Ask Auntie Maddy: I’ve been on a bender and I’m broke
Fear not, you poor little things, Auntie Maddy is here to soothe your sorrows and alleviate your anxieties…
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I’m a fresher. I’ve already spent my entire student loan for this term and college bill is next week. What do I do?
There comes a time in every student’s life when one contemplates selling pictures of their feet on the internet in exchange for money, or at the very least, Tesco Clubcard vouchers, but sadly it appears that yours has reared its ugly head a little too soon. If I’m honest, I’m not even that surprised. With consumer culture all the rage these days, the youth want to live hard and fast, grabbing life by the freshly-dripped monogrammed college puffer and basking in all the revelry of life at university. We want the world, and we want it now! The only question is, what the hell did you spend it all on? A week-long bender in the Revs shisha area, splashing the cash to impress the 40 year old men in suits who dwell there constantly yet suspiciously seem in no way to be affiliated with any of the club or the students? Fine dining at Gardies for every meal, swigging back bottles of the warm rosé with Greta? A particularly rough night on the fruit machines in Spoons? Whatever you’ve managed to squander your money on in the week or so since most student loans dropped, the past is the past. The present, as some would say, is a gift, and your sole concern now should be paying for your place to live. There are multiple options available to you at this point in time. One would be the aforementioned feet hustle, but for those among us who don’t want to sell their sole, or who simply can’t fulfil its sky-high beauty standards, I urge you, don’t despair - there’s a whole market of sixth formers’ personal statements to be written, and like hell they’re going to do it themselves. Financial advice often advocates you visit the bank of mum and dad, but nobody said it had to be yours! With all the money you make, you’ll be paying for a room and another wild weekend on the Spoons-Revs-Gardies circuit before you know it. Just next time, remember to invite me!
I did a massive fart in the communal corridor and all my flatmates, who i’ve only met twice, were round the corner, and laughed at me. Embarrassing. What to do now?
I’m not too sure how I’m supposed to feel about the sheer volume of bowel-themed dilemmas being sent to this column. Having only just recovered from last issue’s blocked toilet crisis, having to reckon with yet more tummy troubles has left me rather despondent about the current state of the Cambridge University’s collective GI tract. Seriously, guys, has nobody heard of kombucha? However, in your case the damage has already been done. Realistically, your only alternative to wallowing in despair (and/or hotboxing your room in a cloud of your own sulphurous gases) is to own it, and perhaps - if you’re brave enough - profit from it. Thank the powers that be for modern-day side-hustle culture - never before has it been so easy to bottle and sell your own homemade eau de par-bum as it is today on some obscure corner of the internet, and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll make it rich enough that you can simply buy new flatmates, nevermind what yesterday’s corridor might have seen (or smelt). Still, that may take a while. As I’m writing this, Etsy’s share price is currently tanking faster than a first-year English student’s lecture attendance in second-week Michaelmas. As excruciating as it sounds, you may just have to embrace the cringe. Envision yourself as the new fool of the flat, put on God’s green earth not to impress, but to entertain. There may be a certain shame in the metaphorical jingling of the court jester’s hat across the corridor as you approach them and insist that the fart was, of course, 100% intentional and 100% done for comic effect the entire time, but if it’s louder than the original stinky sin, I’d count that as a small (if somewhat undignified) victory.
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