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Down it, fresher!

You Will Encounter At Least One of These Douchebags at University

No matter how far you retreat, the people you've attempted to avoid by going to university only get closer.
Ryan Bassil
London, GB

This September, thousands of young adults (and a smattering of enlightened and maybe deluded old people) will pack their bedroom into an estate car and blast it down the motorway. Hours later they arrive in a new town – usually somewhere anaemic like Farnham or Plymouth – and reassemble.

The reshuffle is part of Freshers: an annual week where teenagers across the country are encouraged not only to think about different brands of kitchen equipment for the first time, but to dive head-first into the welcoming pool of higher-education, cheap drinks, and questionable diets.

Annoncering

Unfortunately, no matter how far you retreat, the people you've attempted to avoid by moving only get closer. They live across the corridor; sharing your milk, eating your perishables, and splurting beeriod stains over the communal toilet. This – aside from the fact sharing a toilet with five others strangers involves some disappointment – is bearable. But your new housemates will subject themselves upon you in other ways; usually by blasting their interests through rizla-thin walls, maximum volume, most likely at three in the morning the night before a first-period seminar.

You can’t avoid it – at least until you get to choose your own roomates in second year - but you can at least be prepped to understand the different personalities that will be sharing your living space over the next ten months. Here's a handy guide to the type of people you'll encounter while completing the first year of your course, weed-smoking habit, omnipresent comedown, etc.

The Dance Music Fan

The main problem at university - aside from obvious things like eating potato alphabet shapes for dinner, having to actually do work, looking at your bank account and wanting to sink into the floor - is that most towns are really bad places for music fans. You arrive expecting an odyssey; frequenting the sort of baltic-house club everyone went to in Berkshire in the 1990s, thinking every night is going to be like Larry Levan at Paradise Garage, resident DJs blessing you on a weekly basis like Frankie Knuckles did The Warehouse. Instead you get a Tiger-Tiger, a cramped smoking area, and a sticky-floor.

This is a lesson for dance music fans. You quickly learn there’s a lot of compromise at university. Yes, I’ll wash up the load of dishes you’ve left to play jenga in the washing up bowl. Yes, help yourself to my dinner. And yes, I’ll go out to the same club every Friday and dance to Keisza and Clean Bandit like everyone else. The dance music fans fall into three categories. They adapt, get on the Megabus down to a city with a real club once a month, or spend the entire year sitting in a room surrounded by high-tech speakers, nursing a grinder and a pack of Raws, wondering why they haven't made any friends all semester.

Annoncering

The Creative

You will meet lots of creatives at university and they consistently tell you they “want to build”. What they’re building, no one can actually be sure; but it usually means they want your help with something in return for nothing. This can range from websites, to clothing brands, to club-nights - in-fact, the more things that can be added to a Twitter bio the better. You'll usually find them at most events in your town - the latest tech-house student night, a brainstorm for the student-magazine, whatever - they'll be there, mostly doing nothing, but pretending to do everything. The creative type needs to appear to be on top of trends. This doesn't necessarily mean they LOVE Kaytranada or Twigs or whoever is hot right now, it just means they know enough about them to hold a conversation whenever necessary or to fire a few tweets into the ether. When no one is around, they mostly listen to ambient music that's conducive to getting stoned and not actually achieving anything.

The Guitar Guy

These guys are the sort of jelly-cubes you want to knee in the ribs because they’re giving your girlfriend a shoulder massage, except you can’t because chill bro. You may think the cargo-pant guys - the one’s that resemble those strange people Summer Roberts lived with in Season 4 of the OC - don’t exist outside a realm that involves red cups, shared dormitories and a kick-ass soundtrack. But unfortunately they do - and they’re walking around your university with a guitar strapped to their back, playing their own songs in the quad, and flirting dangerously with every female they come into contact with. These guys don’t necessarily have a specific music taste, but they're into anything that involves a six-string guitar and a male vocal that sounds like a thousand broken hearts. Unlucky for you if you've got one living in your flat - prepare to spend the next few weeks hearing the same three riffs played over and over again.

White Rap Fans

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes on Instagram will understand this character. You can usually tell if one is living in your house: the smell of carpet-kush wafting from under their doorway, the word "piff" littering every conversation, "man" used to book-end sentences. The rap-fan is useful to have in your squad because, let's be honest, they will make your pre-drinks playlist infinitely better. Rich Homie Quan, Lil Durk, anything that has "mustard on the beat" will soundtrack every gun-fingered game of "have you ever". The only #struggle is holding a conversation with these guys for more than five minutes.

Annoncering

The Music Encyclopaedia

(via) Outside of brand strategy meetings, hipsters no longer exist. They’re a redundant character; a piece of branded content, an advert, something that has been sold to the carbon-copy cut-outs who believe facial hair makes them a bearded Adonis. However, although the idea of the all-knowing, all-encompassing, hipster has been pretty much obliterated, there are still people who know a buttload about music. At university you'll run into people that love music so much they won’t stop until you're aware exactly how much they adore it. They want to tell you everything about the latest A.G Cook remix, track from Novelist, and Boiler Room set. They can talk for hours about their collection that includes everything from Fridge to Wen’s Signals. If you’re wearing a band t-shirt or have a record-label sticker on your laptop, then be prepared to hear the life-story of Brainfeeder, minimal house, or Sub-Pop, even if you didn’t ask.

The People That LOVE Shit Music

You soon realise there are people on our planet who genuinely think “Save Tonight” is the best thing ever written.

The Guy That Has Discovered Girls Who Like Music

Well done, num-nuts. You discovered that there are girls who like music too. Congratulations! Doesn't mean you can fetishize them just because they, too, are a human that knows Lil Ugly Mane’s deepcuts. They are also equally likely to have hands, so don't act so surprised when they use them to play instruments, cut samples, or rip out their eyes after being told for the 100th time they're "amaaaazing!" for also having heard about Big Star.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @RyanBassil