Studentypical by Emily Adams

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[Your typical student magazine]

w w w. s t u d e n t y p i c a l . c o . u k

Welcome...

... to Studentypical, your typical student magazine, packed with everyday student problems. Believe it or not, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re probably not the only one struggling through the trials and tribulations of student life, juggling that dissertation with those housemates. Take a peek inside and realise youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not alone! Until next week... 2

Emily Adams Editor

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Contents LIFE The 6 Housemates You Love to Hate ENTERTAINMENT West End on a Student Wage (Review of Once the Musical) LIFE Look, Read, Watch and Follow TRAVEL Dublin: An Irish Adventure TECHNOLOGY The 4 Reasons to Steer Clear of a Kindle

Above image by Adem Djemil Cover image by Travis Nobles

Life

The 6 Housemates You Love to Hate

Making you feel frazzled?

We’ve all been there and we all hated it. Have a read and see if you recognise any of these culprits? Photo by UGL_UIUC

Whenever you want to do all that washing up, that’d be cool....

It’s my food so 4 hands off!

Student living isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. That feeling of freedom quickly turns into dread when you realise you have to do this thing called cooking every day. And what’s washing? That sounds like a lot of effort. But for many, of all the trials and tribulations we students wrestle with every day, it seems there’s one that outdoes them all. That one person that you once wanted to spend every minute of the day with, has become the one you spend every minute of the day trying to avoid: Your so-called friend has become your housemate from hell. Here are a few examples you might just recognise:

Photo by Julka G

Photo by Nicky Getsgood

1) The one who borrows money from you and just hopes you’ll forget about it. We’re students. Our student loan is all we have, so borrow some of it and you’re borrowing part of our souls. Don’t pay us back and we will hunt you down. No exaggeration.

2) The one who smells weird. They’ll spend the longest in the shower and use all the hot water, yet still emerge looking grubby and smelling worse than when they went in. What even is that? Body odour or gone off milk? Meanwhile, the bath is covered in a thick layer of grime. Maybe I’ll give that shower a miss. I’ll just dab cold water on my face instead… 3) The one who never does any washing up. That mountain of mouldy dishes will start growing life forms before someone thinks about edging it towards that waterfall of cleanliness that falls from the tap.

*studentypical Remember how excited you were to live with your new ‘best friends’? Hmm.

God forbid anyone have any cutlery or plates or utensils to cook with. Not even a passive aggressive note will sort this one out. It’s odd how quickly you adjust to eating your dinner out of a bowl with any form of cutlery available. May I suggest trying a steak knife and a chopstick for a ‘bowl’ of beans on toast. It’s an experience to say the least. 4) The one who thinks it’s okay to eat all your food. “Oh sorry, I thought that really expensive piece of steak was mine” or “Oh I thought you bought that bottle of French wine for me, oops”. 5) The one who never does any cleaning. And my Mum thought I was messy! Apparently (or so I’ve heard) some guys think they’re best off living with girls because they’ll have someone ‘to clean up after them’. Nope. Don’t think you’ve got that right. Try again. But rest assured, if they do have an out of body experience and start tidying away all their endless shit, they’ll decide to do it at 2am, the day before an exam, when y o u ’r e trying to sleep.

Photo by Sonnysinc

Photo by Editor

6) The one who plays ridiculously loud music at the most inconsiderate times of the day. Your music is rubbish and nobody wants to hear it. I will send you passive aggressive texts to get you to turn it down and you will not like it. Deal with it. Sound familiar to anyone? If it doesn’t and you’ve managed to avoid these housemate horrors, I applaud you for navigating the mind field of student living successfully and reaching housemate heaven. But take a minute and feel f o r

those of us who have that one housemate who manages to encompass every types of housemate. How? I do not know but, somehow, they make it possible for you to hate them 6 times over.

Cleaning Products? What the hell are they?! Photo by Marcus Ooi

Send us your housemate horrors or tweet us @studentypical with the hashtag #housematehorrors and we’ll retweet or publish the best next issue!

Feeling down about your housemate horrors? Yeah, so are we! Why not cheer yourself up with a cheap trip to the West End. Turn over to find out more...

Entertainment

West End on a Student Wage Review of Once: Once Is Definitely Not Enough Go! See it for yourself ! Ticket: Under £20 Verdict: Once is definitely not enough. When: Monday – Saturday every week until July 2015! Where: The Phoenix Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London Running Time: 2hrs 15mins (approx.)

