Writing a book or a novel would also be great save for the risk factor in struggling to get it published and the potential that it could be absolute jank. I’m sure a lot of us uni-grads are in the same frame of mind. We believed that over the three or four years of doing a degree (and especially those doing humanities) we’d know what to do with our time but as it turns out we’re even more confused than we were before we began. What we need to realize is that unlike our parents time, or our grandparents time before them we have a lot more time to decide what we want to do. Yes, the world economy might be in a right state and we might live in a state such as rip off Britain where every service available to the public seems geared to overcharging us and fining us with incredulous small print (here’s a big fuck you to the landlords, the campus accommodation, BT and the National Rail who perverted the miniscule student finances of all of us) but it’ll bounce back eventually and we can drift between this and that for a few years. Unless we have mad ambitions of making lots of money, of saving the world or becoming an incredible artist/musician/actor/Ultimate Fighting Championship brawler, we have time. Not time to waste though. If you don’t enjoy this time, then that’s exactly what you are doing; wasting the time you have. A lot of us worry that the words of Pink Floyd’s Time will come true. If you don’t know the song I refer to, go out and buy yourself a copy of Dark Side of the Moon, potentially the most complete album ever made, here’s a bit of Time’s poetry:
“Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death”
I reckon this is a pretty good way of summing up a lot of people’s fears, at least I do but you can’t life with this fear. You just have to go out and live it. All being well, it’ll all click into place. I hope.
Anyway, enough amateur philosophising and acting like a guru of life, I’ve got completely sidetracked talking about one thing when I’m meant to be talking about another: the pros and cons of Lancaster. Basically this will act as a guide for those thinking of going to university and a piece of truth for those who have been.
The cons are basically the cons. There are those who will try and con money out of you. £90 for campus accommodation is pretty expensive and like I explained in an earlier article, UPP can be a right scheming organization that knows the ins and outs of the law to the point that they can scam a whole £90 off of you for stains in a mattress that would cost about £25. They probably haven’t even replaced it.. Then you might be landed with a knifing Birmingham-Pakistani (I’m not being racist, but our landlord played up to every stereotype that British people have of these type of characters) landlord who fixes every problem badly with duct tape.
Then you have the fact that the campus bars and the student union nightclub charge £2.40 on average per pint. Whilst all of that money goes back into student stuff and is imperative to keep the university running, it’s still considerably expensive for a student bar.
The reason to these high costs is, and I’ll quote an old tutor of mine
“Everything on the campus has to make profit”
During the 90s, the university ran into massive debt to the point that they could no longer afford to pay tutors wages. Even if you don’t like your tutor, you have to give them credit that they deserve pay just as much as the next working person does and really, the uni can’t run if nobody is around to teach. Still the prices seem a bit over-zealous, but you learn to live with them unless you’re scandalously poor.
Money price problems aside, another issue with the uni lies with the nightlife and the music. A lot of people can go out in Lancaster and have a good time. For another bunch of us we can go out and have a good time, provided we’re blind drunk. I can listen to cheese and laugh at it, but to really enjoy it I need to have consumed a metric fuck gallon of alcohol. Even then, some songs will have me running to the bar requiring another drink. For some reason, I have always hated Summer of ’69 by Bryan Adams and to counteract its audio rape upon my ears, I must assault my liver with excess alcohol. Usually balances me out in some respect.
I like a lot of different types of music. When I’m in my favourite pub back home (Laverys), we get treated to either live music or reggae/rock, well chosen from the 60s/70s/80s. You don’t get that sort of treatment in Lancaster too often. When I go out, I usually want to hear the latest electronic stuff. I’m slowly developing a taste for dubstep, drum and bass, electro, techno and house. Nights for this kind of stuff is few and far between. Occasionally N-Type or Rusko will appear on the scene, dropping the dubstep bomb. Occasionally you’ll get a DJ such as DJ Dirty Dan O’Donnell (cheeky shout out to my old housemate), or the guys from Muddled will put on a minimal set at Mint. Sometimes, there’s a secret illegal rave in a forest right under their noses, paused only by the police looking for some crazed suicidal girl. Like I said though, these nights don’t happen too often.
