A Memoir Of A 21st Century Uni Student

As a uni student, I’m surrounded by so many people I love with all the same problems as me. We all complain, we all have our ups and downs, but at the end of the day, we all have each other as support through the rollercoaster that is your average semester.

We all cry poor 100% of the time.

When you add up the weekly costs of partying, public transport fares, buying waaay overpriced food all the time and the occasional online shop, we have spent approximately 95% of our entire wage as casual sales assistants. Add in the occasional music festival and weekend away, and we’re left with approximately $0 in our savings accounts.

We complain about our jobs. All the time.

Before, during and after every shift in fact. For most of us, who are just slaves in the retail and hospitality industries, we arrive at work sleep deprived (and hungover) on weekends because we rely on pentaly rates. Really, the only thing that makes work bearable is the promise of seeing our fabulous work friends who are more than happy to join in complaining about our shitty jobs that we do not love.

We are always, always tired.

Whether it’s because our social lives get a workout over the weekend, or because we’ve been up until 4am the night before watching YouTube videos of cats, not a day goes by where we feel well rested. By the time we get to a lecture, it’s nap time. Goodnight.

‘Homework’ often means spending hours on end trawling the internet and binge watching TV series’.

Show of hands if you’ve ever binge watched a TV series when you were meant to be studying. Yep, that’s what I thought. Homework can wait, particularly when you’ve only got three more episodes left of Orange is the New Black.

‘Saturday and Sunday’ is not the definition of a weekend.

After working all day and catching up on a social life most Friday and Saturday nights, the weekend is most definitely not a time to relax and unwind. It’s actually the busiest time of the week; we have all the weekdays to do things like stay home and play on our laptops for hours on end.

‘It’s complicated’ is the relationship status of our generation.

A relationship where two people are exclusively together is hard to come across. Even when two people at our age are in a relationship, there are so many complications you wonder if they’re better off alone. As for everyone else, it’s better to ask how many baes they have, rather than if they’re single.

There’s no such thing as being ‘on top’ of your homework.

With each new semester, there’s a blank canvas ready for organisation and dedication, inspiring us to be successful with our studies. We think it’s okay to take it easy for the first couple of weeks before it gets serious, but before we know it, it’s week four and there’s at least one thing due that we haven’t yet made a start on. This is a good indication of how the rest of the semester is bound to unfold.