EMILY ADAMS I’m a student who loves to go and see musicals, plays, gigs, whatever it is, if it’s on stage, I want to see it. But if you’ve ever been to London’s West End, you’ll know that tickets don’t come cheap. So here’s my advice. Travel to London by coach, normally around a fiver from most cities an hour or two away and turn up at Leicester Square where all the cut-price ticket booths are desperate to get rid of their

“The best musical I’ve seen in a very long time” 6

last seats. Pick the cheapest one going. It doesn’t matter what it is or whether you’ve heard of it before. It’s more fun that way. I gave it a go and here’s my review of Once at The Phoenix Theatre. It’s your average Dublin, guitar-playing hoover-fixing boy meets eccentric, singing Czech girl, and it’s the best musical I’ve seen in a very long time. Don’t go expecting, the all singing, all dancing, glittering scenes of Wicked or Dirty Dancing. This is more of a play performed to music. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know the storyline is as simple as its title: two strangers meet, make music, become friends, fall in love and then fall back into the normality of their lives, except

“It’s just simple and you need to see it” apart from each other. But the plot really isn’t what matters here. It’s all about the music. And what amazing music it is. I implore you to listen to the film soundtrack and if you haven’t heard of the Academy Award winning Falling Slowly, written by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (the stars of the film) what the hell have you been listening to? It’s beautiful and I have it on repeat pretty much all the time.

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The Phoenix Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London. Photo by Tom Morris

I’m not interested in the new releases because this one just never gets old. And performed on stage by Declan Bennett and Zrinka Cvitesic, it’s the perfect lullaby.

“One modern and realistic (almost) fairy tale” Before the musical has even begun, the actors are on stage, just playing around with their instruments and their voices. The atmosphere is so relaxed, you want to jump over the balcony and join them (if only that wasn’t an insanely dangerous idea). And who doesn’t love a musical where, during the in-

terval, the pub set on stage becomes a fully functioning bar where you can get on stage and enjoy a drink. Throughout the play, we see just a handful of actors on stage, swapping in and out of scenes and playing their own musical speciality on one simple set. No over the top props and sets, just beautifully talented actors and their voices in one modern and realistic (almost) fairy tale. There’s really not much more to say: it’s just simple and you need to see it. But if you don’t get the chance to go to London and see this masterpiece, then definitely definitely definitely watch the film and listen to the soundtrack. Hours and hours of procrastination right there. You’re welcome. Enjoy!

Listen

To listen to the Once Film Soundtrack on Spotify, follow the QR code Find out more: @OnceMusicalLDN

Zrinka Cvitesic and Declan Bennett on stage. Photo by Richard Lakos

Life and Technology

L ook, R ead, W atch and F ollow This week’s pick of procrastination Your guide on what to look out for on every social media site Look ... @cintascotch on Instagram Ever looked at your everyday household objects and wondered if they could be made into some more creative? Have you ever looked at a pair of scissors and seen a ballet dancers legs? No, didn’t think so. But now, thank god, you

don’t have to imagine it ever again. ‘Cintascotch’ has done it for you only ten times better. Run by Javier Pérez, this Instagram account is wacky and pretty damn awesome. Pérez says that the most common daily objects appear most attractive to him. “Everything inspires me”, he says. You might see a bunch or juicy grapes but Pérez sees a handful of balloons, or that paperclip holding your essay together, that’s a trumpet in the eyes of Pérez the household object artist. Amazing.

Read ... Freshers’ Fun and Frolics

This is a sweet little blog I stumbled across a while ago whilst I was setting up mine. It tracks the life of a university student in her first year. It’s not the craziest, funniest, most interesting blog you’ll ever read, but it’s honest and I found myself agreeing with everything the author says. It’s some light, easy to read, procrastination with a cheery style and a few interesting facts thrown in. Look out for her tips on mastering student life from budgeting and saving money, to getting over homesickness and settling in.

Or, you know, there’s this little awesome blog called hashtagstudentproblems. I hear it’s pretty great… and it’s author *cough* me *cough* is pretty awesome too. Day to day, typical student problems that I’m pretty sure we can all relate to. Have a read and see what you think. Or not. Whatever.

Watch ... SourceFed It has to be SourceFed. It was created by Philip DeFranco, so you just know it’s going to be good. If you haven’t seen it, feel ashamed, feel very very ashamed. It’s hilarious, it’s quick witted and it’s even educational. It’s 20 minutes day split into 5 videos about the best, weirdest or most interesting news stories of the day. But the presenters... oh the presenters, they are a-ma-zing! The original trio of Joe Bereta, Lee Newton and Elliot Morgan was unstoppable and now there’s a whole host

of new shows and presenters to keep it fresh and new - Steve Zaragoza is particularly entertaining. They all have their own little quirks and they’re all fabulous. Watch out for Lee Newton’s hysterical obsession with dinosaurs and everyone’s ability to talk super-fast so they can cram everything into their 20 minute daily quota. And once you’ve become addicted to their fast paced videos, look out for their individual YouTube channels. Definitely worth a watch.

