Avantika Vaishnav
This post was written by an external contributor. George Cook tells us why a student house should be the next focus for TV series A House Through Time.
A House Through Time has been something that has fascinated me since the first episode. From one house, we have seen people die, go to America, have children and undergo tremendous changes through time as we edge closer towards the present day. We’ve seen cultures and people evolve and the design of the house change, but I think David Olusoga is missing a trick – and I’ve got an idea for the focus of the next series: a student house. But what are the things that are almost timeless in student houses?
Cleanliness
On social media, a lot is said about student houses. People always refer to how dirty, disgusting and disease riddled they are. Let’s be honest, this isn’t an unfair assumption! You’ll more than likely inhabit a kitchen that you wouldn’t dare walk barefoot in for the fear of getting enough butter and crumbs on your feet to make a slice of toast.
Whilst the current student generation faces many criticisms, the dirty and disgusting state of many student houses and university halls is something I doubt has changed.
Temperature
Student houses are also – notoriously – absolutely freezing! You’ll often be literally shivering with the cold as you struggle to scrape together enough money to adequately heat your house. This means you’ll often be sitting there with three jumpers on, five pairs of socks and a blanket draped over your knees. Or always wrapped up in bed like a sausage roll.
It’s as if student houses don’t actually have heating at all and reside in an Arctic climate, and that it could snow at almost any point (in fact as I write this I could swear I just a small snowflake drift down from the ceiling…)
Ikea catalogue
Many student houses also have the same furniture in them: the usual brown-ish sofa, a very basic kitchen and if you’re lucky enough to have a table to eat off, it’s definitely from Ikea. Even though time has progressed, the furniture in student houses has remained constant. It makes you wonder how many brown sofas there in the country, and if anyone else apart from students actually has one in their house!
Noise control
These houses are also notoriously quite noisy places, but this is not helped by the fact they have walls that are so thin they may as well not be there. You’ll be able to hear your housemates breathe, plug their phone in and mutter to themselves over certain assignments. These walls are also far from ideal given the fact that students are renowned for having many parties, and a lack of sufficient wall thickness is likely to cause more irritation for the neighbours, who probably already didn’t like you before you moved in.
Props
There’s one thing that almost every student house has, something that is usually collected when are drunk and wandering the streets… you guessed it: a traffic cone! I don’t why students do this, but its like it’s wired into the DNA of every student to pick these up on the way home and add it to the array of already existing furniture. They then, inevitably, become the most treasured item in the house and are admired by almost everyone who enters.
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