People I End Up Sitting Near In Lectures

• Girl who won't stop jiggling her knee and therefore making the entire row of seats shake. Obliviously, of course.
• Girl who makes weird inadvertent 'hm' noises at odd intervals.
• Guy behind me who keeps reaching the bottom of his page and poking his notebook into my shoulder.
• Scary-coughers.
• People who whinge about how 'boring' the lecture was when actually it was genuinely interesting. Go home then.
• Girl who sits behind me, jabs her foot into my back and then keeps it there, despite much passive-aggressive seat-shuffling on my behalf.
• Guy who texts solidly throughout the lecture.
• People who return after a five-minute break with a mound of hot food that smells really strong when I'm really hungry.
• Guy who asks incredibly awkward irrelevant questions that make everyone cringe.
• Smokers. Gaaaah...
• A group of self-styled 'lads' (kill me now - or rather, kill them) who like to share their hilarious 'banter' with everyone in the nearby vicinity.
• A very heavy mouth-breather whose breath I can actually feel on the back of my neck. Ughhh.
• Girl who takes intimidatingly detailed notes
• Someone very tall / with huge hair / with a huge hat in front of me who manages to block out everything important on PowerPoint, leaving me with the flinch-inducing Comic Sans titles and irritating ClipArt cartoons.

Snippets

All I've been listening to for the past week or so - recommended tracks You Stole The Sun From My Heart, Indian Summer and (It's Not War) Just The End Of Love among others.

Some classics, some not-so-classic...

Summer-winter mix, always an awkward time of year to dress.

Things I Have Learnt In Freshers' Week

• No matter how much stuff I think I have, I will always forget something. 
• Halls are not very soundproof - at all. Luckily the only unwanted noise I've had to endure (so far) has been bizarre music from down the corridor, and people singing about snakes. 
• I talk to myself way more than I thought, and it's only now that I know my next-door-neighbour can probably hear me that I've become aware of it.
• Ditto singing.
• Fire alarms at quarter past three in the morning are sheer hell.
• No question is too stupid for Google. Such as, 'how long does a tumble dryer take?', and 'how many calories are in a Greggs ham and cheese bake?'. Someone, somewhere, will have asked the same thing.
• Might be wise not to punch a freshers' rep, no matter how infuriating they might be.
• That club chain that I hated back at home? Yeah, it's exactly the same here, too. Avoid.
• Choosing a hall of residence right next to a building site has its advantages, such as hammers providing a useful alarm clock. 
• It's not a brilliant idea to forget vital stuff, such as your glasses. 
• Everything you found annoying about home will suddenly become incredibly endearing and sweet.
• Recipe books become a way of living vicariously, as you look at all the lovely things you could be eating if you had more than peanut butter and a potato.
• Mixer taps are so underrated, as are hot taps that don't go from lukewarm to scalding in the space of two seconds. 
• The choice between laundry-lurking and laundry-paranoia is a tricky one. 
• Watching stuff alone on a slowly-loading iPlayer is not really the same. 
• Being able to eat what you like, when you like, might be a very dangerous thing, but it is so good.