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The presenters of SourceFed

Follow ... Student Problems @ProblemsAtUni The one twitter account that perfectly sums up your uni life in just 140 characters. It makes you feel that little bit better about yourself and a little less guilty about all that procrastination you’ve done. It’s perhaps a bit worrying how accurate it is; maybe they’re stealing my tweets… Created by just another typical student, 19 year old Dom McGregor studies at the University of Manchester and has generated over

Next week, look out for cats on twitter and a hilarious guy on YouTube. You won’t want to miss that.

124,000 followers since he set it up. If only my procrastination was as productive as that. It certainly won’t do anything to convince your parents that uni is actually pretty hard. Instead it’ll only cofirm their fears that you sleep all day and binge watch Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad instead of ‘working’. But hey, it’s humourous and light hearted. Plus, with all those exams and deadlines looming, it’s reassuring to remind myself that I’m not the only student panic revising and living in a little corner of the library. Definitely wish I was sleeping all day and binge watching programs now!

Technology

The 4 Reasons You Should Steer Clear of a Kindle The digital age has claimed another victim. It’s time to say goodbye to the spine and hello to the screen. And I, for one, am not going to welcome it with open arms and here’s why. 1. Haven’t we got enough gadgets already? Let’s be frank about this: a Kindle is just yet another device to look after, play with for a bit and then toss in the corner to gather dust? Now, alongside your iPod, your iPhone, your laptop and every other gadget, you have another item to dote on. It’s hassle that a book doesn’t demand. And don’t forget you have to spend money on it too, feed it your hard earned dollar and water it with electricity or watch it wilt and die.

2. My books are my prized possessions. Aren’t yours?

To me, an e-book isn’t even a ‘real’ book. My books are the collection of childhood. There’s nothing better than perusing a book store for hours on end and taking away a carefully selected, hand-picked novel. What about the smell of a new book, the touch of the paper, the look of a worn and well-loved paperback? With a Kindle to hand, you might as well toss it in the bin. Add electronics and technology into the mix and it becomes so cold and impersonal, mechanical even. Forget about the content, it’s cover or blurb, it’s about seeing how many words you can cram into one electronic device. It tears the pages out of your book collection and reduces your beloved novels to nothing more than a bit of binary code; why would I ever want to do that?!

3. Forget to charge it? Bye bye reading time… again.

If reading with a time limit is a problem, then the battery life could be a deal breaker. It’s an electrical device so you’ll probably have to charge it every day, but then that’s what we get with our gadgets these days.

Photo by Shane Lin

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limit attached to it, especially one that you don’t get to decide.

4. Money, money and yet more money. Who said e-books would be cheaper than the real thing? An e-reader is nothing without its e-books, and they aren’t actually much cheaper than your average paperback. So why fall for another money making honey trap? The fanciest, flashiest (most

pretentious) e-readers can cost up to £170. I could buy around 24 books costing £7 at that price! That’s a whole book collection. If I bought a Kindle, I wouldn’t be able to afford to read anything except the packaging and I certainly don’t want to throw more money at yet another global company sucking the life out of the local bookshop. No thank you. Kindle literally means ‘to set on fire’. So go ahead, set your belongings alight, put a match to all that money and watch it burn because the digital age is taking over.

Photo by Michael Sauers It comes with the territory, right? Imagine reading a book, when the words fizzle off the page, the pages burn apart and you’re left with just the ashes, with no idea what happened to that man dangling from the mountain by his fingertips, whether the boy got the girl or if he survived that life threating surgery. Why should you have to wait? That’s certainly not what the author intended. You’re not frantically

reading the final instalment of Harry Potter’s escapades when good ole JK abruptly stops, wand outstretched with just one Avada Kedavra between you-know-who and the saviour of the Wizarding World, and says “Hang on guys, just going for a coffee break, BRB xoxo”. That’s what Kindle is asking you to do, to sacrifice your reading experience, your leisure time just because we’re in the New Age of technology. Reading shouldn’t have a time

What do you think? Have your say online at www.studentypical.co.uk/kindle

Photo by Wendell

“It’s time to say goodbye to the spine and hello to the screen” 11

Travel: The Student Guide

DUBLIN:

An Irish Adventure Have a look at my top student travel tips for this charming capital city.

Snaps from the Editor’s Escapades Dublin: The friendliest, most welcoming city I’ve visited, crammed full of endearing Irish charm. And Guinness, lots of Guinness. But being the birth place of that weird burnt flavoured stout is just the tip of what Dublin has to offer, and it is pretty kind on us students too. The Ultimate “Hey look at me! I’m a tourist!” Trip The Hop On Hop Off Sight Seeing Bus: No, it’s not the coolest way to travel, but yes, it will get you where you want to go. It’ll certainly minimise the amount of time you spend emptying the contents of your rucksack to find your overly large tourist map from your “Dublin: Top 10 attractions” guide (remember Joey from Friends getting inside his map trying to explore London?). Its €18 for two days and I was genuinely surprised at how many sights there were to see. It takes you on two different routes, one around the main city and one around the docks, pretty good value for money if you use it as your main form on transport.

