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What is wrong with all my hallmates??

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10:09 / 03.12.03

Are there any people around who are into their studies, pin? I was lucky enough to meet a few people like me that way, people who got a bit passionate about things - I was always surprised the way that the rest of 'em reacted to interesting academic work. Most sulked and moaned as if they were still in the sixth form, and were all too socially retarded and shy to actually take part in debates. Twats. Unlike Anna, I did have a great time though.

10:13 / 03.12.03

I mean, how many queerish half-Scots do you run into?

*Raises hand*

(Except I make a rubbish half-Scot. And a pretty rubbish half-English person, too. And there's perhaps too much queer, too little -ish, so I probably don't count in that respect, either.)

Incidentally, I think this thread title and abstract deserve a nomination for best ever.

... And I think "Tolerance of Intolerance" might make a nice little Head Shop topic...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:20 / 03.12.03

Bed Head has it right when ze says: Pin. Whatever you do, don’t live with your friends next year. Definitely don’t even think of living with your girlfriend. These people are too important to you to be eroded by the continual arguments and politicking that go with sharing a fridge/tv/bills/living room.

Having just begun being spoken to by my flatmate/best friend again after a frosty (to say the least) couple of days... (okay, so much of the argument was actually MY fault, but again... I don't want my faults to alienate me from my friends) I'm inclined to agree.

Normally, of course, I'd say that was bollocks. (Putting up with shit is one of my most annoying habits.)

Good luck anyway, pinster- don't let the fuckers get to you. Half of 'em are probably putting it on to fit in anyway.

Students, eh? Never realised how much I hated 'em until I went to university with 'em. (hold on a minute...)

11:29 / 03.12.03

Had this problem myself in my first year in Uni.

The house of 10 I was put in was mainly made up of second year students with five first years; me, the (fairly hard-line) head of the Christian Society, two lads who became friends on the first night there and then didn't really speak to anyone else in the house, and a guy who had a breakdown and left in the third month of term.

Of the second years, there was one guy who I saw leave his room just twice in the whole year, and four extremely hard-line Muslims, who used to spend their days putting leaflets about al Muhajiroun, Hizb ut Tahir, "Why Gays Should be Killed" and the like under our doors, disappearing and re-appearing at strange hours, and arguing about the Qur'an in the kitchen (the last one I didn't mind that much as I actually found listening to it quite interesting; the second one I didn't like because it kept waking me up; the first I was frankly very freaked out by.)

I'd like to say that I spent most of my time arguing with both the head of the Christian society and the Muslims and attacking their prejudices, the way they viewed gay people, women, and others, but I rarely did.

When asked what I thought I wouldn't lie, and I would voice opinions or do things that these people didn't like - indeed, just going for a pint after a lecture would be seen as disgusting by the Muslim guys, something they told me more than once, and frowned on by the head of the Christian society - but I didn't gear up for a full-on verbal assault on them at any point. Instead, I went next door, found some more like-minded people there, and started hanging round with them; and most of the time in my house, I just kept my head down. Possibly this was wrong of me, and I should have confronted them further: I do sometimes think I should have done. But I didn't.

It is a pain having to share living space with people who you disagree with, but it can be done. Perhaps the best advice I could give, if you don't want to rock the boat, is just to never actually lie about yourself or your beliefs; by all means, don't weigh into every argument, but don't hide who you are to fit either. And no, this certainly isn't anything to do with you, _pin.

15:30 / 03.12.03

Hey, not all Isle of Wighters are queerish half Poles you know, I can't stand 'em meself, they never bother to integrate, we had one in our village, only one mind...
_pin, it may be because you're in Soton. Hang out with JtB and Elseware and the lads and lasses, they'll bitch about students with you all day

15:55 / 03.12.03

There are very few people in this world it's actually worth speaking to

About 1 in 20, I've heard.

You'll be all right, pin. In just a little while you'll wonder why you ever gave a shit. Maybe I'm a counterrevolutionary or something, I don't think you have any obligation to educate these yutzes. Unless they have redeeming qualities you haven't mentioned, it just doesn't need to be your problem.

In my first year of college, I was surrounded by people who were so offensively tolerant that I was shunned for not wanting to sleep with ugly people. Shunned! I was oppressing them or something, but I never really worked out how their ugliness was my fault.

