So you did it. You came out of the two year shitfest that was your ‘A-levels’ with a couple of Bs and a D and somehow managed to secure a spot at Brighton University with the added points you got from Social Studies. Congratulations, your parents must be really proud.

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Now for the exciting part of your life where you get to spend £20,000 of borrowed money to have some failed writer attempt to explain the many analytical standpoints on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Bet you can’t wait.

Of course this all sounds very scathing, but what I’m trying to get at is that the actual academic side of university is kind of like an extension of the pointless bullshit that teachers drum into you at school. It’s only in the arena of a Masters or PhD that you really get anywhere. No, university is a time for partying, shagging and learning how to be a real human being. You don’t need any stupid course work to get in the way of that, do you?

Plus straight after uni (which will go by worryingly fast) you’re going to be plunged into the depressing world of 9-5s, so you might as well make the most of your free time. Never again will you be able to feel the joy of waking up on a stranger’s sofa at 11am and not getting the fear.

That’s why I’ve decided to use my own personal experience of university to show you how to get a 2:1 without doing any work. OK, so there will be a little bit of work involved, but if you use these tactics you should be able to cruise through these three years and laugh at the sidelines as your mates sweat over a 6,000 word essay that they’ve got to hand in the next morning. Suckers.

Make friends with your tutors

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I know I just referred to university tutors as “failed writers” but in actual fact, university tutors are alright. These guys aren’t the incapable pond life that you find lurking in the staff room at your local secondary school. Uni lecturers specialise in something – they’re smart, passionate and way more liberal than actual teachers. They’re also the ones who decide whether your work is shit or not.

I’m not saying befriend your tutors and then they’ll instantly give you good grades – that would be stupid. But what I am saying is that these guys know what you need to do to get a first. Did you know you can actually take an essay to them and ask them what grade level it is? If you do your work a bit in advance rather than the night before (trust me, you are going to want to do that) you can literally pay them a visit, ask whether it’s up to scratch and if it ain’t, they’ll tell you how and where to improve. And if they like you, they’re probably going to help you that little smidge more. Seriously, it’s that easy.

Also make friends with Google Books

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Google Books is the absolute essential for any essay writing. What you’re supposed to do when composing a thesis or whatever for a module is reference it using the Harvard Referencing guidelines. This basically means just arguing a point, then using a quote from a book (the reference) to back up what you’re saying. It basically shows you’ve done some shit and that you’re not just spouting utter bullshit. The main problem with this is you’re supposed to reference anywhere between 20-40 books, which as you can tell is a lot of fucking reading.

Well into my first year of uni and about 100 books in, I realised I could sidestep all of the prep using Google Books to find references instead. Just make sure you read the actual main couple of books for the essay and for the rest of the “reading” which you use for referencing, type in what topic you’re looking for and hey presto, Google will find a book with a quote that you’re looking for. So, for example, say you are arguing that Freud’s psychoanalytical theories were present in Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’ you literally can type into the Google Books search bar: ‘Freud Mrs Dalloway’ or something like that and it’ll give you a load of highlighted references from multiple books. I can’t even tell you how much reading time that’s going to save you. You’re welcome.

Dissect your dissertation

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Most university degrees work like this: first year = 0% of your overall degree (so it’s basically just a doss year). Second year = 25% (just try to pass and you’ll be fine). Third year = 75% which translates as “fuck me, I’ve actually got to do some work.” And of course, with third year comes the bastard dissertation.

But what I learned through my ingenious (if I do say so myself) method of smashing through a 30,000 word thesis on Modernist literature is that it is totally possible to nail it without really doing much work by doing it bit by bit. The mistake people make is trying to fit the whole thing in last minute, which is just the dumbest idea ever. For your third year you pretty much don’t have any lectures and instead have months and months of free time to work on your final project. If you just do a little bit each day you’ll be sorted.

Here’s how I figured it out: I had three whole months to do the dissertation. It was 30,000 so I decided to write just 500 words a day for sixty days, leaving me with one month at the end to party. I became nocturnal during this time: I’d wake up at 5pm, do the 500 words (which would take about an hour at most) then go out and get fucked up all night, then repeat this until it was done. Throughout the whole process I made regular visits to my tutor who would assure me that it was at a 2:1 and boom. By the end of it I had a winning final project and I hardly felt like I’d done any work. Do the same and you’ll absolutely nail it, I promise.

Pay someone to do all the hard work for you

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If all of the above sounds like too much work for you (you might want to consider becoming a sex worker because ain’t nothing in the working world that’s easier than doing a degree) then just pay someone to do the work for you. Just make sure you hire someone decent because you don’t want to get done for plagiarism. You’re looking at about £3,000 for a dissertation so you might want to get saving if you’re going with this option.

Well, I hope you found that useful. Now, be gone with you, and go enjoy one of those mental student parties. God those were the best.