Blog: Hello. My name is Holly. I am 20 years old, and I’m currently studying English Literature and Language at the University of Liverpool. Yes, I am a student, but hear me out…

I am here to offer a rare and wonderful insight, beyond the tabloid statistics, into that most misunderstood of creatures: the student – its eating practices and social patterns, its habitat and financial survival.

With the dramatic increase of university fees next year, are we facing the decline and perhaps even endangerment of this unique species?

What you take with you to university is your upbringing and your schooling. It’s frightening how much I see myself, once left to my own devices and having overcome the initial euphoria of freedom, becoming more and more like my mother! The irrepressible urge to disinfect anything vaguely unsavoury-looking and to have everything “just so” in piles (no mean feat, let me tell you, in the student house.)

Every student will have their own horror stories when it comes to housing and, frankly, I wouldn’t be without them. There is no better way than to be thrown in at the deep end and be hit by the ice-cold realisation of how much your parents did for you, the cost of living and eventually, god-willing, what it is to be self-sufficient.

A strict adherence to the Law of Sod dictates that, with a property company that completely shuts its doors Friday to Sunday, our heating will inevitably turn itself off on a Friday afternoon with an engineer thus unavailable ‘til Monday. I recall wintry scenes of us all gathered round the kitchen stove, breath in the air, resplendent in every layer it is conceivable to wrap, mould and heap around the human body!

The picture is completed with snails and mice in the lounge and a shower I would probably hesitate to wash my dog in! My best friend considers it a blessing that she’s virtually blind without her glasses when she’s in that cubicle of toe-squirming contagion. My best advice? – just don’t touch the sides! But that’s what you get when you move into a house previously occupied by five boys. Seriously, though, for the price and the area, one has to be realistic: it’s close to the uni, it’s within walking distance of the supermarkets and bus stops and, most importantly, you’re a dirt poor student!

And I’ll thank you to add that not all of us survive thanks to Heinz and Birds Eye. Some of us develop into quite decent cooks; I’ve heard tell of roast dinners with all the trimmings, homemade lasagne and Thai chicken curries in one house alone! And whilst my humble vegetarian menu might not constitute a “real meal” to many red-blooded students, it works well for me and my friend’s budget and lifestyle, and we’ve learnt to adapt to make sure we get enough iron and protein in our diet.

Fortunately my upbringing and a very level-headed flatmate has meant I’ve been thriftier that most but, trust me, it hasn’t always been like that. I stumbled into the red even before I went to uni on a debit card with no overdraft facility and I decided, after that, I wasn’t going there again if I could help it!

Supermarkets sure don’t make it easy for us students to be healthy though; with endless deals on pizza and frozen chips, packets of noodles for nine, yes NINE, pence but rock-hard avocadoes for a £1 a go! In Fresher’s Week, that most hallowed of all occasions in the student calendar, I heard tell of one youngster spending SIX HUNDRED POUNDS on revelling alone. Not, I might add, the uniform experience.

I could bore you with the emblematic image of student depravity – walk the streets of any university campus in the early hours and you can take in the sight for yourself; half-clothed, bleary-eyed barely evolved mammals retreating out of the approaching sunlight and into each other’s beds, ear drums buzzing with the amplitude of the night.

Sure we are those things. We are, after all, the anarchic youth.

But we can astonish you by being dynamic and enthusiastic scholars as well.

Broken Britain hasn’t made cuts to passion and drive. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. It’s there still. The library is a constant hub of activity and academic appetite. You wouldn’t be surprised, come exam time, to find exhausted scholars slumped against a text book throughout the night and into the morning because most of us know the value of what we’re doing and why we’re here. We want to come out of it by the end with something to prove.

The thing is, yes, fees are going up to £9,000 next year and, yes, no one should lightly undertake the gravity of such debt. But, for what it’s worth, I don’t believe it should stop anyone having an education or, furthermore, the invaluable university experience.

The amount will still be covered by the student loan, where and when it’s needed, and if there is ever such a thing as “good debt,” this is it. We will never be hounded for the sum and we will automatically pay it back in realistic amounts only once we’re earning over a certain threshold.

If we don’t repay it after 30 years, the debt is cleared anyway. Some won’t and never will learn to budget but most will, even if it takes a hair-raising plunge into the overdraft every so often.

But whoever said growing up would be easy? Never before or again will you have the opportunity to embrace such a diversity of people and experiences.

The only really dark turn in my tale is the big F-word; the Future. For those of us taking less “instantly vocational subjects” shall we say, a degree is not always enough and many of this year’s graduates will pursue further education or extra-curricular experiences in order to ensure their CV survives beyond the first glance. Others will turn to any old job in order to stay afloat. Perhaps the jobs are still out there, but they’ve rarely been more competitive.

It’ll take determination, hard work and energy. Perhaps it’s no bad thing.

Holly Dodd