Freshers Guide To College in Cork

23rd Aug 2011

So you’ve put in the hard work, got your CAO choices and now find yourself en route to one of Cork’s fine third level education camps. Here’s the PROC guide to some of the things freshers can expect to be surprised by in the coming weeks as they pass through the college gates….

 

1. Getting To Know People Who Are Not From Cork

This is always an important part of any Corkonians’ life as being able to put the greatness of Corkonians into context is very important. Don’t be overly disappointed by the standard of human-being you meet from places like Tipp, Waterford and further afield.

Waterford girls look like this when you've had a few cans

This is the ‘standard’ for most people outside Cork and they cannot be expected to be as smart, good-looking, witty, charming and engaging as the rest of us. Do your utmost to welcome them to Cork and be conscious of the fact that the longer they spend in Cork the more they will pick up your accent and become easier to understand.

Kerry people can be extremely difficult to comprehend initially but UCC and CIT now have language therapists, translators and “safe rooms” to allow Kerry fellas in particular to normalise and adapt to the cultural capital.

 

Waterford girls look like this when you are sober

2. Homework Off!
The novelty of having so much free time in the evenings after lectures will last for quite a while – at least until the end of Fresher’s Week until you realise that all this magical spare time is to be taken up by socialising in greasy pubs and dingy apartments.

With no teachers irritating you about homework and no Gardaí or bouncers hassling you about ID you may feel like taking your clothes off, running down the street with a traffic cone on your head and shouting strings of obscenities to celebrate your new found freedom.

 

Ironically such action will re-involve teachers and Gardai in your life once again as you get expelled from college and have to repeat the leaving cert instead. 
 

3. Doing Adult Things Like Drinking Tea
The thought of sitting around a table clutching a cup of tea whilst talking for hours with others and actually enjoying it may seem like the most boring uncool thing in the world when you’re a teenager in school. In college you’ll have a lot hours to kill especially if you end up doing some arts doss in which there can be long gaps between lectures.

UCC Old Bar where everyone is hoping to have sex with everyone else.

During these long interesting chats with fellow students you will arrive at what seem like obvious and ideal alternatives to the insanity of the free market economy and world hunger. You will also declare that you will spend most of your post-college life travelling the world. This is natural when you are on the crest of a new wave of freedom and hopped up on Barry’s Tea but in four years time you may have to apply to the IMF to be allowed to leave the country. 

 

4. No Uniforms
The shock of not having to put on the same boring clothes every single week morning means you’re going to have to get yourself some new rags in time for your first day at college to look nice and snazzy.

Initial impressions last and if you’re going to win over the flahbag in your class your club tracksuit , black pointy confirmation brogues and a humble offering of a can of cider are not going to help your prospects even if you assure her that you’ve a pair of fierce flashy runners on the way from a sweatshop in China that you found online.
 

 

Impressionable Kerry fellas will be ‘Galvin Kleined’ up to their…ahem…”teeth”, bate into skinny jeans and mincing around in pretentious ripped t-shirts displaying their barely post-pubescent baldy chests so don’t let the cute hoors get ahead in the fashion stakes. Of course we wouldn’t suggest that you need to dress up like an eegit to ‘compete’ though - just mock them openly with your cutting Cork wit from day one.


5. Facebook Faux Pas
Beware of initial unbounded enthusiasm for your new class by lashing out the Facebook friend requests to one and all – partially to impress your Cork friends with your new battalion of backup buddies should they ever threaten to excommunicate you from the group for hanging around with people from other counties.

Yes we CAN

This can happen far easier than you think when you’re around so many non-Corkonians. Accidentally using a non-Cork greeting like the Waterford “well boy”, the Kerry “Ugggh” or referring to fellas you know from college as your “mates” will be like red blood to the ballhopping sharks you grew up with.

So raise the bar for Facebook friendship. Do you really want Pascal from Patrickswell to post up pictures of you with half your face buried in some young wan with ‘bingo wings’ from Tralee at the back of the college bar for all your real Cork friends to see? You’ll never live it down.

 

 

6. Your New Sixth Sense
Like a hungry hyena sniffing the warm savannah air for any hint of prey as a college student you will attain a similar ability to smell drink deals from several kilometres away. You will recoil in disgust upon learning that a classmate has paid 7.99 for six beers when you can get them for 7.65 elsewhere.
 

It'll be back up in a few minutes

Incidentally a number of students in 2006 were tested for psychic powers in a UCC laboratory after it was discovered that they could read off license special offers from over three miles away by wetting a finger with cider and sticking it in the air. They are believed to be now working for Met Éireann whose weather predictions are determined by a large lotto-wheel in their Dublin headquarters that is spun at 7am each morning by a middle-aged woman wearing clothes from that were sent back in a time machine from 2145 AD.

 

 

7. Having Awkward Sex With Someone From Roscommon in a Manky Toilet

She did look kinda good looking after an afternoon, evening and entire night gatting cheap cider in the Old Bar but even as you fumbled pathetically with the buttons on her dress while she held your face off the stinking floor of the toilets downstairs it did dawn on you that you might regret this tomorrow.
 

College Sex: never really goes according to plan

To hell with tomorrow  - live in the moment! Now it’s all about figuring out those complex cardigan dress strap button clip thingys which seem to be wrapped around your head and her elbows - before one of you falls asleep or vomits or both.  


8. Waking Up In Your Own Vomit

Preferably this will happen in someone else’s house with a bit of luck so you can just leg it next morning and avoid having to clean it up. Coming-to at half eight in the morning with the living room air heavily pregnant with gut wrenching gaseous breast-in-bun and decomposing carrot and tomato vapour is all part of being a student and everyone reaches their low point somewhere around Christmas of second year.

 

 

College opens your mind to new possiblities

 

 

You might have thought you were the job sneaking a half bottle of vodka into the Savoy on junior cert night but wait until you discover some pub with cheap booze and fifty quid you forgot your old man gave you for food.  

 

9. People Talking About Their Hangovers

About 80% of social student chatter in UCC is about being hungover. 15% is about drinking and the other 5% is about money for drink.

Whining about the state of your body, headaches, carpet-mouth, nog-breath, chaffed bulb, and red-ring is an indirect way of telling people how crazy a party animal you really are. Filled with insecurity about not fitting into the weird social norms of Irish university, students feel a constant need to exchange hangover anecdotes.

 

Cogging: it's everywhere

10. Cunts

 

While school yards had teachers, bullies and soccer balls to reign in obnoxious self absorbed twats, they tend to thrive in the unrestricted liberal playgrounds of our third level colleges where, like tadpoles turning into frogs, they transform from twats into cunts. Here’s a list of real cunts you are likely to come across in college:

- Professors on 100K+ who pretend to be sympathetic about ridiculously exhorbitant registration fees. Hypocritical cunts.
 
- People who try to get elected in student elections because it’ll help their future careers. Most of them are cunts.
 

UCC President Mike Murphy on 232,000 euro per annum.

- People who live for their weekly Philosoph meetings so they can pretend they are in an 18^th century English court. Fuck off cunts.  

- Lecturers who call out names in the lectures to check on attendance. Checky cunts.

- People who ssshhhh in lectures. Shut up yourself you cunt.

- People who join Young Fianna Fáil. Sleazy cunts.

- Science and Engineering students who take on “personal projects”. Sad cunts.

- Scoil Mhuire girls with Dubarry shoes, fake tan and American accents. Sailing cunts.

- Security Guard Parking Nazis. Unhelpful cunts.

- People who won’t let you cog in exams or labs. Selfish cunts.