Ever to Excel?

Life beyond the bubble

The Venerable Bede, in a fit of despair caused by the nihilistic outlook of his pagan contemporaries, compared life on Earth for the non-believer to the flight of a sparrow through a mead-hall. For one moment, the sparrow may bask in the room’s ale-scented glow, enjoying the drunken chatter of the men and women who mingle there. Yet his admission to this sanctuary is all too brief. Outside, the biting chill of a British winter rages, and the little bird must soon return to the dark unknown from which it has emerged. Though I am perhaps indulging myself, I think the somewhat tragic metaphor can be applied to the journey of the student in St Andrews.

Fresh-faced and pitifully naive, we are thrust into the mead-hall at the tender age of eighteen and proceed to glide through four years of similarly ale-scented debauchery, years in which the blustering reality of the outside world fades into pleasant memory. Life in the bubble — a cocktail of costumed pub crawls, sweaty house parties, and late-night dips — possess much of the flickering warmth, the slightly claustrophobic sense of comfort one associates with the Germanic alehouse. Yet, if we students are the sparrow, what happens to us frail creatures when the doors are behind us for good?

For starters, we must experience the startling revelation that the world is bigger than the three streets we’re used to. When that long awaited moment arrives, the feeling will be bittersweet. After four years of recycling the same tired pubs, the same overpriced restaurants, four years of beach walks, Taste paninis, and sanity-restoring trips to Crail, suddenly it’s all over. The world that awaits you is likely one of unlimited choice, pubs so numerous that you can never sample them all, faces in such abundance that most will remain strangers. Of course, the delicious freedom of our twenties is a privilege, and something that the cloistered St Andrews student will likely throw themselves into. Yet after four years in such a little bubble, I imagine I am not the only one who fears floating into the big, wide world.

The truth is, there’s nowhere quite like St Andrews. I was told this on my first week here, during a chance late-night encounter with a pair of ex-students on West Sands. Ejected from Aikman’s at closing time, I wandered onto the beach in the hope of finding an escape from the bustle of Freshers’ in the clarity of a Scottish night sky. Instead, I discovered two more than slightly inebriated St Andrews veterans eager to thrust some of their hard-earned advice on me. I can’t recall it in its entirety, but it was something along the lines of never taking the town for granted. At the time, I felt there was something fated about that meeting, as if I had stumbled into some version of my future self, sent to warn me against letting the next four years of my life pass me by. 

I don’t believe I ever did. In fact, with each year, I appreciate with renewed wonder just how extraordinary this place is. Nowhere does familiarity like St Andrews, the sense of collective boredom that breeds camaraderie amongst even the most dissimilar of students. In a town where everyone knows everyone, we are all subject to the same scrutinising judgement as we rush into Sainsbury’s in our pyjamas or stumble in late to a Thursday-morning tutorial reeking of the night before. Yes, the sense that you are under constant surveillance is maddening at times, but faced with the prospect of losing it, I’m almost saddened at the thought of never being part of something so intimate again.

It’s an intimacy that dominates life here. One that is terrifying at first, as you are faced with the prospect of fewer streets to explore than years you will spend here. Yet it is an intimacy you’ll eventually learn to cherish. It’s this same intimacy, this loyalty to a place which is equal parts playground and prison, that propels students (one too many Le Chouffes in) to scribble their own hard-earned wisdom on the walls of the Aikman’s toilets. I have perused those walls more than I care to say, and emerge from my cubicle each time with a renewed faith in the University. After all, how many times in our life will we be able to read profanities on a toilet wall and know exactly which shawarma joint, which club night, which department is being badmouthed? The Aikman’s toilets speak for the great collective of students that stalk the town’s three streets, and when the time comes for their re-painting, I’m certain the wisdom of another four years will come to live on in them.

In many respects, I do leave St Andrews ill-equipped to face the real world, in which responsibilities and problems spiral far beyond the ones I have grown accustomed to in this toy town I call home. Yet I leave with the sense that I have been part of something entirely unique, and I have got through it with friends who, after so many nights out, nights in, nights spent arguing about the state of our flat or the state of the world, are so much more than friends. As I battle the mingled panic and relief of my final few weeks, I feel sure of one thing — that of all the mead-halls I could have flown through, I’m bloody lucky I chose this one.

Illustration by Lucy Maitland-Lewis