An Irishman abroad

"Stoodent Life" - Part 2 - The First Day

Before I take you to my final year at University - a little story about my first day there:

At Coleraine University, there is a big square entrance hall, with a lot of seated areas on the ground and 1st floor. It was to prove a popular spot to sit and ‘people watch’ whilst waiting for lectures to start (or to actually skip class)

On the first day of university, I found myself sitting in this hallway (or ‘the model’ as it was known), waiting to go into my first class ever at University – 2 hours of applied mathematics – exciting stuff). I was a little bit nervous - as I’m sure most students are.

I watched as all these people walked past, seemingly so in control of themselves, looking as if they knew exactly where they were going to and what they were going to do once they got there. I felt so nervous and lonely. What had I let myself in for? Why hadn’t I picked a University where I would at least know someone that studied there?!

As I wondered to myself what lay ahead for me, I noticed a small man, in his late forties walk in through the front entrance. There was something about the man that caught my intention; perhaps it was the determined manner in which he strode across the hall, looking every inch the man (all be it a little less than average man size) on a mission. He carried a small, battered leather satchel and looked more than a little bit pissed off.

He walked over to a stand that had posters and fliers advertising Northern Ireland Railways. A nice enough lady, who I had been chatting to previously was stood there handing out the fliers, answering enquiries and selling student passes for the trains.

She gazed on in astonishment (as did everyone else in the vicinity) as the man proceeded to grab the fliers out of her hand and throw them up in the air. He then continued by pushing all the remaining fliers off the table and ripping posters of the walls behind.

“This is my protest against Northern Ireland Railways” he screamed, pointing the finger at the poor NIR rep.
“30 minutes late! 30 minutes late!!” he continued, eyes ablaze and veins popping out on his temple.

I was sure the man was going to have a coronary.

“Do you realise that thanks to the ineptitude of Northern Ireland Railways, I have missed my meeting? - Bloody useless the lot of you!!”

He then stormed off in a huff, mumbling and muttering to himself.

A few of us got up to help the rather flustered looking lady gather up the fliers. I started joking about it with her and another guy – a real tough looking heavy metal dude, looking totally resplendent in “denim suit” and extra long mullet. I remember thinking at the time that he looked like the bass guitarist of the popular rock combo (or German Thrash Metal band, depending on your taste), Kreator. (See http://www.kreator.tk/ for details).

After helping the lady, we went back to our seats.
“I’m Giles,” he said, offering his hand in greeting.
This was the last thing that I expected this Rock God to be called but he seemed like a nice enough bloke. We got chatting and it turned out that this was also his first year but better than that, he was studying the same course as me! I had made my first friend. I felt better about things already!

After a short chat, we went into the lecture theatre and waited on our lecturer to arrive.

You can imagine our surprise when our lecturer walked in and turned out to be none other than the guy who we had just watch demolish the Northern Ireland Railway stand!

As we went through first year we discovered a few more things about the guy. Seemingly he had a history of doing this sort of thing before. There was a story that did the rounds, where he is supposed to have wrecked the grocery store on the campus, when he discovered some out of date cheese on a shelf!

We also heard that he was an alcoholic, trying to cope with life living with his wheelchair bound wife.

What was for sure was that despite the fact he was extremely intelligent, he was a pretty awful teacher - rambling his way through extremely long algebraic equations and completely losing us in the process. I was amazed to pass the exam at the end of the semester.

I also saw him on the train on several occasions, so the fact that it had been late on that first day didn’t seem to stop him from using their service.

But what it did provide Giles and myself with was a way of breaking the ice and getting to know someone from University on our first day, which was to prove invaluable, because from that day we were to become best buddies and he was one of the seven guys that shared a house and some wild times together in our final year at university at the den of iniquity known as Whitehaven – an amazing house with, amongst other delights - a sauna, a dance floor and a fireman’s pole. Not your average house, I’m sure you’ll all agree and it turned out to be not your average year as well...