IN THE MAGAZINE

I DON’T WANNA GROW UP

An Ode to School and a “Meh” to University

Photo by Bernard Capper

It’s weird how much you will come to appreciate school the very second you start uni. It happens to everyone. As the people carrier pulls away, leaving you in your tiny blank cell alone for the first time in your life, you will feel as vulnerable as a new born kitten dragged from its mother’s teats and dumped in a burning wheelie bin.

Before you’ve even Blu Tacked the Bob Marley poster to the cigarette smoke-stained walls, the realisation will hit you that, as great as it is to be away from home, the whole experience is going to be much less exciting than you thought it would be.

Once the first week is over, you will realise that you will never again experience anything with the same wide-eyed naivety as you did for the first time at school. Here are just a few things you will miss.

Photo by Keith Hunter Ray

FOOD
School food, as genuinely awful as it was for you, tasted fucking delicious at the time. Processed “chicken” burgers speckled with bits of bone slapped between two pieces of warm soggy bread and covered in ketchup so cheap and acidic it could strip paint? Yum! I don't care what Jamie Oliver the fucking cunniliungus face thinks, school dinners rule.

When you get to uni it’s all healthy eating and “Did you know those crisps have monosodium glutamate in? I only eat Kettle Chips because I like to be in control of my body at all times” and “You know you should shit in the lotus position to release all your negative energy, right?” That last bit has nothing to do with food, obviously, but someone did say it to me at uni once. 

Photos by Stephen Bayley, David Smith

MONEY
The day you start uni is the day your money trouble begins. All you had to do at school was stick out your hand each morning and your mum would pour enough change into your hand for as many Chomp bars and cans of 7-Up as you could stomach. Life was a breeze.

Now you’re at uni you’ve got rent to deal with, bills to pay and food to buy. For the first time you will have friends who want their 10p back, with interest. You will be the guy buying toilet roll for the whole house because your flatmates would rather wipe their arses across the edge of the sink than fork out 69p for six rolls of tracing paper.

Oh yeah, and then there’s that problem of the tens of thousands of pounds you now owe the bank once it’s all over. 


SCHOOL DISCOS
Ahh, how amazing were these? Prancing around high on a mixture of fruit punch and petrol you found in the shed at home, locking lips with anything that came within three feet of you, and trying not to ejaculate if you got to do a slow dance with a girl. And all this while teachers stood there watching with full-on tents in their trousers. Actually, that was a bit of a weird, pervy experience, thinking about it now.

You’ll never again get the chance to dampen a digit with a fat girl behind a tall stack of chairs in the assembly hall, and then go and let your mates have a sniff of your finger as you all stand around giggling.

Instead, you’ve got to ply some hippo at the student union with 11 pints of cider to get her back to your room, only for her to cry during sex and tell you she’s deeply in love with some morbidly obese 60-year-old lecturer with neck acne and a chronic sweat problem. 

Photo by Sohrab Farahmand

FIGHTS
You are very, very lucky if you will see even one of these at uni. I don’t think I witnessed a single punch being thrown the whole three years I was there. School fights were amazing though – everyone huddled round screaming, “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” like they were watching two randy hamsters battle it out. I’d say I must have witnessed about 30 fights in my first week of secondary school. You’ll never again get anything that rivals the fun of you and 40 of your mates going on the bus to take on three tiny kids two years below in a nearby private school. 


“SPECIAL NEEDS”
None of the “special needs” kids make it to uni. You know, those slightly unhinged, but quite smiley people who can barely spell their name, constantly smell of piss and come from severely odd families. You will not find that innocence and naivety in anyone you meet ever again. As much as you laugh at them while at school you will come to miss them (until they are hunting you down on Facebook to tell you they have four kids and they weigh about 25 stone and would love to hang out).

Photos by Glyn Johns and Norma Walker

CLOTHING
Let’s compare the average school uniform to the average university attire.

School: Cute girls with pigtails in short skirts, long white socks and open neck white shirts (I’m talking about those who are 16 and upwards here, obviously). And you get to spend every day hanging out with them. You are forced to hang out with these divine goddesses. I don’t think you can ever possibly comprehend how much pervy Japanese men would pay to experience this even for five minutes, let alone five years.

