Dispatches from Kent, England

Utterly maddening things you probably haven’t considered when you move as a graduate student to the U.K.

1. If you are a student OR independently wealthy, you’re gonna have a hard time renting a place, even if you can pay a year’s rent in advance. Real estate agents will always choose people who are working full-time over you, the lowly student. If you want to rent a place you have only a few options: Live in a dorm room which looks and smells like a prison, a flat with 5 other mates (at least 3 beefy English dudes who eat only pork pies and look like cage fighters), a house where the lady before you smoked for 13 years and the landlord doesn’t really want to paint and where the guy upstairs is on welfare and hasn’t left his room except to collect Uber Eat meals and leave his wrappers in the hall.

2. Let’s say you found the perfect spot (yes, I did.) You must pay all your rent upfront because you are a student.

3. In order to have a U.K. address at the flat you want — which you will be paying a year’s worth of rent for — you must show proof of a U.K. bank account.

4. In order to get a U.K. bank account you must show proof of a U.K. address.

5. Read numbers 3 & 4 again, then again in a loop, then pull out your hair.

6. In order to get a flat, you must have a utility bill from the U.K.

7. In order to have a utility bill from the U.K., you must have a flat to rent.

8. Read 6 & 7 over and over, then pull out your hair.

9. The over-friendly voices of real-estate agents will slay you when they tell you they won’t let you a flat because you’re not working full-time.

10. Passive-aggressiveness is real. The British people are so warm and friendly even when they don’t want to be. Be careful, they might burn you with their too-hot tea and smash you with their crumpets if they don’t like you. So far, I haven’t experienced this, but I’m starting to see bits of it and planning to be wary.

11. Get used to the trains. They run great until they don’t.

12. If you’ve missed the train, take the bus, don’t wait an hour, then wait again, even if the train station guy tells you the next one is on the way. You may be waiting three hours. If you do have to wait, you can go to a site called DelayedRepaid and they will pay you back for the ticket.

13. Avoid certain hours riding the train like the 3 p.m. shift of teenagers swarming out of school loosening their school uniforms and swearing like sailors. Avoid late night crowds: the Saxons who get a little too carried away at the pub with their mates and will sing drunken tunes on the way home. Although this can also be great entertainment too. Avoid the train lines to the beach on sunny days as well. There will be too many happy Brits. Sometimes you just want to be your grumpy American self but they won’t let you.

14. Marmite, a yeasty spread for toast. Love it or leave it. You decide. There’s apparantly a sports-fanatic-like rivalry with lovers and haters of Marmite. For one, I like it.

15. The fried chicken here — so much better than the South. So good.

16. English mustard. YUM!

17. Fly-tipping. It’s not about flies. Read about it, if you do it you, it can be criminal.

18. Freshers are not car freshners. It’s a name for freshman

19.Timetabling. It’s not a word from a sci-fi novel about time travel. They use it to mean scheduling.

That’s all for now!