To feel somewhat sorry for less extrovert undergraduates these days?

[fishdishwish]

It seems to me that the whole 'party' culture seems to dominate student life more than ever before, and that many young people of both sexes are buying into a really laddish ethos.

I was never the most socially confident of teenagers, but I found my niche at uni (mid 90s) after a slightly rocky start. However, I'm not sure how I would have coped now.

DD struggled with the party atmosphere in the first year, climbing over her sleeping flatmates in the corridor early in the morning, to get to daily 9am lectures.

After the second year, however, she has been telling me how differently people behave from those at school. Everybody is more adult, no one grills her about why she does not have an inch of make-up slapped on; and even better, they are not interested and do not wear it themselves.

She does seem to have found her niche amongst the students in her department, which runs very intensive courses.

I was at uni 2003-2007, and initially it did seem like pretty much everything for freshers was geared around going out and getting drunk or playing sport (and then getting drunk afterwards!). Didn't really get on much with my flatmates as most of them were that way inclined and went home at weekends anyway. Wasn't until I found some other friends outside of the flat and discovered the non-partying societies like Film Club, the Harry Potter Society (oh yes it existed!), the Nightline volunteering group, Ramblers and so on that I realised there were plenty of people who didn't go in for the partying lifestyle - you just have to go out and find them.

For the record I also joined the Real Ale and Cider Society in my third year and helped organise beer festivals - they were lovely chaps and their drinking habits much more up my street, a nice pub with comfy seats where you can chat and be heard instead of shouting across the noise!

Flip flops I too was at Uni in the 80s and I think my experience was very similar to yours. Before I went I ipagined everyone would be much more sophisticated and extrovert than me - but in reality they were not. Really not.

I find this thread interesting because DD is about to start Uni in about 3 weeks. She is a sociable girl but I wouldn't describe her as a party animal - most of her friends right now are on the geek end of the scale!

So far though she has been signing up for welcome parties and freshers armbands. Hmm!

Perhaps one advantage of social media though, she has already found the facebook page for the hall she will be in so has contact with people who will be in the same place as her.