It's time to come clean, I am an adult. I work at a desk all day, my most consistent emotion is self-loathing, and I don't feel uncomfortable wearing brown shoes with jeans - perhaps the most irrefutable test there is.
Slowly over the past three years the Jäger bombs have dried up. On nights out younger clubbers have started looking at me like I'm a substitute Geography teacher. I got a gut. Had to join the gym. And referring to myself as a 'graduate' has become increasingly ridiculous.
There might be a modern tendency to treat anybody under the ages of 30 as a 'young person', but once we get a full-time job we're just kidding ourselves. We might not all be married with kids like our parents, but there's no getting past it - I am an adult. And, I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but if you're no longer in education, so are you.
But that's okay, there are plenty of benefits to not being a student. Not having to live in a messy six-person house, not having to do everything on the cheap, the structure, the routine and the self-reliance. But I'd be kidding myself if I said I didn't miss having an excuse for opening a fifth can of Stella on a Tuesday night.
So with Freshers' Week going on in Manchester, TheLADbible decided to send me out to see what it's like to do it as a 'grown-up' - reliving the banter, the chunder and the Sambuca - through mature eyes.
PRE-DRINKS
Once you get a salary respectable enough to buy that doesn't taste like it was brewed-up in the off-licence owner's bathtub, you don't really do pre-drinks anymore - why mess up your house when you can mess up a bar? But every student knows drinking before you go out is how you keep it on the cheap.
Sadly, unlike the students, I have a job. And because banter doesn't clock off at 6pm I had to work a late-shift in the office, until 10pm, AKA prime pre-drink time.
As getting pissed at work tends to lead to typos and bad grammar, we don't usually drink in the office. But - as it was freshers' - I brought some vodka into the office, and kept it low-key by drinking from a mug. I also dug out a pack of cards to pre-drink with.
One of the things about getting older is that the number of mates you go out with tends to shrink. At University going out in a group of 20 is standard, whereas post-uni you're lucky to tempt a couple of them away from a Friday night watching 8 Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
Although I tried to convince pretty much everyone in the office / my contact list to come out with me, none of them fancied it because, being in their mid-20s, being rammed into a freshers event was no longer their thing. That, and the idea of me having to go solo into a warehouse of people who don't remember SM:TV Live was hilarious to them.
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Still, it was alright getting pissed on my own in the office and, by the time it reached 10pm I was pretty tanked-up. But the realisation was dawning on me that I was off to Sankey's for a freshers' night and, although I was pissed, I was in no way pissed enough.
The prospect of being alone in a club full of students was dawning on me. I remember what it's like to meet a non-student as a student at a club; they're nearly always some sleaze with their shirt buttoned down to their crotch, who stands on the dancefloor ogling the girls' tits. I was worried about being seen as this guy, so I headed to a nearby bar - where my colleague and aspiring beauty blogger Josh Teal was drinking - to drink until the anxiety passed.
Here's what he made of the situation: "Judging by the look on Dawson's face, anyone would think he was going to Syria and not Sankey's. I knew he wasn't exactly looking forward to fist-pumping in his £2 raincoat but this was different. He was farting like nobody's business and spent such a stint in the toilet you could have watched the entire Director's Cut of Avatar twice, but I just put it down to nerves.
"After we left the pub it occurred to me that he was still hungover from a night out he'd been on the day before. And when he's hungover, hairs of the dog usually make him chunder.
"I asked him where he fancied going next and his reply was so terse and phlegmy I thought he was speaking Klingon. I knew exactly what was gonna happen so I got my phone at the ready and captured this picture, for the benefit of you all. He was fine right after it."
I've chosen to change it into black and white so it looks more like a gritty piece in a student art project on #BrokenBritain. However, the grim reality of that photo was me - like so many Freshers across the country - a bottle of vodka downed, throwing up a Morrison's meal deal I'd had two hours earlier in the city's Northern Quarter with a smoking area of people looking on.
I'd love to say it was a 'tactical chunder', but it wasn't. My trainers needed cleaning. My mouth tasted like vomit. But it was 1am. More importantly, it was time to hit the club.
THE NIGHT OUT
I'm not averse to Grime, so I had no qualms about going to Sankey's King Original - Footsie, P Money, Cut La Teef, Spooky event.
But Freshers' isn't really about the music, is it? It's about loads of people ramming themselves into as small a space as possible to get as pissed as possible. Half-cut cattle entering a slaughter house of noise and dance, on the promise of a good time.
