IT'S THAT time of year again. October is icumen in, and with the onset of the second month of Mary comes the sight of rusty hinges being oiled and the sound of creaky padlocked gates being dragged open, to allow the annual autumnal stampeding influx of youth, beauty and awesome potential that is the Irish first year student population, to brighten up the otherwise dank corridors of our third level institutions.

These first years are young, disorientated and by and large clueless. They need someone to shield them from evils like overwork and the Faculty of Commerce. So with a spring in my step, a twinkle in my eye and a grasp of the alphabet that any English Lit. student would marvel at, I present the definitive A-Z of University life. And so to F.

H H H H

F is for Fresher (that's you), Freedom and, though I hate to sound like a Pepsi ad, Fun. Many first years don't realise just how inextricably linked these concepts are. Well they are, at least until three weeks before the exams. Anyway, exams in first year are made nice 'n' unfailable by the ever-obliging professors, because they love each and every one of their students - the attractive female short-skirted ones most of all. (Apologies to all first year repeats, and professors who aren't dirty old men)

E is for ENJOY LIFE THIS YEAR BEFORE ALL THE SPARK IS SQUEEZED OUT OF YOU BY THE TIRESOME TREADMILL OF THE WORKADAY WORLD YOU MAY NEVER GET THE CHANCE AGAIN I'M SERIOUS!!!!!

S is for Second Years, your immediate elders, but by no means your betters. Freshers beware. Remembering ruefully, nay bitterly, their embarrassing lack of cop-on at this time last year, they will concentrate their energies into making sure you make the same mistakes they did. Thus they will endeavour to sell you out of print but essential textbooks at extortionate prices and they will vindictively (mis)lead you to believe that industriousness equals prosperity (see F). More to be pitied than hated (although to moderately despise them is an acceptable halfway house).

T is for Third Years. Witty, debonair, always ready with a radiant smile and/or a weighty philosophical discussion, their insights into all aspects of life will be invaluable to your progress and can be easily obtained if you ply them with money, ravishing sexual partners and lots of alcohol. Mine's five hundred pounds, Lillith out of Cheers and a quadruple Southern Comfort, thank you kindly.

O is for Outside the Pale. I'm talking Wicklow, Fermanagh, Kerry, Mayo - far-flung domains from which many of your classmates will inevitably hail. N.B. Dubliners, get to know these people. You may not understand what they're saying, and even when you do they're usually on about Massey Fergusons and NET Urea, but they have flats in which parties take place and in which you can sleep when you are impossibly drunk and have neither the money nor the wherewithal nor the parental approval of your drinking habits to get a taxi home. Make your first seven days at college Befriend-A-Bogger week (Apologies to Gerry McGovern).

A is for Arts, a very popular and tremendously useless course. A is also for Aversion to gainful employment, a characteristic common to all those who are seriously planning to enter the real world armed only with a degree in Greek and Roman Studies (Wanted: High-powered Chief Executive; must have own car, own hair and intimate familiarity with Zeus' lineage) and Philosophy (or how to use a working knowledge of Existentialism to rise up the ranks in Burger King).

M is for Medicine, the faculty whose motto is "Residencum Feminum Desirabilis, Arfus Arfus," roughly translated as "Home of the Babes, Arf Arf." Avoid unless you really want to become a doctor.

D is for Disraeli, who remarked that "A University should be a place of light, of liberty and of learning." In his alliterative frenzy he neglected to mention love, lust and longing. These will occupy, for eight hours a day (each), the mind and Id of any first year who had the emotional-development-stunting misfortune to attend a single sex secondary school, on being dropped, wide-eyed and ignorant, into new environs swarming with strange creatures with exotic names like 'Mary' or 'John'.

K is for Knowledge (no, TCD English students, it doesn't start with N, you silly, strangely-accented, corduroy-jacketed people). Acquisition of knowledge is one of the main reasons people go to college, and pop stars have varying attitudes towards it: The formidable Violent Femmes think you should "Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn everything you can learn" ('Lack of Knowledge') but the flatulent-ish and not under-educated Pink Floyd reckon that "We don't need no education." Kim Deal of the esteemed Breeders, meanwhile, is of the far more sensible (and far more worthy of a pop star) opinion that "Hot metal in the sun/Pony in the air/Sooey and Saints/At the fair." You decide.

V is for Veterinary, the faculty whose motto goes something like; "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shove our hand up a cow's bottom." Delightful people, if a bit malodorous. V is also for Vibrant Social Life, the development of one of which is the real reason you go to college. And no better place! What with every campus having a student bar in which you will, in all likelihood, get served (this is a big step for many previously frustrated wannabe pissheads) and clubs where you can meet fellow poetry buffs or Amnesty activists or trout ticklers (this is as yet a minority interest) and what with the yawning golden vista of a whole new peer group to explore, there need never be a dull moment. Oh, and there are loads and loads of . . .

