Following the recent news of Dublin City Council’s (DCC) Chief Executive, Owen Keegan, saying that students should construct their own places to live, we bring you the best college gaffs you can do yourself.
Keegan’s idea may have been genius, but, like all of the world’s top minds, he is more of a big picture type of thinker and has kindly let us come up with the specifics ourselves.
Treehouse
What better way to relive the days when you weren’t in constant financial peril than to take a trip back to your childhood by living in a treehouse?
A few planks of wood, maybe a sleeping bag if you’re feeling like treating yourself, and that’s your house sorted. Here’s one we made earlier.
You won’t need to worry about housemates robbing your food out of the fridge because you won’t have any! (Food or a fridge that is. You may still have housemates in the form of squirrels and other woodland creatures.)
Find a good sturdy oak in Stephen’s Green and you’re only a stone’s throw from Trinity! Or, call dibs on a nice maple in Phoenix Park. It’ll only take you a short walk to Heuston Station.
Getting home from nights out will be a bit tricky, though. Climbing up a tree after 12 Jagerbombs is notoriously hard, but you probably won’t be able to afford to go out anyway, so don’t sweat it.
Lego house (!!!)
Nostalgia is all the rage lately, so continuing our theme of going back to the good old days, when you were young enough that the Government had to at least pretend to care about your wellbeing, why not try some construction?
The life of today’s busy student is difficult to anchor to one place, so why not invest in 20 boxes of Lego and just set up shop wherever you’re be for the night?
At a late night after-party? No problem. Just get to work building a small rectangle that will shield you from the elements and hope you can fall asleep behind a bus shelter.
Assembly will take an hour or more every night but at the end of your degree, it’s ultimately less hassle than dealing with landlords.
A few centimetres of plastic moulded into the shape of blocks is still better than getting drenched. Just be careful to buy your Lego blocks from a reputable supplier because it might be difficult to get any state compensation if they suddenly start to crumble.
Hotel
Okay, so, this is technically cheating but if you win the lottery (Or more realistically take out crippling loans) and find yourself staying in a hotel room for a semester, you can still spice things up a little.
Thanks to the kind folks at DCC and Keegan himself, there’ll never be a shortage of hotels in this city ever again. The story of the Nativity and not enough room in the inn could never happen in Dublin because most cultural venues have already become rental accommodation of some sort.
Any student should definitely consider making a fun blanket fort in their hotel room or making signs for the person living in the hotel across the road – odds our there will be a hotel across the road – to distract from the fact that their country doesn’t care if they have anywhere to live.
It’s the best coping mechanism we can offer.
And if all else fails and you can’t follow Keegan’s great advice for DIY student accommodation, you should probably just drop out. The cheek of you trying to get an education in the first place.
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