Freshers: Get out of my library

Freshers, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Has something happened? You seem to have all forgotten you’re freshers.

Gradually I’ve noticed more and more of you spending your well-earned free time in the library. More specifically the ASS library. And I can’t really get my head around this unexpected scenario. What, you have an essay? A “deadline”? Reading?

Well I’m afraid the idea of working hard in first year is blasphemy. You shouldn’t be here, you need to enjoy your short lived session of freedom. If any of you are in the library right now, go outside and experience nature before you’re buried in the quagmire and social hermitisation of third year.

Maybe I’m just a cynical third year, so I can’t understand the stresses of your lives. I mean the fact most of your first year doesn’t count must be one of the most arduous things in the world.

I can deal with one or two of you. Hell, maybe even three on a good day. But you all turn up at once, talking on the stairs, standing around like you’re on a catwalk in your “wavey garms” and it sickens me. What are you even doing on the stairs? I didn’t realise the purgatorial stage between work and play was now the social hub of Bristol. Why don’t I get my decks and we can drop on the stairs? I heard Skepta was playing.

My daily library sesh is slowly getting later and later purely because I can’t deal with the struggle to find seats, even in the morning. And, yes, going to the library when others are pre-drinking is depressing.

Your sheer presence may aggravate me, but I must emphasise I don’t mind if you take the book I need for an essential argument in my dissertation. I really don’t mind if you crowd the ground floor, swarming like locusts when the slightly pretentious sandwiches are displayed. I really, really don’t mind if you infect the seats of the library like a virus, slowly sucking the life force out of third years trying to get seats.

But when you leave your stupid, unfunny pencil cases on a table for the entire day just so you can go out of your way to be a selfish fucker, I may get mildly irritable.

But yeah, it’s fine.

I don’t usually hate freshers: after all, I went through puberty once. Actually, I can relate to the fresher “chat”. Objectifying lecturers, what great banter…

If you absolutely have to be in the library, and are going for a break, take your shit with you. It’s the courteous thing.