How middle-class is your student residence?
You can take the pampered teenager out of the suburbs, but you can’t take the suburbs out of the pampered teenager.
Living in halls, this old adage couldn’t be more true. Halls of residence are renowned for stripping away any home comforts and launching students into a Darwinian competition for survival, with the evolutionary loser usually the one that fails to keep tabs on their milk.
However, painfully middle-class students up and down the country just cannot let go of some “essentials” that make life worth living back in Surrey or Oxfordshire.
How middle-class a student are you? If you have any three of these things or consider them standard fare for halls of residence, then it’s more than likely that you’re part of the Broadchurch-watching, quinoa-chomping masses.
A Graze box
Nothing says ideal hangover food like a box containing pumpkin seed flapjacks, chorizo (pronounced chor-ee-tho) stuffed olives, and korai chutney. Well, if this thought has passed your mind at some point, even in jest, you’ve probably got a severe case of middle-classititis. Protests of “It’s just the free one you get for signing up” fall on deaf ears – no amount of free Super Kale and Edamame will mask your class veneer.
A cafetiere or moka pot
The thought of living off Sainsbury’s Basics instant coffee for three years is hellish for some students, so for their very survival, they turn their coffee-and-tea corner into a mock-up Costa. Never mind the fact that the expensive ground coffee for your cafetiere – never ‘French press’ – is tearing chunks out of your student loan, you just adore freshly brewed Nairobi Java House blend.
Foreign language literature that you’ve never read
Positioned conspicuously on a bookshelf, around eye level, your copy of one of Flaubert or Goethe’s works collects dust, but signals to guests that you are cultured and multilingual – the fact that you struggle to read the bloody thing notwithstanding. It also gives you a nice little ego boost, as you tell yourself that one day you’ll take it on an outing to Starbucks, where the underlings can gaze upon you as if you are a fully-fledged member of the Intelligentsia.
More than one type of tea
Realistically, all you need is breakfast tea. Don’t kid yourself. Tea is tea and always will be. Having Peppermint tea to invigorate you in the morning, Earl Grey to cleanse your palette after lunch, Camomile to put you to sleep, and Rooibos when you want to “splash out” a bit is completely and utterly redundant. Spending more than £10 on tea is daft, and if you really must have a tea cabinet stocked better than an 18th century colonial shipyard, it’s probably for the best that you retreat back to the suburbs.
Several Apple products
iPhone. iPod. Macbook. iPad. iWatch. Everywhere you look, the simplistic white apple with a chunk missing is everywhere. You may even have a couple of the stickers that used to come with an iPod hanging around, just to show your unflinching fidelity. You may try and say that it’s more practical, and “interconnectivity” is “the way to live”, but just the thought of Windows, Android, or – god forbid – a Windows Phone make your stomach churn in discomfort and disgust. iDigress.
Avocados
Let’s face it: avocados are pointless. They’re expensive, bland and take days to ripen, depending on the state you buy them in. For students, they should be as no-go as the smoking section for an asthmatic. Despite this, you still find yourself making a bee-line to these green ovals of goodness whenever you go to the shops. You’re hooked, and the lethal cocktail of avocado, feta, humous and pita bread is as middle-class an addiction as any.
An item of clothing from Urban Outfitters
This shop is the mecca of the high street for middle-classites. Everyone has to go at some point, but probably only once. Because of your now derisory income as a student, you cling on to the shirt/pair of jeans/leggings that you broke the bank for in a birthday money-fuelled impulse purchase.
This piece of fabric is your pride and joy, the crowning jewel of your otherwise unremarkable wardrobe. If you can’t relate to this point and think Urban Outfitters nothing special, then it’s likely that you’re upper-class. What are you doing at City?
So… what did you score?
If your room or kitchen has been summed up by this list, do not fret. Living in halls may seem like the ultimate goal is to return you to your primordial roots, but a year of seldom-washed bedsheets and beans on toast can take its toll. You’re perfectly in your right to take anything and everything that you deem necessary to make it comfortable, homely and, above all, what university should be – enjoyable.
