In Which everyone feels secretly a little bit smug

It's wonderful thing to be at uni for the first day of the year. Wonderful in that very special, hectic, the-queue-for-the-computers-is-siddenly-hours-long sort of way. Today is the very first day of uni ever at all for hundreds of tiny first years, many of whom (most of whom?) genuinely believe themselves to be actual people despite having demostrably been born in the nineties.

This makes them very excited, in that nervous sort of way where you have to pretend desperately to be totally cool and comfortable and down with everything despite not actually knowing what building you're standing in. So that makes them all very pleased with themselves, in between torrents of hyperventilation in hidden corners.

Similarly, the second years suddenly feel themselves to be filled with worldly wisdom; they know exactly where Manning is, and even if they're not actually quite sure which building the Marjorie Oldfield Lecture Theatre is in, they certainly feel that they trump every obvious fresher they see.

Where it gets interesting is the 3rd years, way laid back, and the biggest people on campus, apparently unaware that many people have degrees that go for longer than a basic 3-year span. Their superiority is only marred by the fact that those of us who've been around even longer remember them as Ickle Firsties.

The tragedy, though, is that even now (and this is my 8th year), one still feels a bit that way. Or I do. I know I oughtn't, but I keep catching myself feeling smug about how at home I am, and thinking of all the undergrads as "little". I didn't actually notice this until my On-The-Ball Friend James showed me the earnest and young-reading blog of a first year medical student. I'm pretty sure that last year I was swanning around going "I'm in 7th year, bitches, I'm so all over this uni", but reading the writings of anyone who is that excited to have gone to a clinical day puts my erstwhile assurance into sharp perspective; I may have known where the Bosch building was, but I really did have very little idea about a bunch of stuff. On the upside, at least this year I've noticed. I know that I know barely more than the whippersnappers who are excited to learn that the Vestibular Canals are vital in balance, I remember practically nothing of the things they're learning at the moment, so I guess I ought to get down and get humble.

But obviously not as humble as anyone who was born in the 90s, because really, isn't it just as important not to get carried away?