The Hoarchive

Warwick’s a funny old fish. For one thing, it’s not a fish. But it does have a lake, though there aren’t any (many?) fish in it.

The Hoar is by no means a fish. It is, however, the only help you’re going to get in the difficult ordeal of faux freshers’ fortnight — an ordeal so horrendous that simple questions like, ‘Is that a fish?’ become unexpectedly difficult to answer.

1. Create a new false account of your prior education, domestic life and general health for each new person you meet.

On paper, it makes sense to work out broadly what one’s identity is and — on the whole — to stick with it and avoid confusing people. At uni, however, such indolence will do you no favours.

At Warwick, rubbing — as one does — shoulders and genitalia with the intellectual Ford Galaxies of the planet, possessing any fewer than twelve or thirteen different backstories will mark you out as a dangerous idiot.

In my first term, I explained to my personal tutor that I was an elderly prostitute from Bogotá; to my flatmates that I was a roofer from Basildon, and to my parents that I was a communist agitator from Beirut.

2. On no account permit yourself to partake of alcoholic drinks.

As the Baby Jesus once wrote, ‘vodka turns middle-class kids into silly twats’. Silly twattery is punished at Warwick with large fines of which payment is not required. (We don’t know why either.)

To avoid charges of silly twattery, we recommend that young and old alike develop a healthy dependency upon narcotics. Heroin is a readily available opiate that can be easily administered by intravenous injection.

3. Bring a small goat or sheep to keep your cleaner happy.

Halls kitchens are cleaned once or twice a week by an overwhelmingly female army of not wholly horrible and generally charming cleaners. When forced to clean kitchens that are not already clean, cleaners invariably become unhappy and frequently become quite angry.

Intoxicated cooks tend to attach a decent portion of their comestibles to the fabric of the kitchen. Therein lies the problem.

Even a very small goat or sheep will deliver enough goodness and cheer to delight your cleaner, and serves the double function of converting waste organic matter into compact dung pellets. A happy cleaner, as we all know, is a good thing.

4. Do not shower alone.

It is a well-reported matter of the utmost facthood that all dropouts decide to drop out whilst showering. Typically, this is because a potential dropout in a shower is a potential dropout shielded from the comforting fingerings of his or her close friends and recent acquaintances.

Comforting fingerings from close friends and recent acquaintances are essential to healthy studenthood, so make a concerted effort to join any close friend or recent acquaintance who appears to have secluded him- or herself in a solo shower.

5. Do not attend lectures that you are not expected to attend.

It is terribly tempting, once one discovers that Warwick on a weekday is a mass of concomitant lectures, to attempt to attend all of them in their entirety.

This is an unrealistic goal.

6. Develop an excellent joke based upon the similar sounds of ‘budget’ and ‘budge it’. Use this excellent joke to excuse yourself from all budgetary problems.

Near-homophones are powerful like that.

7. Join two societies so that you can advertise mad cool super discount genuine Ray-Bans in their Facebook groups.

The mad cool super discount genuine Ray-Ban boom doesn’t look like it’s slowing down, so get in on it.