You don’t need friends. You don’t need a mobile phone. You don’t need Pokemon Shuffle stats breaching 2,500 plays on your Samsung Tab A. You do need…

An Alarm that Kicks Your Butt

Destroy those dreamy, piece of crap alarms that twinkle you into consciousness and smile at you saying, “It’s ok, I don’t mind, that was a sweet ass dream, wasn’t it? Go back to sleep baby,” when you go tap it into snooze and drift away again until 4pm.

No! You need an alarm that tears down your walls with sounds of abject fear and terror that pump your body with more adrenaline than an epinephrine injection before you've even had time to remember who you are. Lay a series of deadly traps between the alarm and your bed, so by the time you get to it you’re so scared shitless and thankful for your own life you will probably never sleep again.

Use this song:

An Inspiring Object

On my wall hangs a boxing glove keyring (a very realistic one, seen below) that I earned in Fresno during my dedicated years of martial arts training. After attending every single class of Kickboxing over the course of the semester, without missing one, my teacher singled me and two other classmates out for our valiant effort towards our training, making me feel like a massive nerd in front of the whole class while they clapped. He handed me the keyring and we bowed, saying “Osu!”

My intense and bloody training in Fresno had been completed at that moment, but even now that I have returned to the UK, I still hold a piece of evidence of my perseverance. The boxing glove key-ring is a testimony to those times: dragging myself out of bed at 8am feeling fresh from a good night’s rest, or still sleepy from staying up too late staring at my computer in the darkness or still hanging out of my arse from the previous night’s alcohol-induced escapades.

Now it motivates me, letting me know that if I’ve managed all that once, I can do it again. The key to my secret?

Regular Packets of Celery

One look at the diet of most university students is enough to let you know that the next generation would not survive without the current imports we buy into England and the USA: packaged products that barely resemble the original source of food they are supposedly a form of.

The idea of health is discarded by most students on the first trip to Sainsbury’s (or Walmart) when they realize no one is there to tell them not to buy absolutely everything in the sweets aisle. It also fails to arise when the image of a steaming burger with a big red sticker saying “1 MINUTE COOK TIME” champions the attention of the consumer over boring leaves without any cooking instructions on the package.

All this means the arteries will slowly clog, the skin will grow paler and the mental state of the university student will apathetically decline without any apparent cause, to them.

Well, all this can be averted with simply one packet of celery a week. I know, you’re not a rabbit, but if you can stomach noshing down just one or two a day, your body will be screaming hallelujah into the nether-reaches of the toilet bowl.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!