to want to electrocute the freshers slightly?

[SuperFox]

Just that really, as I am rudely awoken at 330am by yet another hysterically funny game of trapdoor run I can't help but wonder what the response would be if I rigged up the door knocker with a short sharp shock; only a small one for educational purposes you understand, cause and effect is such an important lesson in life...

One of my neighbours has the joy of working at the university, his years of experience have taught him that "undergrads are all idiots, utterly clueless" (to be muttered wearily).

Anyone else love the start of the academic year and the ensuing pranks as much as I do?

They look younger every year

Only slightly...?

Never encountered this, and I lived in student central for years.

What I do really hate is supermarkets. Yes, there are five of you, and you are all trying to learn how to balance booze and carbs, but you will all need ID! And money! And a bag to put it in!

And why oh why do they feel the need to stand in the bookshop talking loudly about how much they've read? As a rule of thumb, if you are standing in an academic section of a bookshop, and you are a fresher, every adult around you will be more educated than you are, and will think you sound like a dickhead when you talk about your love of Marx's prose.

Just got four moving in next door to me, who didn't get into halls. Better than the 2nd years we had to endure last year, I hope, who thought they knew it all and wrecked their own house at 2am mostly on a regular basis.

Round here they move in packs, but more like overgrown gangly overexcited puppy packs than the streetwise hyenas they assume themselves to be. We are in the naice part of town therefore around here are more trustafarians than worker bees (far less social graces than normal in my humble opinion). I tend to run them out the way with the buggy whenever possible... is it possible to arm buggy wheels with water pistols or sumsuch chariot race style?

also I second the supermarket complaint, although watching 5 of em in tesco carpark yesterday try to work out how to carry their 4 trolley loads from trolley to bus stop with no bags was most chuckleworthy!

I do enjoy watching them in Waitrose. Gangly overexcited puppies imagining themselves cosmopolitan cooks, there. 'Oh yah, this is cho-ree-tho, yah'. And then they go and buy overpriced pizza and beer.

(I know it is fundamentally wrong that students should be in Waitrose, but freshers do go. It was slightly cruel of whoever authorized Waitrose's planning permission to make it one of the closest supermarkets to the university here.)

super - oh, yes. That is fun too. Bless their tiny hearts.

I am very excited this year. I get freshers of my very own to play with.

well they are all rich for the first fortnight at least aren't they? taxis and groceries galore then 3 months of noodles, baked beans and begging calls to the bank of m&d

LRD can we help with your class plans or whatever, get our own back a little before they wise up?

No, it would be cruel.

'As a rule of thumb, if you are standing in an academic section of a bookshop, and you are a fresher, every adult around you will be more educated than you are,'

And in most Oxford pubs as well.

Ha ha I love how they strut around town with an attitude of 'I shit ice cream cones me' for the first month the reality whacks them like a bus!

I love Oxford pubs.

It's not quite fresher season here yet, but there are parents taking their children round for a look, and that is almost more fun.

'I shit ice cream cones me' such a great phrase.

Last year there was a lass I overheard explaining in great detail how she had it all figured out, she was going to save money by baking her own bread and this would enable her to budget for organic meat.

It was very sweet.

When DS1 was a fresher, he lived the high life for the first few weeks, making wonderful meals with the finest cuts of meat. By the second term he had to learn how to make 101 exciting meals out of a sack of spinach he got cheap from the market.

They won't take parental advice. They have to learn through experience.

I like this time of year. They're all fresh & eager. It lasts till we ask them to do some work, and don't treat them like the special snowflakes they've been told they are.

But their enthusiasm emerges every now & again, when they learn in front of you, and that;s delightful. So yes, a little electric shock so they learn -- purely educational, of course. You'll be doing us all a favour.

But it's why I prefer not to live in the same town in which I work ...

LRD don't know your subject but is there any small possibility of including a very important for final grade type research paper on the subject of the impending extinction of the lesser known wild haggis perhaps or the increasing prevalence of drop bears? Yetis are a bit obvious but you never know... please pretty please?

knees, my brother and his flatmate came to have a deep familiarity with all the possible recipes you can make with value pasta and tinned tomatoes. Spinach would have seemed a luxury!

super - tempting as it is, I think they will realize I am as wet behind the ears as they are, really.

My speciality was tuna mayo pasta, which was basically value penne pasta with a tin of John West and half a jar of Hellmans!

There seems to be a far more laddish ethos amongst male students these days, and the girls seem far more reluctant to challenge it than they were 20 years ago.

Just met my next door freshers. So sweet! Two young men and two young women. I reckon 18 years old. Parents just fussing and leaving. As my own DD is off the uni in two weeks, I just want to hug them all.

That sounds really revolting, fishdish.

I used to make 'risotto' with smoked mackerel (the stuff in plastic packs) and sweetcorn in it. WTF was I thinking?

No, you are not being the slightest bit unreasonable (and I speak as a parent who will deliver their fresher next weekend)

I did used to enjoy watching them doing their first shops in packs, in the first couple of weeks of term though - Great entertainment . I feel a little sad we now have a nearer Aldi so I no longer shop near the University.

LineRunner take them round some cake - you will have friends for life

agreed about the laddishness, maybe reality tv is responsible for that one? I had to stop myself going out and boxing the ears of the drunken yoof in the street the other night who was screaming "minger" "fattie" etc at presumably some poor woman on her way past. He carried on down the road so would have been gone by the time I had got my sleepy self out of bed to give him a piece of my mind but in my day he would have at least been told where to get off by any presumed victim of that sort of crap as well as passers by.