Ohh. Emm. Gee. I think I must have slept through this semester - nay, year! - because I was floating along and out of the blue my Creative Writing tutor, Rodge, said “well, next week is your last class”. What?! Are we not just getting started? I don’t know what scares me more, the fact that I’m now half-way through my degree or the fact that I can’t think off the top of my head of anything I’ve learned! I have two exams and even then looking at the timetable doesn’t make me feel like they’re actually going to happen. Just some classes that someone called Nadia has been to and knows enough to regurgitate the main points in two hours…
Then there’s summer. I’ll need to start looking for a new flat with my friend from school, David. Please, please, please no bed bugs this time! Rubbish accommodation need not apply! And there’s a week in the sun with my boyfriend - I plan to do nothing but brown pleasantly by the pool. And turning 20, which seems quite grown-up and important. Even though I had to drag myself away from buying flip flops and kaftans the other day I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that it’s not still Christmas. I’m losing track of time in my old age.
We were talking recently about how in the summer between school and Strathclyde my friend Kat and I did a two-month stint of work, out, work, out, work, out, work, collapse. Maybe it was the novelty of her being just over eighteen and me being just under (with a fake ID), or maybe we just had a lot of time and money to waste. Even in first year though, in the beautiful days of Garnett Hall, I remember all the random excitement and always being busy. Weekly 12-Hour, flat parties, ABC on a Thursday…ahh! Then this year, what have I actually done? Not been in classes that much (due to a lot of ‘self study’ course content), I could count in single figures the amount of times I’ve gone clubbing and I’ve not really done much of anything else.
This time round I did discover that going out for tea or lunch was sort-of better than going ‘out out’ because, apart from being far less expensive, when you see your friends you can actually hear what they’re saying. Also it’s ok to put your pyjamas on and have an early night, try some proper cooking and take your make-up off before you go to bed. I also really appreciated the good relationships that I had perhaps taken for granted before, especially my Mum and my boyfriend. Although living somewhere as 24/7 as Glasgow is amazing, the things that I enjoyed the most were things that I’d loved all along. I guess that’s what I’ve learned in my second year in the city. Not a bad lesson.

Have you ever heard of bed bugs? I hadn't either - except from way back in the day when Queen Victoria was still in charge and people were filthy...that was until we lived in THE FLAT. For those of you who didn't read the first installment of my column - since we moved into that attic of despair we've had nothing but problems: I discovered condom wrappers under my bed, the heating didn't work for 2 months and we found human faeces in our mop cupboard (although I think my exact, mature words were "ahhhhh! a jobbie!!!"). For those of you that did read that article yes, we still live in the flat with the condoms, cold and toilet-matter.

Still, all of that was almost bearable and we shuffled on like comrades in a battle of Somme proportions until the discovery that we were not alone. Bed bugs are really difficult to spot, mainly because they live in the dark and they're tiny for the first 6-8 weeks of their lives, so it wasn't until Susan emerged one morning from her room covered in lumps that we got suspicious. Either she'd brought someone home from the union the night before who was very hungry, or we had an infestation. Since then - despite stripping her room of all the furniature - the problem seems to have exploded. Since Christmas I've been going to bed head-to-toe in proper, outdoor clothes. Come get me now, you fiends!

Turns out they did and just went for the tiny patch of my face that I'd left uncovered for suffocation reasons. My actual face. So, I only had one bite in comparison to Susan (and Kerri by this point)'s skin rashing-up on a daily basis - but it doesn't make it any less disgusting. These little red brutes have been scuttling about in our walls, waiting to attack in the dead of night. For your own reference they're about 5mm long and the colour of blood. Blood that they just took from various parts of your sleeping body.

Last week 'the exterminator' (I didn't see him because I was at a lecture, but I have images of some sort of Arnold Swarchenegger kicking our front door down and filling the flat with dry-ice) came to rid us of our blood-sucking squatters. We left the flat for a few hours and when we came back there was a slight smell of baking-soda. I'm not really sure what went on but I'm absolutely terrified that I'll bump into the wall and hundreds of them will pour out like a scene from a parasite death-camp.

We're convinced that they've been there long before we have, although our landlord disagrees. Here's the worst bit: unless you take photos of everything and can prove it otherwise then legally it's your responsibility to pay for them to be gassed out of your flat. Renting somewhere is a LOT harder than we thought. And saying 'sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite' will never be the same again...