22:01 / 03.12.03

It's here that I feel the need to point out that in my first year of uni I found my hallmates all so instantly obnoxious that I spent the entire year systematically avoiding any contact with them.

They must have thought I was thoroughly fucked up - "I mean we only see him about once a month.. he eats on his own.. and you should here the noise coming from his room at all hours of the day and night.."

Thankfully though I made my own friends via the kind of routes which offered a slightly better likelyhood of meeting likeminded people than pure chance.. so it was ok.

But then I'm only a not-very-queer-at-all-really quarter-Latvian, so many you've got things worse..

Oh, and I shall also register my complete agreement with Illmatic and Tryphena's assessments of the general shit-ness of students. It sort of reminds me of that bit in If.. "And how are the juniors?" "On the whole.. dull." "oh dear." To not put too finer point on it, it's a matter of beating through the knobheads with a big stick in search of the few worthwhile human beings..

23:26 / 03.12.03

I'm living my final year at UCL at the moment. Reflecting back on halls I find myself agreeing with most said already. I just want to suggest that some people may be unlike you through conditioning, habit and instinct, rather than through actual thought.
This happens quite often I think.
So it might be worth chatting to people you like in spite of their social and political behaviour, to see if they still have an open mind. I've had some major successes and made some (hopefully) lasting friendships out of people who I wouldn't have talked twice to in the first few weeks. I guess you knew this already, so my piece of unique advice is: stay clear of debating society members as they tend to treat every issue as a game and are the least flexible of anyone. It's important to remember that while life may be a game, you aren't allowed to play with other peoples' hands. The formal discussion lends itself to people who can afford to treat serious issues as a game, and discourages those who like to change minds whether their own or others'.
I really don't think that most students are shit - that's limiting someone's potential in your mind before you have the chance to decide for yourself. Be optimistic and you'll have a better effect on people, and make more friends. If being optimistic, tolerant and educational doesn't work, avoid or hit with plank.
Best of luck!
-l

11:14 / 04.12.03

Just watch them and see what they do.

My campus is one of the most right-wing in the country - I'd put money on it - most of the exec is pro - fees and there's currently a pretty major lobby that our SU should break away from the NUS and become completely privatised... (this has me rolling my eyes in horror). They hate everybody except their little WASPie selves but they have much to learn.

It may take time but you'll meet people who you can really relax with - it didn't happen for me til second year, - I spent my first year walking around in a state of sheer paranoia and feeling like a fraud. Then in my second year it eased up quite a lot - we could choose more specific classes, and my groups were really small and I found that actually, I love the people in my seminars to bits and we hang about together more than people I know from other places (with the odd exception), even if we disagree we understand enough about each other to appreciate how those opinions came about but it did take a really long time. We laugh at the idiot rightists together...

.

12:29 / 04.12.03

A case study from when I was at uni:

In my first year, when I was in halls, I actually had to share a room. And bizarrely I was put in a room with someone who was so utterly opposite to me (or at least me aged 18) in every regard that I could only imagine that it was some sort of practical joke. He was an extremely hardcore christian, so much of a tory-boy that he actually worked for a tory politician in his spare time (a front bencher at that) -I mean he had quotes from Thatcher framed on the wall- and worst of all he was the most hate-filled homophobe I've ever met. I soon got tired of the arguments, so just started to humour him instead.

Well anyway, to cut a long story short, by the end of the year he had bought his first ever pair of trainers, drunk his first pint, and gone out clubbing.

By half-way through year 2, he came out, started exploring the gay scene, and just generally became more easy-going.

Now, some five or six years later, and he's still one of my good friends.

No star here laces

13:34 / 04.12.03

I say fuck them all.

Personally, my experience of university, having lived 3 years in the equivalent of halls, is that in every hall there is one decent person. The rest aren't worth bothering with. Make friends with the one person and have them as an ally. Play music loud, take industrial quantities of drugs, have weird, pretty people round your room all the time and be disdainful and/or oblivious to your neighbours at all times.

Your only actual contact with them will be making them look foolish in class and scrumpling up the pissy notes they leave on your door and chucking them in the bin.

They will all gossip about you, not be your friend, but will be too awed or intimidated to actually give you any hassle.

And, yo, even if they do, the worst they will do is 'tell' on you, and as we all know from school, that don't mean shit. There is nothing your university or your hallmates can feasibly do to you to make your life painful, so fuck them.

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