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6 hours ago
11
You don’t realise until you leave home just how idiosyncratic every family is, and how many of its customs are tacit, invisible, or maintained by someone else. Now you’re among people who emphatically aren’t related to you. How would you have any idea which of your practices were universal, and which common courtesies your upbringing had totally skipped? How do you even know how to keep your own body and soul together without the behind-the-scenes input of parents, who also have peculiarities of their own? Here’s a starter pack on how to function.
Food
The basics
Anything with blood goes at the bottom of the fridge (although fridge-sharing between vegetarians and meat-eaters should be negotiated first thing).
Refrigeration is a game-changing technology but it doesn’t work if you just leave food near the fridge, even for a couple of hours. Likewise, nothing that’s been defrosted should be frozen again.
Don’t put a cooked chicken on a board that hasn’t been washed since it had a raw chicken on it. Likewise, without getting overanxious about it, exercise caution around all raw meat. Don’t cross-contaminate utensils (that is, use the same knife on raw chicken and then salad, without washing it).
Ice doesn’t go off.
Hopefully, you won’t have a dishwasher, as washing-up is a life skill. But if you do, don’t put anything with an electrical plug in it.
Don’t use a wet cloth to protect your hands when you take things out of the oven. Use an oven glove.
The eating bit
You need the following repertoire:
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Something quick that has protein in it and is not toast. Suggestion: an omelette.
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Something that is a full meal, covers protein and vegetables, and can be eaten over several days. Suggestion: bolognese or vegetarian chilli.
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Something that you can scale up to feed two or four without bankrupting yourself or showing off. Suggestion: pesto pasta, but please always add broccoli right at the end – such a small price to pay to not get scurvy.
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Something that you can make for others that is comforting and nobody can take against or be allergic to. Suggestion: risotto.
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Something that you can just pour boiling water over, like a cup of tea, only it’s food. Suggestion: miso soup or soba noodles.
The habit forming
It is actually quite hard to integrate fruit and vegetables into your diet if you’re cooking for yourself but don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. They don’t just magic themselves into food. You should keep a stock of things you can mainline raw while you’re doing something else – carrots, apples, tomatoes, cucumbers.
Everything is edible with the right chilli sauce: harissa, Tabasco, piripiri, sriracha, or for special occasions Hungarian pista or crispy prawn chilli oil. Likewise, pickles: lime pickle, gherkins, jalapeños.
You will probably be about 40 before you can be trusted to spontaneously grate ginger. Pastes in jars or tubes are a cheap alternative: arrive with one garlic and one ginger.
Health
Dr Imogen Bloor, who recently retired as a full-time GP and clinical lead in London, is the source of this expertise.
Before you leave : make sure all your jabs are up to date, principally the new meningitis B vaccine and the five tetanus jabs you should have had during childhood. “Tetanus is incredibly rare, but if you get a wound, you’ll be much less anxious about it,” Bloor says.
If you have an existing health condition, make sure you take enough medication with you so you don’t have to register with a new GP in a panic.
Do register with a GP at your new address, though. Most universities, particularly campus ones, have a student health centre, which is essentially a GP practice but skewed towards a younger population. It will have ancillary services such as counselling and physio.
“In the olden days, everyone had a Reader’s Digest Family Health Guide, and the internet has replaced that,” Bloor says. But the internet isn’t as easy to interpret. “You’re not born with the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.” The NHS symptom checker and patient.info are the wheat. “Common things occur commonly – people latch on to likely cause #63. An 18-year-old with a hoarse voice almost certainly hasn’t got laryngeal cancer.”
If you were at home and something happened, you would ask a parent. So call a parent.
Pharmacists can see and treat a whole range of conditions, from hay fever to urinary tract infections. Calling 111 can be helpful, as they can provide advice and signpost you to appropriate services.
Is it freshers’ flu? “As a general principle, if you’ve got mild symptoms and you take paracetamol and fluids and you rest and things seem to improve, that’s a good sign.”
Or isn’t it freshers’ flu? “If you have a severe headache which isn’t relieved by simple pain relief, or if you’ve got associated symptoms, like loss of balance or confusion or altered consciousness, or you’re vomiting or you feel too unwell to get out of bed, then it is important to seek medical advice.”
