Soothe Your 5th Week Blues: Seduction Tips

As week five lurches ominously into view, that drunken fumble you managed to procure from a first year who didn’t know better during freshers’ week can start to feel like ancient history. Unfortunately, if you want to repeat your success, you will soon learn that flirting in fifth week is no longer the walk in the park that it was at the start of term. You no longer have the holiday tan, the stress acne free skin and the general air being of a person whose life is worth living to fall back on. If you want to pull, you are going to have to really put some effort in. Luckily, The Tab is here to help with a handy four point guide to flirting during week five.

She is flirting, not having a stroke

1. Don’t neglect the basics

At this stage in the term, it is the little things that count. If you can still manage to dress yourself, maintain eye contact or speak in full sentences then you will be doing better than most of the rest of us. If you can manage all three at once, stop reading now and get yourself to Cindies, because you will be fighting them off. And frankly, you are doing better than me, so there is not much more I can teach you.

Still here? I thought you might be. Don’t worry: all is not yet lost.

2. Choose your hunting ground with care

If you are going to have any success in your flirting, you are going to have to go where the people are. By this, I obviously mean the library. Just to clarify: I categorically mean your college library, not your subject library. Now is not the time to be socialising with people who do your subject. Half of them will make you feel sick with their heart-breaking competence, and the other half will just provide a disturbing mirror image of your own despair. Ideally, you want to find someone who will make you feel good about yourself. This may mean finding a Medic or Lawyer, to feel better about your workload. On the other hand, if you fancy being cheered up about your future prospects, we Philosophy students always have plenty of free time for a chat.

But what if the people you usually sit with in the library are off limits, by virtue of being already taken/close personal friends/Mathmos? The answer is simple: move. The time for loyalty died along with week four and the last traces of your academic enthusiasm. In week five, it is each man for himself.

3. Maintain your dignity (or try to)

“But Charlotte,” you may protest, after having courteously checked my name at the top of the page, “I loathe and fear the library! I would much rather pretend that I am a normal student at a sensible university who hasn’t devoted the best looking years of their life to researching 18^th century agricultural reform, and try to pull in a club instead.” Preaching to the choir, sister/brother. But do beware that if you choose this path, you are walking a dangerous line. Drinking in fifth week tends to fairly quickly take on a worryingly self destructive tone. My hard won advice would be to avoid alcohol entirely. Trust me, you don’t want to be phoning up Life on a Monday morning to see if anybody has handed in your self respect to lost property. Sober Cindies is bad, but losing all memory of your night and spending most of the next day being informed that you spent most of it throwing yourself – both literally and metaphorically – at random members of your college is much worse. Or so I have heard.

VK is not OK

4. Dust off the charm

Once you have chosen your location, you will want to work on your chat. Luckily, this shouldn’t be too difficult: if you can find a topic of conversation that isn’t how tired or stressed you are, then you will probably be the most interesting person your target has talked to all day. At this stage in the term, witty and charming is probably setting the bar too high, so aim for conscious and producing words, and see anything more as a bonus.

So there you have it: your ultimate guide to flirting during fifth week. Use it wisely, and feel free to send me gifts of thanks if you do in fact pull. Unless of course, I have just ruined any sex you will in fact be having this week by making you think of this article at the opportune moment. Sorry about that. Probably best just to stay home, anyway.