Easter = Bak 2 Skl

The UCU strikes of Lent term meant plenty of lecture cancellations; a harking back to the 'free periods' we grabbed when our school-teachers were absent. But the vibe this time around was totally different. Uni students actually lamented the loss of learning time. Whilst our high-school 'frees' were filled with utter madness; kareoke sessions with the interactive white-board, truth or dare, quick drives to the Nandos and general ruckus.

And now, being back for Exam term, without any structure of your weekly essays, supervisions and timetabling of lectures, there is a clear absence in your life. You miss the best state-sponsored prison there is, your local comprehensive. [soz if u can't relate]

Easter term is a space-time vacuum; whilst you're chained to your desk, inhaling kit-kats and passing love-notes to yourself, all you do is think; and I don't mean about your revision, but about the 'best days of your life' and take several walks down memory lane.

so can we go back to school please? like now.

conGRADulations bby

Throwing it way back to when the biggest stress was whether you'd manage to make the early bus so you could be back in time to watch Hollyoaks.

When it was actually enjoyable to have a 'sickie'; you would literally look forward to catching a cold from your mates. Occasionally you were pragmatic, deciding to take off the Friday and Monday, to give yourself the long-weekend. It's simply no fun having your medic pals tell you that you're not in fact infected with a rare sickness that you diagnosed from WikiHow. Now you're days off, disease-infested or not, are filled with total shame and guilt.

Do you remember that big old LOL when your school-teachers LIED and told you that taking your GCSE's/A-Levels was actually far harder than a uni degree, because you had to spread yourself over a dozen subjects as opposed to just focusing on one?

As a teen, this information gave me hope that from here on out everything was going to get easier.

what? a history degree isn't all about dressing up as Queen Liz I

I nodded along to the comforting words from these supposed guardians of truth. Of course regurgitating your tutor was a hard day's graft and rehearsing controlled assessments was downright exhausting. But they promised that there was light at the end of the tunnel. They fed us the pipe dream that uni would be a breeze because we would be dedicated to one subject.

I naively tweeted the struggles of 'study leave', and hashtagged away the pain of how we had to 'teach ourselves the whole course'; whilst I continued to transcribe swathes of my textbooks and copy and paste the entirety of BBC Bitesize.

!! Haha [me laughing at the folly of my youth].

Try revising topics from your first ever weeks at Cambridge a full 18 months later, it's as if you hadn't even got your pen-license yet; the handwriting is utterly illegible and you still hadn't mastered commas. An absolute mess.

Bring me back the days of power-points, when the teacher would actually wait for the whole class to copy out the slide !

Throwing it back to the times where you actually had the self-confidence to put up your hand and ask a question.

I would take countless detentions, late-notes, chewing-gum spit-outs, and phone confiscations for just a few more days of school spoon-feeding, class camaraderie, tippexing genitals onto everything and having your biggest fear be calling your teacher Mum.

i would take back my gappy-teeth for this

I am not alone in this struggle, I know you all feel it too.

This is why we all congregate in the UL.

The clambering to get through the revolving door at 9AM, it's as if the school bell is about to ring.

The hustle and bustle in the locker-room, urm Hello. The same rules apply, freshers are obviously relegated to the bottom lockers whilst the big 'lads' [academics] shove us children out of their way.

You settle down with your pals in a room, and are quickly shushed by any nearby adults. Like usual, you revert back to texting on the chat underneath the desk to avoid dirty looks.

waterloo road??

Everyone rushes to the Tea-Room at exactly 12:30, of course we're not institutionalised at all. You nervously scour the room to make sure you can spot your friends at a table, otherwise its a sandwich in the toilet cubicle for you.

When you manage to track your friends, your childish anxiety bubbles over as everyone brings out their pack-lunch, silently judging each-other's choices.

Some of your mates might leave early for PE, as they hurry back to the college gym. And just like your school-self, you'll definitely be bunking that.

And at 4pm you can bear the pain no longer and declare 'schools out'. But the school vibes in Easter keep on coming.

Of course there is no clubbing this term, on school-nights, weekends, or otherwise. It's as if we're 17 again and none have us got our fake IDs yet.

The craziest thing we get up to is congregating in someone's room for a movie night, like our childhood sleepovers. Except we don't even have the stamina anymore to stay awake for the 'midnight snack'.

the face of innocence !

And if you needed any more evidence that Easter term is the weird shroom school dream, let's throw it forward to May Week, AKA the School Disco. The crème de la crème of house parties.

But now instead of boys greasing their hair back with gel, and wearing shirts with flames, they've shaved their head and teamed it with wavy overalls. Whilst the gals have ditched the knee-length leggings for something vintage from Mummy's 80's wardrobe and hazardously large hoops. With this costume hegemony we are practically back in school-uniform.

'School is [clearly not] out for the summer', it is most certainly back in. We have managed to benjamin-button back to our pre-teen years and magically escaped the duties of adulthood.

So let's raise our Capri-Suns to the air and thank f*ck for that.