Other red flags include: rapid onset, so if you feel a lot worse in a short time; a purpuric rash (one that doesn’t fade when you press on it – the classic meningitis symptom). Bloor remembers vividly from her sepsis awareness training “a number of patients who say, ‘I feel like I’m going to die.’ If you feel that ill, it’s more likely that you are really ill.”
If you get infected hair follicles or a boil on your butt (perianal abscess), don’t be too embarrassed to go to the doctor; it won’t get better on its own. Bloor has seen a lot of young people who depilate their pubes, and boys their chests, and it’s really easy to get an infection there if you don’t clean and exfoliate properly.
You don’t need a GP referral to use a sexual health or family planning clinic – just look up where it is. When you get there, be frank. “You can’t shock a doctor; most doctors have seen most things. It’s human and natural to feel shy or embarrassed but you’ve got to try not to worry about that.”
If you think you might be so drunk you have to go to A&E, you’re probably lucid enough that you’ll be fine. But if a friend is so drunk that they’ve lost consciousness, are vomiting uncontrollably, or have banged their head, take them to A&E. “There is a small risk of a subdural haematoma [bleeding around the brain] without knowing.”
Diarrhoea only, you’ll most likely be fine within 48 hours. Some stomach bugs can cause blood in your poo, but that’s unusual and you should consult a doctor. Eat bland, dry food and drink flavoured fluids (squash, stock) to replace salts and sugar, not just water. Persistent vomiting is riskier and you shouldn’t eat for 24 hours, stick with the flavoured fluids (little sips but often), but seek medical advice if the vomiting doesn’t settle or you can’t keep any fluids down. Be vigilant with hand hygiene and don’t prepare food for other people until you’re completely better.
On injuries – is it broken? “Seek help if it’s very swollen, or painful to weight-bear, and doesn’t settle with ice compression.”
Animal bites? “Especially if they’re penetrating rather than just a scratch, you should contact a GP promptly as they usually need prophylactic antibiotics.”
Bloor’s most important advice of all, in my opinion: “Speaking both as a doctor and a human being, I would never discourage someone from contacting their GP if they’re worried. Young people are on a journey of learning and understanding self-management, and unless they’ve got someone to sense check against, they won’t know. Stoicism is fine but it can be dangerous.”
Cleaning
Wash dark colours separately from light ones, and whites separately from both – all colours can go in the same dryer, however.
Read the labels – they mean something.
If in doubt about what temperature to wash at, most modern washing powders do a good enough job on a cold wash (it’s often a snowflake symbol).
Hang up your towels to dry (spread out flat) after a shower. Then you can use them more than once.
Don’t use other people’s towels – they don’t like it.
Wash your bedding every two weeks. Realistically, every month is fine, unless you’re entertaining frequently, in which case, every week.
If you leave your washing in the machine too long (say for the entire day), it takes on a weird mouldy smell, and people don’t like that.
Never be the person who thinks someone else in the accommodation is going to do their washing-up. It’s such a dick move.
If you leave a toilet with any visible sign that you’ve been there, someone will be taking a picture of that and putting it in a WhatsApp group that you’re not in.
Interiors
Whatever you’ve got to put on your wall, you need seven times as many things. Every prison room you’ve seen on TV, that’s what a university room is like.
If you’re going to have plants, water them, otherwise you’ll look like a weirdo.
Take an eye mask; there is always something wrong with the curtains.
You may take this as your first opportunity to be as messy as you like, and that is your right, but make a little area where you always keep vital things – you are now the only person who has your keys.
Does anyone know where you’re going and what time you think you’ll be back? Don’t get too hung up on it, but it’s good if someone has a vague idea.
Nobody knows you well enough to have taken against you. So if everyone’s going to a thing and you’re not sure if you’re invited, just say, “Am I allowed to come to this thing?”
You’re going to meet a lot of people who aren’t like you, haven’t grown up in a nearby street, don’t have the same set of references, don’t have the same associations. Try to accentuate the positives – they haven’t brought their gun with them – and don’t overreact.
You might join a lot of clubs and societies trying to find your tribe, and get rapidly disillusioned, because it’s not a very solid basis for commonality, “both thinking you might like Irish dancing”. Or maybe it is! Just don’t panic, is the point.
Friendships are very intense in a closed environment – say, if you only socialise with people on your course, or in your halls. It’s easy to lose perspective. Leave a bit of space and time for unconnected others, friends from school, weird library people.
