I can’t remember the exact date of my departure from university. It was sometime in the summer of 2021. My flatmates and I packed up our things, had a sombre pint at the pub, hugged, and then went our separate ways. I boarded the train at Bristol Temple Meads with a degree in English and Philosophy and no feasible job prospects. I was also broke. Three years had come to a precipitous end, and it was time to move back home. I was worried about my future. The thought of becoming a bum terrified me: the sort of graduate who day drinks, listens to Limp Bizkit, starts a true crime podcast from his bedroom, and screams at his mother for not washing his pants. But I returned home in spite of my fears, largely for one reason: I couldn’t bear the thought of becoming a university hanger-on.
The very thing that compels the hanger-on to stay is delaying the inevitable
The potential to become a university hanger-on exists within every graduate. (Well, male graduate at least. Women do not seem to fall so easily into this particular trap.) If you don’t know what a university hanger-on is, let me explain. They are the person that never leaves their student town, the person that refuses to grow up. They are the walking embodiment of having too much of a good thing. They are the perpetual student, the ketamine-riddled 28-year-old manchild, the cocky general manager at your old student bar. They are all over the country in every campus, town and city. They are the Wayne Lineker of the education system: they never know when to call it a day.
In my experience, it was the men who found it harder to leave their student selves behind. I can only assume that these men were struck down by a severe case of arrested development – a common occurrence for young blokes. Or perhaps they had the disturbing urge to stick around and court the green freshers, trying, and failing, to impress them with tales from their former glory days.You might find these men drinking discounted beers with freshers and talking about their upcoming re-election campaign for the Students’ Union. You might bump into them on a night out at Lizard Lounge, suddenly confronted with a tired reflection of your former self, and they might lean into your ear, their breath hot and sticky from all the VK Blues, and they might say something like, ‘I hear you’re training to be a teacher. That sounds wank. I’ve always hated kids.’ Perhaps, if you’re still in your 20s, you know a hanger-on. Perhaps you know more than one of them, and perhaps they all live together in a five-bedroom house – just as you did when you were a student – and perhaps one of them is doing a PhD, one of them is dating a girl five years his junior, and the other three have started an improv group called Improgress. And perhaps you visit them every few months and remember, as you stare at the crusty old bong on the living room sofa, why you left university for good.
The eternal student is perhaps the purest incarnation of the hanger-on. Driven by fear and the misguided notion that collecting degrees like a philatelist collects stamps will lead to better job prospects, these perpetual postgraduates are a blessing for universities. More fear means more degrees, and more degrees means more money for an education system that is, for use of a better phrase, shot to pieces. This is not to say that every graduate who remains in their university town or city is a hanger-on. I was very tempted by the prospect of staying in Bristol. It is an enticing city: small enough to make you feel important but big enough to keep you on your toes. It wasn’t Bristol that I wanted to leave behind; it was me. Being a student is a bit like working behind a bar. It’s fun until it isn’t. It’s also a temporary appointment. I wanted to move on from my foppish salad days and to take the rollneck off and put the Gauloises down. I wanted to leave the world of potentiality in the rearview mirror and embrace actuality – however blanched the real world might be. I had been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and my future as a hanger-on didn’t look bright.
But this is where the hanger-on and I part ways. They like things just the way they are (or were). Change is a dirty word for the hanger-on. They too have been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but rather than heeding his warning, they just shrugged and asked him for a spare Rizla. The hanger-on does not believe in the ‘good old days’; they only believe in the ‘good days’, which are now and forever – or until their body gives out.
The very thing that compels the hanger-on to stay is delaying the inevitable: the passage of time. Every human being wishes they could stop time, and every human being that has tried to do so has failed – the hanger-on is no exception. Eventually, they grow to realise, just as we have realised, that youth is anything but immutable. Sooner or later they are forced to join the postlapsarian world of adulthood. Like a performer in front of an empty crowd at their 20th Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the truth is laid bare: it’s time to throw in the towel. Most hangers-on give up before they turn 30 – only a few are brave enough to make it their life’s work.
The hanger-on is not at fault for wanting to relive the best years of their life. They are at fault for wanting something that is not possible: more time. Adulthood is awful. We spend the majority of our youth trying to get there faster, only to realise that we should have savoured our ignorant years while we still had the chance. We sit at our desks scrolling on our phones and laughing at those who are still behaving like children, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of us would do the same if we could. But we can’t. And neither can the hanger-on, which is what makes their existence so bittersweet.
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