“The friendliest, most welcoming city I’ve visited” And unlike the tours in London, Paris and Rome (yes, I’ve unashamedly done them all) you get a live commentary from every jolly bus driver. I would honestly pay the €18 just for the chance to listen to that charming Irish accent and listen to their self-deprecating

jokes. Don’t try and imitate the accent though, it’s just downright awkward. The “I’m guaranteed to get a free drink” Tourist Attraction Before I left for Dublin, I really thought I would give the legendary Guinness Storehouse a miss. I don’t like Guinness, at all; although I probably wouldn’t run through the crowded streets of Dublin yelling such an obscenity. I really didn’t think this attraction would be for me. But to be honest, there’s a reason it has been voted the top attraction to see in the city time and time again. It’s actually really interesting, it’s well set out and packed with surprising facts along the way. Three hours later and we still hadn’t reached the top floor. From food tasting to the history of the company’s advertising, you get a (literal) taste of what the Guinness brand really is. Make it to the fifth floor and you’ll get the chance become a master in the art of pouring the drink itself. Being a highly skilled bar assistant at the one and only Kent Union nightclub, Venue (N.B. the previous statement may be an exaggeration of the truth) obviously meant I didn’t need my pint pouring qualification (or rather I couldn’t be bothered to wait in the queue). But I guess if you haven’t had the pleasure of pouring your first pint, spilling it everywhere and carrying around the luscious odour of “Eau de Beer” all night, then it’d be worth a go. I hear you even get a certificate for all your effort (ooh la-di-da).

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The pinnacle of the trip though, has to be the seventh floor Gravity Bar with 360 degree views of Dublin. And as promised, every ticket to the storehouse includes a free pint of Guinness or a soft drink if you’re under 18 (or can’t handle your ale like me). All in all, a must see attraction. The “I’m trying to be all educated and knowledgeable” Tourist Attraction Perhaps not the happiest hour of my life but a tour around Kilmainham Gaol is my number one attraction and for a student it costs just €2! It felt very much like being in Shawshank Redemption (but as a child, I did want to be an actress, so I guess this is the next best thing). The former prison saw countless leaders of Irish rebellions come and go with many being executed for their crimes. Seeing the cells and the places of execution was really fascinating. Maybe I need to get out more, but I love all the gory historical stuff. The tour guide literally knew everything about the history of the gaol and I’m still in shock that it only cost €2! Definitely worth a visit. The Stereotypical “Act like an Irishman” Night Out The Irish are renowned for their drinking and dancing, with over 1000 bars and restaurants in Dublin alone. If you want to find the hub of city on any given night, head to Temple Bar, a collection of typically Irish

bars and clubs; every single one of them with a live band usually playing some traditional Irish tunes.

“A tour around Kilmainham Gaol is my number one attraction” And you can guarantee there’ll be a raucous gathering of rather tipsy Irish men and women doing some weird jigging and jumping around in front of the band. I’m reliably informed that this is called “Irish Dancing” (Yeah… sure). Just one tip though, if you’re planning to get a little merry, stick to the beers and ales (probably Guinness to be on the safe side). What were essentially two shots of Malibu and a can of coke cost us over €16! Bloody cheek. But they’re just so humble and friendly, how could you argue with an Irishman? The “Other bits and bobs I forgot to mention” If you end up at the docks, stop off and have a quick look at the theatre. As I’ve mentioned before, it;s worth seeing if there are any cut price tickets left for that night. €25 to see War Horse for a seat that would cost you upwards of £60 in London. Bargain! Absolutely incredible play if anyone’s interested. (Watch out for a review in the near future). If it’s shopping you want head to Grafton Street, but (for

ALL THE FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW Exeter to Dublin: 45mins (if your pilot likes to put his foot down, an hour for the responsible ones) STUDENT PRICES: Guinness Storehouse: €13.50 Kilimainham Gaol: €2 Phoenix Park: Free! Hop on Hop off Bus: €15.50 me) even better, go when the shops are closed and the street entertainers come out. There’s a truly amazing atmosphere at night. Or in the day, on the same street, try out afternoon tea at Bewley’s with a view over the shoppers’ hustle and bustle. And for some more cultural beauty, head to the Phoenix Park to see where the President sleeps at night. Pretty impressive house but no matter how long we waited, he didn’t invite us in for a cuppa. Not as friendly as we first thought then. Whatever it is you want to do, Dublin probably has it. All I need now is one of those I love Dublin t-shirts and a stuffed leprechaun to cuddle at night. Irish Adventure complete!

See You Next Week!

Photo by Editor