Before O-Week and after Y12, I set out some high goals to achieve this year in uni (Kiryll)

To upend the cliff-hanger, I didn’t quite meet them. Because, what’s more comfortable: making reams of notes or watching The Matrix? Like a helium balloon, my élan fizzled out to trudge the smudged line between staying afloat and sinking in a hedonistic quicksand.

Last week during a 3 hour break between lectures, I perched my lazy ass on a cushion in Rowden library and ploughed through Russell Brand’s autobiography. If some think TV shows are now filler for the ads, uni preparation became a slight hitch for my time with Russell.

I found out its called time-inconsistency in economics. Something I read about that helped my uni course exactly 0%. It’s when a person takes the short term route to immediate reward, rather than a long-term haul to a Roman triumph. So a bit like if I played truant and went to a local pub to drink away my sorrows with froth, instead of soldiering on in a lecture theatre. It’s the difference between slouching on a sofa swaddled in Mars wrappers and sending your graduation hat flying with pride.

It’s probably defined as the “Gee, I wish I’d done that” or “Gee, thank goodness I’ve done that before”. Imagine a brain operation – I would love to have a surgeon who, upon encountering  a rare condition inside my grey matter, thinking “Phew, thank God I learnt that in med school”. Because, if they hadn’t, I’d be tongue-sticking-out D-E-A-D.

So why am I still finding my-self firmly rooted to the “I wish I’d done that” column? Because I am a time-inconsistent decadent fool preferring Russell Brand to William Blake, Neo and Morpheus to the Enlightenment, and The Walking Dead to the French Revolution.