These things weren’t issues at first, I mean, you had just come out of 12 years of being controlled by your parents and school rules and finally you were free to party! It is during these times that beer becomes your best friend, you learn the popular language of drunkanese and you have issues falling off the floor. Later you become vulnerable and realise that your cat died ten years ago and you get defensive because the pot plant doesn’t believe you. You’d think this is the worst of your experience but it has only just begun.
It is about this time you discover that “worshipping the porcelain God” is more than just an expression and those long distance phone calls to GEORGE can go on long after you think you’re finished! But on a serious note the morning after is when reality finally kicks in and you remember a serious problem in a students life… AIDS… those After Intense Drinking Shits get you every time and you swear you’ll never drink again… and you don’t… until the next weekend!
Other than the obvious, food is a very important aspect in a student’s life. Students love food so regardless of what it might taste like or what it might be you eat it! I swear they could serve road kill and as long as there are sauces everyone will eat it! You may laugh but this is a serious issue people. Ever notice how at every mealtime there are two options, chicken (or so they say) and “food x”? Ever notice how many pigeons there are on campus when you first arrived compared to how many are left now at the end of the year? WHERE HAVE ALL THE PIGEONS GONE?! Another thing, have you ever noticed that the quality of the pigeon, I mean food, is indirectly proportional to the amount of tomato sauce left after every meal? The better the meal, the more sauce is left over, the more digestively challenged it is, the more it must be drowned!
Campus life is the best though and it’s funny how people who are studying the same degree always flock together. You can tell the Business Science students a mile away with their iPods, Puma’s (and thank God they’re over the pink shirt phase) and if you need to find any Film and Media student look on Jammie stairs or grass patches, I guarantee they’re all there. You wouldn’t know how to spot an AcSci student though because they can’t afford to leave their rooms and as far as law students are concerned, you don’t want to know what they look like. As different as we may appear, there are a few valuable lessons we all come to learn during our UCT student career:
Firstly, Procrastination is an art.
Secondly, to steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
Thirdly, it’s amazing how late you can stay up doing absolutely nothing, yet falling asleep in class or in the library takes an average of two seconds.
And lastly and most importantly, your life will never be the same again!
Debbie Liebenberg is a Journalism & Linguistics student at Rhodes University.
Tags: student life, university