Felix Desmarais: Living poorly as a student is a rite of passage

Student flats on Dunedin's infamous Castle St. Photo / Jason Oxenham

OPINION:

To some, living in a tumbledown shack as a student is a rite of passage in New Zealand.

The subject has been in the media a bit lately, with some calling for a better lot for students.

My dad, who went to art school in Dunedin in the 1970s, told me about a flat he lived in where you could see the snow outside through a gap in the walls. It would even tumble inside at times.

A beloved interior design feature in this country is indoor-outdoor flow. Indoor-outdoor snow might be taking it a bit far.

Forty-odd years later I had a similar pleasure, living in a house on the dark side of a valley in Wellington.

My room didn't have real walls as such, in that the building did have an exterior, but that was the beginning and end of it. The exterior wall was also the interior wall - two for the price of one. No amount of 2-minute noodles could warm me up enough.

Perhaps instead of eating them, I should have stacked them up the walls - uncooked, of course, I'm not an animal - for makeshift insulation.

I'm sure the mice that regularly ran around the edges of my room would have appreciated that workaround. If I had a truly pioneering spirit I could have made it a circular economy - feeding the mice with the cheap 2-minute noodles and turning my own latent hunter-gatherer instincts upon them. Protein is better than carbohydrates to keep you full, after all.

I paid $150 a week for that hovel. The only cheaper rent I ever paid was $96 a week - in 2007 - for what can only be described as a glorified wardrobe. I was like Harry Potter but with student loan debt and an overdraft. At least he lived rent-free in his cupboard under the stairs.

It was all I could afford at the time, but when my parents saw the conditions I was living in, they offered to help me out a bit more financially so I could get a house with the privilege of real walls. The name Felix means 'lucky' and it's by name and nature.

The house's parting gift to me was mould behind the pictures on my walls and in my shoes, which explains why I had a nagging cough worthy of a 40-year veteran smoker.

Open plan living is also a coveted design feature in New Zealand. I've seen some students really commit to this by shoehorning an extra bedroom out of an alcove in a living area with a sheet hanging from the ceiling. Good for them. You don't need to be rich to have a bespoke designer layout.

Perhaps there is something to be said for what the wise ancient Greek philosopher Drake calls "starting from the bottom". We look back on our grotty, frozen student days as the time in the trenches, the price we paid for a salaried job and proper walls. Because for students, at least there is a likely light at the end of the tunnel. Studying is a means to a qualification end which - hopefully - lifts you up and away from financial insecurity.

And if you're really lucky, you might even be able to buy the tumbledown shack. You only have to pay down tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, build up a $100,000+ deposit and compete in the market.

Or you can take your tertiary qualification offshore to better prospects.

Either way, it's a rite of passage.

Felix Desmarais is a journalist and mostly-former stand-up comedian who sold out very cheaply.