MTG
**Gen Z vs Boomer: A Freshers Week Showdown**
*Gen Z:* I had the best first week at uni.
*Boomer:* All those snakebites given your liver a good beating? I’m training for a marathon, so I’m not currently drinking. Don’t tell me you’ve been on the wacky baccy. *Eyeroll* Please stop.
*Gen Z:* I went to origami night, three Disney screenings, and joined the Hummus Society.
*Boomer:* My uni days were more about me getting blitzed than blitzing chickpeas. *Groans* Didn’t you see the Drinkaware survey? A quarter of uni students never binge drink.
*Gen Z:* How do you meet pals without offering them a shot of vodka in an old Woolies mug? Not very demure.
*Boomer:* Freshers has been rebranded as Welcome Week. Let me guess—emotional support alpacas and crystal-healing workshops?
*Gen Z:* Unis like Edinburgh have replaced organised pub crawls with yoga classes and cake-decorating sessions.
*Boomer:* I did plenty of decorating the pavement outside the kebab shop. Binge drinking is such an ick. And I don’t eat kebabs—not a wholefood.
*Gen Z:* I lived off Pot Noodles and beans on toast. Class A wholefoods.
*Boomer:* Not very #CleanGirlAesthetic. What about greens?
*Gen Z:* Greens amounted to whatever was growing in the mouldy fridge.
*Boomer:* But how did you avoid freshers flu without nutrients? As one X post says: “All the shots killed the bacteria.”
*Gen Z:* Never me. A Leeds University student told Radio 1 about his month-long vitamin C and iron ritual to say laters to the lurgy.
*Boomer:* My flatmate Mark used to say: “Plenty of iron in a pint of Guinness.” Gross.
*Gen Z:* I start every single day with a green goddess juice from the student union’s smoothie bar.
*Boomer:* Ah, the SU bar. Fond memories of warm lager and dishy second-year boys. Smoothie bar? The Telegraph says that since hardly any of us drink, dozens of SU bars have closed.
*Gen Z:* Where do you go on a Thursday night to try to pull? The library?
*Boomer:* Bradford Uni turned its student bar into a bubble tea and shuffleboard café.
*Gen Z:* Sounds like a Japanese nursing home.
*Boomer:* So racially insensitive. Bubble tea is Taiwanese.
*Gen Z:* Taiwanese nursing home, then.
*Boomer:* I bet my old boozer is still there in Aberdeen.
*Gen Z:* Bad news, bestie. Aberdeen’s student bar closed after taking only £2,000 in four months.
*Boomer:* Our house’s weekly bar tab was bigger than that!
*Gen Z:* That means you had a borderline drinking problem, not a social life.
*Boomer:* Oh, but the SU bar was my happy place. Well away from my Strangeways-esque room and a shared bathroom the World Health Organization would have condemned.
*Gen Z:* Omg, stop. My en-suite accommodation has a Himalayan salt lamp, bar trolley for kombucha, and a spider plant called Edward because it’s Harry Styles’s middle name.
*Boomer:* You’re naming plants after pop stars and I’m the one with issues?
*Gen Z:* It’s called self-care, duh. I got my inspo from Manchester student Lucy Franz, whose #BougieUniRoomDecor racked up 500,000 views on TikTok.
*Boomer:* For us, the height of luxury was the bi-termly bedding change.
*Gen Z:* According to The Times, students at UCL and Kings can now pay £1,711 a month for rooms with a kitchen, cardio studio, cinema, and roof terrace. Nicer than where I live now.
*Boomer:* As the writer says, a uni room is more than just four walls. It is a study hub, sleep sanctuary, and emotional anchor all rolled into one.
*Gen Z:* Jesus! It’s a sorry state of affairs: locking yourself in your room, eating hummus, and doing downward dogs.
*Boomer:* Downward dogs, fgs.
*Gen Z:* I’ve only got one thing to say about all this nonsense.
*Boomer:* Sounds like a sober affair?
*Gen Z:* No: what Freshers hell is this?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-15115515/MTG.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490