Likewise, there aren’t too many live band nights. When they do happen, they’re in some bar or old man pub that none of your friends want to be bothered with, so unless you have the money and time to go drinking on your own whilst your friends are having a good time without you. If you live on campus, this would be slightly more aggravating as transport becomes an issue. However If you look though, you will find a gem from time to time. The Robert Gillow and The John O’Gaunts are both quite good for this. Metal heads and rockers might be better off looking in the Yorkshire House or the aptly named The Pub.
The extravs though can be fantastic. For those that don’t understand, each college in Lancaster runs a concert at the end of June featuring a bunch of different acts. Whilst Pendle often sucks as a college, it has a great reputation for good music at their extrav. In first year the talented but often forgot about Nizlopi played for a good hour or so and this year had an excellent line up of old school rockers and reggae artists, closing with a great DNB/Dubstep set. Despite the lack of greatness in the year, at least you have something to look forward to at the end of it, even it does involve stumbling around a bar wearing a bed sheet as a toga because it’s a Roman theme.
Lastly, there is the drug scene, which compared to Belfast is usually great but compared to the rest of the country is perhaps quite lacking.
Now, I’m aware I should treat this discussion with some sensitivity, after all not everybody gets high and some would consider a town with fewer drugs a nicer place to live but I am fully aware that drugs will always be part of some student cultures, whether openly flaunted or underground.
To get any Class A, one has to know the right people from the get-go. Rather than Manchester where it is a lot easier to figure out how one acquires these substances, contacts are key. Ringing and ordering well in advance is a must. With weed the situation is similar, though there is rarely a day when there isn’t at least one dealer holding. The problem is the bags are rarely anywhere near the accepted 3.5 for £20 and you’re often likely to be a gram short and the tree being wet. Believe you me though, when it’s good, it’s star-seeing phenomenal.
Back to the pros:
Well for one, the university is ranked pretty highly within the UCAS tables. When you get a degree from Lancaster it’s supposedly going to hold some weight with employers. Now I can’t say the same for every course but the history course is excellent. The tuition is excellent and there are a wide variety of time periods on offer to study. I did everything from the 1300 years of Islam through to the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Pretty impressive I thought.
Secondly you’re right in the countryside, if you want to you can utilize those beautiful Summer days to walk up by the canal, traipse into surrounding forests or start a camp fire in a field. Heck, a train ride would get you into the Lake District. It’s an amazing feeling sometimes knowing that you can just breath in some fresh air. The town itself isn’t too bad and whilst simple has a few great things about it. The indoor markets are usually pretty amusing and there are enough shops to supply you with everything you will realistically need.
Thirdly and finally, the most important thing though is the friends you make.
Unlike Manchester Metropolitan, where my friend suffered from a poor social life, in Lancaster it is so easy to meet new people. The college system and relative openness means that you can meet people from different flats and befriend them easily. You can also meet loads of people on campus and it’s not unusual to start conversations with randommers and get on with them well. Most of the societies are easy to join, so if any sport or wierd hobby takes your interest, they will usually encourage you to make an appearance if you speak to them long enough.
I met my friends and housemates through random parties in kitchens and a love of similar things and I’m glad I did. I’ve had a damn good three years with them and a messy three years at that. I’ll probably behave myself a lot more now that I’ve left university but I’m glad I did my misbehaving with those guys and they know who they are. I’ll be thankful that I got pissed up a field with them and smoked the reefer till the sun rose and I hope that others like me get to experience the same kind of excellent characters as I did. They were the ones that influenced me into liking new movies, new music and new games. I think in some ways we all grew as people throughout the three years, influencing each other in different ways and showing how there is more than one way to catch a cat (catting requires a whole other article I feel).
Soppy I know, but I’m a sentimental old fool when I want to be.
There you have it: easy ways of making friends with excellent people, average drug scene and not such a bad academic reputation. If you’re looking for somewhere to study, consider Lancaster. If you’re half way through your degree, enjoy it; work hard, but play damn well hard. Then of course, if you’ve just finished it, remember the good times and don’t worry too much about the future. Think with your hopes, ambitions and intelligence, using only your fear when you have to.
Here's to attempting to take your own advice.
