Students Guide to College Romance

3rd Sep 2014

It’s just a few short weeks since leaving-certers all around the country received confirmation that they have been lucky enough to get a college course in Cork and finally have an excuse to leave their non-Cork counties. Equally fortunate local students were informed that they won’t have to leave their dear county after all. Lucky them.  

The People’s Republic of Cork bestows a sincere welcome to young students from inferior counties to Leeside – here you will learn how it’s really done. We’ll leave the education bit to the pros but allow us to proffer some advice on the stuff you’re actually interested in.

You’re still young so your choice of pub in Cork needs no more than two basic criteria. Firstly, that the price of drink is the lowest possible and secondly that there are members of the opposite sex there of a similar age. After this it doesn’t matter if the toilet upstairs is dripping down through the floor boards and into your pint or the barman looks like he has committed a string of gruesome murders - what counts is that you’re not in that fancy place up the street with the nice seating, pleasant smell, selection of craft beers and friendly bar staff paying an extra 20 cent for each pint.
 

Drink and girls. Everything a man could want.

Particularly for those coming from same-sex schools the sudden introduction of such colossal numbers of the opposite sex is terrifyingly exciting. While slushy teen-novels and Aussie soap operas may suggest that post-teen college romance is the stuff of sweet dreams where The One walks right up to you after your very first class and says “hey, would you like to catch a movie tonight?” and you live happily ever after, the reality for college students in Ireland is a little less straight forward.

99% of relationships between students start between 1am and 2am in the city’s student clubs usually after being pressed up against someone at a last-call bar counter squeeze or in the loud bedlam of the coat queue when the DJ stops.

Quite often no verbal communication is required prior to a coat-queue snog – just the bleary eyed acceptance “you’ll do” face before the fluorescent right-folks-please lighting reveals a little too much and you’re both happy to call it a one-all draw, collect a valuable league point and go your separate ways.
 

Never snog a fattie when she's hungry

In fact, for the same reason many student ‘relationships’ also end in that hazy hour of runny mascara, snivelling noses buried in tissues and desperate just-to-get-you-back snogs in plain sight of the breaker-upper. When it comes to college romances that 1-2am slot is rush hour and panic stations rolled into one.

Then it’s down a stairs past the ushering black coats and crackling walkie-talkies to the cold chaotic streets and the shouty swirly hoards and its choppy sea of deafening issues: lost friends; lost mobiles; lost coats; lost inhibitions. Taxis line up like empty lifeboats offering sanctuary from that half-two sinking feeling but if your romance journal is still empty then it might pay to go down with the ship and find your Kate Winslet or Leonardo di Caprio in debris of The Sea of Drunk and Disorderly at The Fountain on Grand Parade.

No need to ball home cos you haven’t had the one too many, right? Sure, you’re grand, aren’tcha?
 

Even in your youthful experimentation with alcohol you will learn the power of the Irish drinkers’ self-conviction and its accompanying moral authority – there’s always someone more drunk than you to look down on: at least you’re not as bad as her and her eyes pointed different directions and the two friends holding her up, the skirt half way up her back and her roaring like a hyena in a thick north Munster-somewhere accent about something nobody can or wants to understand. At least you’re not that bad.
 

With the terror of impending sobriety and a blank scorecard Cork’s chippers and kebab shops become Last Chance Saloon – the options will be limited. Two girls in Clare jerseys firing chips at each others mouths or three big-boned girls in Tipperary jerseys smearing burger bun sauce on each others hair in between cider burps? Pass.

Now with but a snack box for love you bury your head for half an hour in Whatsapp, Tinder and Facebook apps sending desperate messages of hope -  pawing at the screen with greasy fried chicken fingers. Any parties? Any beours? Any love?

Beep beep.

“party up in greenmount. gonna be nuts. cmon up bah.”

Ding dong. Oh this is exactly what you wanted. Four lads with most of their kebabs on their shirts playing Towerfall Ascension on the Playstation with one can of the good stuff between them. No old dolls at this nerd off but “half talk” that such-and-such and her buddies are on the way. One of ‘em suppose to be very tidy. Grand, have a sup of the can and wait it out with your eyes rolling….
 

Waking up at half seven all alone on a couch in Greenmount with the Playstation menu screen flashing in the cold dawn grey looks like tonight, or more specifically at this point, last night, is officially over and it looks as if you didn’t score this time. Without that sober courage to ask a girl or guy out this is the way business has to be done so get used to it.
 

Too much craic

At least you saved 20 cent on every pint.