Charley’s unsolicited weekly take on the uni topics no one else dares to mention…
Especially in Sheffield, we love our fancy coffee shop study dates: latte art, a variety of iced drinks, and maybe even a matcha if we’re feeling extra cool. These pictures flood every Instagram story: book open, cute coffee in hand and an aesthetic song played over it.
But, if I posted myself rushing out the house for my 9am with a monster in hand, that’s not as acceptable, is it? Despite both of these varieties of drinks only appealing to students for one real reason: caffeine.
Especially to many parents, energy drinks are seen as a cry for help: the fluorescent cans with a list of ingredients that not even a linguist could pronounce on their first try. Every headache, sad spell or broken toenail: it’s always these dreaded energy drinks that are to blame!
But, in the long term, for your average student- are these drinks really that terrible? I mean, without them, I definitely wouldn’t have made it to as many 9am lectures, and probably would’ve lost half my friends due to acting like a zombie all the time.
Yes, the caffeine crash at 2pm is real and no one wants to witness that, but the SU shop very much exists for a reason (when they actually stock the decent flavours of monster) and then you’re safe for approximately 3 more hours.
If you’re a student and you don’t have any bad habits (yes, submitting coursework at 11:59 pm on the due day does count) then are you really a student? Yes, the ingredients are not ideal, but at least we know what they are. At least there’s more certainty with what I’ve got in my body on a Friday morning – unlike the skibidi rizz bombs I’ll inevitably drink that night.
Maybe we shouldn’t carry on this habit into our dull corporate future, but for now, it’s not going to kill us, is it? (Please don’t hold me to that legally)!
As a short-term solution, energy drinks provide both joy and alertness to pretend to listen in lectures and survive the Sheffield hills whilst having such a range of brands and flavours to choose from (although some brands are just wrong).
This year, let’s aim for a balance of cute coffee shops and also Manic Monday Monsters: perfect for a great year of caffeine-fuelled chaos!
Come back next Monday for another column from your new favourite oversharer!
Image Credit: Tiger Tattler