To be fair, as I'd turned up so late - half-an-hour before last entry - I at least didn't have to queue up and listen to middle-class teenagers talk about their last k-hole.
I gave the bouncers a nod, passed over my ID and mumbled a few buzzwords about being a journalist so I wouldn't look like Rolf Harris turning up on an episode of Super Sweet 16.
After awkwardly throwing some shapes and making eye contact with a few people whose jaws were in a different postcode, I decided it was time to head to the smoking area to try and get a repertoire going with the city's newbies.
Sankey's smoking area is a courtyard that can out-measure the capacity inside. Pretending to need a lighter, I lent a clipper from some business student called Ryan who was safe enough to introduce me to his mates.
What do you say as a man who thinks Pete Doherty is still relevant? This was no time to be snobby or distant, so I figured my best bet was to just say 'Warehouse Project' and 'Jamie XX' a lot. Next thing I knew I was propped up at the bar buying a round of Sambucas. We clinked, we necked, we shuffled, we smoked.
They kept talking about their holidays to south east Asia and inter-railing though Europe, I've not being travelling much myself so I just had to nod along and hope they didn't notice.
Not wanting to squander what I had going with them, I never admitted I was a journo. From what I remember, I just made up some spiel about me knowing one of 'the sound guys'. Though I didn't lie about being a graduate. They weren't stupid. One girl called Ella said I looked 'about 21 or younger' but that I was also 'obviously older'. What's interesting is that I'd forgotten that students, particularly freshers, are on this weird, constant pursuit to impress. They don't yet know the pleasures of being in your mid-twenties and relaxing over a casual pint. Students are always 'on' in these scenarios. They're loud and brash and dumb, but hilarious.
They were probably surprised by the fact that I wasn't wagging my proverbial dick all over their face and telling them how I almost overdosed at Outlook over summer, but with getting older comes a kind of self-assurance. I felt like I was on vacation, and I didn't have anyone to impress.
I tried getting a group 'look at us we're about to have a shot!' picture but it turns out smashing hard liqour like it's the age of Prohibition renders you a complete fuckwit when it comes to even turning on a phone let alone structuring any sort of angle - so all I have on my phone is a load of blurry videos of the MCs and crowd.
Disbanding myself from the students for a bit, I went to take a moment in the toilet only to find they'd been closed because some dirty fucker had taken a shit on the floor. On reflection this was probably the perfect metaphor for the beginning of university; you're out there without parental supervision, you realise all the growing up you've been forced to do was bullshit. You're your own person and you kind-of revert to a child-like state because you realise you can do what the hell you want.
Can I blast music as loud I want in my box-sized room? Fuck, I actually can. Can I get as pissed as I want, without any consequences. Go on then. Can I shit on the floor of the biggest club in the north of England? Hell yeah.
After finally having a piss, I met back up with Ryan and the rest of them and just got into the music. Forgetting I was working the weekend shift in the morning, at some point the Freshers' vibe overtook me and I didn't feel ridiculous that I was being twerked on by a girl I barely knew. I just got into it under the laser quest arena lighting. But as much as it sounds harsh, there was no chance I was going back to a single-bed in halls.
It was getting on for five o'clock, I had work in the morning and, as much as I wanted to take the student night bus, I ended up getting an Uber. I can't remember much, but let's just say I was pretty fucked.
NEXT MORNING
The entire night out in its entirety
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My alarm was set for 8.30am, but I woke up at 10.10am, needing to vomit and knowing I only had 20 minutes to get to work. With an audible "shit, shit shit" I called a taxi, put on some clothes and got into the office half-an-hour late.
Obviously, the day at work was shit. Where as everyone else who'd been out probably hadn't woken up yet, here I was writing content for the lads through a banging headache. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the night, but going out is a lot more fun when you've no responsibilities in the morning.
Sure, I'm yet to buy a pair of bootcut jeans, but maybe that's the worst thing about adulthood. It's not that our tastes become our fathers, it's that we keep the same tastes as we've always had at the same time that the people younger than us start to speak a different language. Youth culture is a constantly evolving process and, as you get into your late-20s, it slowly starts to pass you by, because keeping up with trends stops being as important. Responsibility means we stop being able to do everything we used to do.
Students get a lot of shit and, yeah, they can be pretty annoying. But I think, really, people are hating on a mind-set they've outgrown and can't understand. A naivety they wish they still had. Moments in the past they can no longer remember. A part of themselves they've lost touch with.
Sure, doing a fresher's night as a student wasn't as fun as it might have been 7 years ago. But, really, that was all on me.
Featured Image Credit:Topics: student, Manchester