how to survive the third day of the fourth week of university
Wake up late with neck pain and a sore throat because you have freshers’ flu. Waste time until you go downstairs to eat the same breakfast that you eat everyday (‘antioxidant’ cereal with biscoff and organic hippie dark roast peanut butter). Test to see how croaky your voice is while in the lift on the way downstairs into the kitchen. Run into a guy who you’re friends with but who you’ve also been kind of annoyed at lately for reasons that probably won’t make sense to anyone else here, with ‘here’ being your residential college. Finish eating breakfast and head back to your room. Panic-scroll through some lecture slides. Walk to your class in pyjamas and see a dead bird curled up on the side of a path. Leave class early because you have a math test, which ends up going not terribly, and therefore better than expected. Walk back to your college with your two friends, one who sat the same test and another who you bumped into on the way back. Prepare lunch in the kitchen while your friend points at a bloated carton of curdled milk that someone left on one of the counters. Eat lunch with some people you know and others who you don’t. Walk to your math tutorial and see a dead rabbit, with blood coming out of its mouth. Realise you arrived there an hour early, so sit on the steps and study. Have the class pass by uneventfully until you get a tickle in your throat and cough so hard that your nose bleeds. Unknowingly move around in public for the next half-hour with blood on your face. Grab a konjac jelly pouch from your fridge and attempt a walk, but give up because it’s too hot. Go into the computer lab and try to study (and fail).