University: Frumpy, flat-chested, frigid girls in combat trousers, a Che Guevara T-shirt, a Berghaus fleece borrowed from their older brother who was in the TA and trainers which can double as hiking boots.


NAME-CALLING
You can’t call people “a fucking idiot cuntface dicksplash” any more because somebody in the Fucking Idiot Cuntface Dicksplash Student Protection Society will overhear and then they will have a massive protest outside the student union the next morning and threaten a mass suicide unless you are thrown out.

Instead you have to be civil and mature the whole time and stop yourself any time you go to say something offensive. At first people will think you’ve got Tourette’s with all the unfinished outbursts you’ll be making. Fuck ’em!

PRANCEHALL

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Comments

Anonymous, on Dec 18, 2008 wrote: it’s even fucking worst when you leave good ol brooklyn, for fucked up leech-on-your-wallet london. 1st year’s a fucking trip for me :/ a bad one.

Anonymous, on Oct 24, 2008 wrote: parp

Anonymous, on Oct 20, 2008 wrote: school was semi torture but also pretty amazing,bongs at lunchtime,fag breaks complete with sausage rolls,fucking the teachers up...fabulous uni was however fun...graduating sucks leaving education behind sucks and that guys comment)im assuming hes a dude) is on the dollar has i am so on the dole its not even funny along with many of my 1st class mateys! i face a career in retail off to the gas chambers for me!

Anonymous, on Oct 18, 2008 wrote: i fucking hated school, and i fucking hate uni

Anonymous, on Oct 17, 2008 wrote: i fucking hated school, and i fucking hate uni

Anonymous, on Oct 17, 2008 wrote: SCHOOL WAS BULLSHIT. being a grown up is infinatly better than having people wiping your ass constantly. bunch of fucking children that want their mummy’s and run home every week for cuddles. people who miss school are what make uni fucking boring with there 50% whining about how school was better and 50% telling you how topshop-rock-n-roll you are. cos you spend all your cash on a bunch of shit clothes from american apparel, and drink bulmers cider. fucking predictable as any artschool shorditch twat. Uni is the best. being a grown up is the best. the real shit comes when you leave. then you have no excuses- either way, go to oxford or some back water polytechnic you’ll end up working in McDonalds, since everyone is over educated.

Anonymous, on Oct 17, 2008 wrote: sorry to reiterate... but "Took loads of drugs, shagged loads of girls and met nuff classic people." bwahahahah. you are what everyone else calls a student cunt.

Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2008 wrote: i know the girl!! awesome.

Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2008 wrote: met "nuff classic people" did you? you are the reason uni is shit. it’s retards like you that ruin the whole thing. you smoke a joint and you think you’re pete doherty.

Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2008 wrote: who are all these depressed geeks that read vice?

Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2008 wrote: I felt sooo fucking down today from all of this bullshit. This made me laugh out loud so much - because it’s sooo fucking true. Thanks PRANCEHALL. See you in the Summer.

Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2008 wrote: I smashed the shit out of uni Took loads of drugs, shagged loads of girls and met nuff classic people. Prancehall is a twat

Anonymous, on Oct 15, 2008 wrote: omg, my flat mate is a perfect description of your uni girls.. Frumpy, flat-chested, frigid in combat trousers, a Che Guevara T-shirt exactly what she wore today!

Anonymous, on Oct 14, 2008 wrote: You forgot entire classes coming up with cunning ways to embarass and generally belittle teachers. Our entre science class would hide in the bushes every day until the teacher got so confused he walked away, then when he came back we would all be there and claim we always had been. lecturers are too chummy to do that too. plus there not a group mentality amongst uni students :(

Anonymous, on Oct 14, 2008 wrote: "Instead you have to be civil and mature the whole time and stop yourself any time you go to say something offensive. At first people will think you’ve got Tourette’s with all the unfinished outbursts you’ll be making. Fuck ’em!" --> word !