Just #DurhamThings
November 05, 2016
Somehow it's already November and I'm well into Michaelmas term, as is starkly evident by the number of assignments that are suddenly being thrown my way. Having said that uni is going pretty well: this year is so much more interesting in terms of what modules I'm taking so I'm actually motivated to do all the reading (or at least as much as I can get through), and as a result I'm enjoying it a lot more and managing to keep up with things a bit better.
Being back in Durham is also really lovely, I feel like it's definitely becoming 'my' city but I'm still discovering new things every day. For instance I'm a big fan of the bus system - I'd never used it until the beginning of this term but now I spend a lot of time pootling back and forth across the city and looking wistfully out of the window. On one of these trips the other day I started mentally listing some funny little idosyncracies of student life in Durham so I thought I'd share them here - so at risk of sounding like a Buzzfeed article, here are some things that anyone who goes to Durham will be all to familiar with:
- Feeling your spirits lift when you see the cathedral rising over the skyline
- Risking your life crossing Stockton Road on the red man when you're late to a lecture
- Knowing you have to hate on Castle and Hatfield but not quite knowing why
- Forgetting to factor in hill slope and incline when planning your walking route
- Thanking your lucky stars your department isn't based in Stockton
- Having to walk single file along Church Street or else risk having a limb removed by the X12
- Trying (and failing) to convince people that Doxbridge is a thing
- Dressing up on a night out and knowing full well you look like a local
- Not believing Hilde-Bede exists until you have to walk past it every day in second year
- Avoiding North Road after dark if at all possible
- Never knowing which way to go to get to the Calman café when you enter the building
- Having to explain college families to non-Durham people
- The horror of knowing you could end up living in Gilesgate unless you get housing sorted asap
- The even bigger horror of potentially living in Dragonville
- Avoiding going up to the cathedral tower or else risk not getting your degree
- Knowing that whatever happens, college is somewhere you'll always feel at home
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