P is for Parties. More frequent and, from the social incompetent's perspective, easier to get invited to than what I always thought were excessively elitist secondary school gatherings, they have another advantage in that they are open-ended. You're mature now, don't forget, so even if you're living at home you shouldn't have to face the parental music when the last bus comes and goes and you're not on it. This gives you unlimited time to sit in the corner ladling vodka into your gob and keening along to 'Everybody Hurts' while s/he whose soulful blue eyes make having studied for the Leaving worthwhile is in the next room being drooled over by someone who isn't her/his soulmate. Brian Wilson said it best: Fun Fun Fun.

B is for 'Blue and Grey Shirt', a song by American Music Club and a peerless soundtrack to those not-getting-it-together-with-your-soulmate-for-the-third-party-in-succession Blues.

C is for Commerce, the faculty whose motto is "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we join forces with Beelzebub." (Apologies to . . . Naaaah)

H H H H

And there you have it. The F-C of University life, not an A-Z as promised but that's only because all us students, whether we be in NUI, RTC, TCD, DIT or any other groovily-acronymed establishment, are members of the Revolutionary Disciples of Che Guevara (Remember 1968 . . .) and refuse to be bound by the petty shackles of bourgeois alphabetical order.

If you are truly a student in spirit you'll be thinking this way soon. Even if you aren't, say for example you're starting in DCU, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

NORTHWARDS BOUND

"Bout ye? What's the craic?" Despite the bombs and bullets, over 2,000 Southern students, attracted to the scene, courses and having their fees paid, brave their way over the border to experience academic life in Northern Ireland.

In the last five years the number of students from the South heading northwards has more than doubled. However, one wonders how many of the 16,800 students from the Republic who did not obtain a place at college this year seriously considered the prospects of going to the universities on the other part of the island.

Last year, 700 Southern students opted to go to Queens University Belfast and nearly 1,500 decided to go for one of the four campuses of the University of Ulster; Jordanstown, Derry, Coleraine or the Art College in Belfast. Last year UCCA (the British equivalent of CAO) forms were filled in by 6,786 southern students hoping to go to colleges in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.

Belfast's student life is excellent (and a lot cheaper too). Queens Student Union is one of the biggest in Europe and there"s always plenty of entertainment to keep students happy pixies. If boredom begins to set in with the late bars (every night), folk nights, discos, blues nights, Karaoke nights, concerts, bands, table quizzes etc. just walk a few minutes outside the Union and you'll be on Belfast's golden Mile area. Belfast may not exceed Dublin in the amount of bars and nightclubs available but what it doesn't have in quantity it makes up in quality. A pint is on average about £1.50 and students tend to head to bars like Laverys, The Elms, The Empire, The Fly, The Bot and The Egg which usually have late licences and aren't too far from home.

Pubs, politics and the people are some of the inescapable aspects of Belfast. Don't be fooled by someone offering to go for one quiet pint - it doesn't exist and is only a fictitious concept in Belfast's nightlife.

GOOD CRAIC

Conor O'hAilín (20) from Galway city is a third year Aeronautical Engineering student at Queens. Conor went to Queens because of the course on offer and feels student life up there is very secure and good craic. (An added bonus was his fees were paid).

"When I first came up to Belfast I was a bit nervous when I saw the RUC vans and guns patrolling the streets but that's just the way of life and you get used to it fairly quickly," he says. "It's still in the back of my mind though and I wouldn't venture to walk in areas I didn't know.

"I've had no hassles living up here with my accent or anything else probably because I stay in the student area and I would be very careful what I said. I tend to steer clear of political discussions unless I'm with friends."

Linda Higgins from Kells, Co. Meath, went to UU's Colraine campus for three years. "I wasn't worried at all about coming up here but my grandparents were apprehensive about my going to the North to study. For the first few weeks I kept my mouth shut and was careful of what I said until I knew people and the lay of the land a bit better," says Linda

"Once I was called a 'Fenian bitch' because I had dyed my Docs green. I wasn't aware of any political connotations when I did it but there wasn't any trouble. Before I started Colraine I had heard that some woman was tarred and feathered and that two students were arrested for having semtex but I never saw or ran into any trouble whilst I was there. There was an RUC presence there more so than the army but the only time I came into contact with them was student parties when they would tell us to keep the noise down and then leave.

"In Colraine students tend to stick together and you don't really mix with the locals. I loved Colraine, the craic was brilliant, the drink was much cheaper than at home, everything was laid on like a free bus home from the disco which was only a pound to get in. In my three years there I got to know nearly everybody there.

"I certainly became more politically aware in the North, somehow it creeps into the conversation and you slip into late night discussions over alcohol."

FIVE FOLD INCREASE

Figures from the Northern Ireland Economic Research Group (1992) show that about a third of Southern students choose to stay on in the North and 18 percent go to Britain. Less than half go back home (48 percent).

NIERG also found that there has been a five-fold increase of students going north between the mid-'80s and '90s. And that southern students felt adequately prepared with the Leaving Cert. for exams which 85 percent of first year undergraduates passed first time round.