Get up, read through some notes, eat, recite the Periodic Table, go to school, have lunch, search for "continental drift" on Wikipedia, feverishly reread Hamlet on the bus home, eat dinner, dive into piles of notes; fall asleep and dream of your Leaving Cert exams being disrupted by huge robots made from Bunsen burners inexplicably repeating directions to the train station in French. Repeat for two years.
Yes, the Leaving Cert really is the time of your life. After months of solid cramming, you must be hopping with excitement at the prospect of doing it all again. But it turns out there is more to college life than spending weeks in the library, chasing up citations on obscure eastern European philosophers, thrilling as that certainly is.
To the untrained observer, college life often appears to mean the freedom to experiment with facial hair, learning the dark art of scarf-twirling and never having quite enough money to buy a beer and a bus ticket, although this is really only true of humanities students. All the other undergraduates are just trying out austerity so they have something to measure their success against.
Doing a degree of any sort is only part of the picture. Most of us will make lifelong friends in college: the people who will be with you every step of the way, through all the ups and downs. For many, it’s a new start: a chance to find out who you really are. If that means dying your hair four different colours and growing a Fu Manchu, fine; you have years until you need to find out what smart casual means, and if you end up working for Google you may have decades.
To make these new friends, though, you need to look up from the books once in a while. This is what clubs and societies are for. They make college life actually happen. Brilliantly, it doesn’t matter what you’re into: whether it’s knitting, golf, drama or break-dancing, someone has started a group for it. When you join these societies, you’ll meet people who share an interest, but you’ll also discover worlds of new perspectives and experiences you wouldn’t otherwise have. All of which will make your time in college more than just a diploma, however useful that may be.
The late author David Foster Wallace once said that the only thing that’s “capital T-true” is that college gives you the ability to really decide how to pay attention to the world around you. Outside of acting in plays, running around a football pitch or debating which college is the best ever, there are societies expressly designed to embrace the wider world. Join your college’s LGBT society or Amnesty or any of the many charitable organisations. You’ll meet new people, learn new things, and go to the best parties.
In fact, getting involved in college life could end up showing you the career you didn’t know you wanted.
Rough Magic theatre company started as a loose group of like-minded friends in Trinity Players, while Garry Hynes’s legendary Druid company sprang from NUIG Dramsoc. Declan Kidney and Ronan O’Gara both played rugby at UCC, while comedians Dermot Morgan and Dara O’Briain learned how to deal with hecklers at UCD’s frequently colourful debating society.
This isn't unique to Ireland. Sometimes it seems that every comedy series on UK television is a graduate scheme for ex-Cambridge Footlights members, from Monty Python to Mitchell and Webb. Facebook had its genesis as a system to compare the hottest members of sorority and fraternity houses in Harvard University. Obviously, it's very different now.
Even if all you’re interested in is arguing, college has something for you: politics. Every institution has a student’s union, and most political parties have a branch you can join. If you have a burning desire to change the world, or just like holding placards in the rain, this is where the leaders of the future are born.
You have to work hard in college, make no mistake. Trying to make your way in the teeth of this recession is far from easy, and a good qualification is essential. But don’t make the mistake of thinking a degree is all you need. The people you meet in Freshers’ Week could be part of your new start-up, the film crew for your Oscar-winning movie, fellow teammates in the Brazil Olympics, or even your future husband or wife. At the very least, you’re going to need someone to talk to when you fall out of the library on Friday evening.
Don’t let this moment pass you by.
