We learn a fair bit about life from the telly. Especially back in our tragically tormented and highly impressionable teenage years (don’t deny it, we were all there). It was one thing to actively seek advice from another human or, heaven forbid, one of those grown-up people who actually have IRL experience of the things we hadn’t yet gone through, but why would you bother with that when you could just see how it all plays out on the box?
The thing is though, while many of our favourite sitcoms got lots of things right (like, the Blair Waldorf style headbands are better left at high school and you should probably make sure you’re actually on a break before you go ahead and sleep with someone else) there’s plenty TV didn’t properly prepare us for. Namely, university.
Turns out getting a degree doesn’t quite go the way 13 neatly packaged 48-minute episodes suggests.
Mums don’t visit that often. Not even the cool ones
Sure, you talk on the phone a lot for the first couple of weeks as you settle into your new home away from home. Your mum might even stop buy on special occasions like birthdays or if you’re deserving of a lift home. But parents really don’t set foot on campus anywhere near as frequently as Lorelai Gilmore did. And that’s not a bad thing, kids.
University reps aren’t all disconcertingly eccentric
Remember the episode of Skins ( the second series with the first cast. You know, when it was still good) when Tony goes for an interview at a university while recovering from his accident? It’s actually quite an emotional, thought-provoking episode but it’s punctuated by Polly and Derek, the really irritating, faux-excitable campus guides who are enough to put anyone off a tour. Real life university guides and reps aren’t all as unbearable as these guys are. And they’ll probably not give two shits if you decide to go for a swim with a full suit on.
Switching rooms in halls is pretty much impossible
Not even in TV world, only in the Gossip Girl world could someone (Georgina) strut over to the admissions desk, ask to bunk with someone else (Blair) and it magically happen without so much of a xoxo. We’re talking weeks of emailing back and forth with the accommodation office and negotiating with other students who probably can’t be assed to switch rooms.
Admissions interviews don’t tend to hang in the balance of a Rubix cube
I don’t know how they do things in Bel Air, but I’ve never heard of anyone on this side of the pond rocking up to a university interview, telling the interviewer that they’re not actually interested in going to university at all, everyone being really settled on the fact that it's not going to happen, only for the train crash of a conversation to be turned on its head on account of the stupid interviewee solving a fucking Rubik's cube. But of course, that's how Will got in.
No one in their right mind would turn down Other Realm University
Imagine if Harry Potter turned down Hogwarts? That’s all I’m saying. Sorry, Sabrina. Josh was great and all, but you made the wrong choice.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.