"Hi there. My name's Sam and I'm studying German at Bangor University. German because I didn't know any better and Bangor because it was sunny on the open day. Sam because I was six weeks early, supposed to be a girl and that was the second thing that popped into my mum and dad's heads. Shadrak was the first thing.

I'm in my fourth year - a year peculiar to language students and those unfortunate enough to have missed the odd lecture due to various, quite obvious, reasons. It's a real game of top trumps - being in the fourth year you win against all but the most hardened PhD students, and they never leave the house anyway.

I spent last year in Germany talking English at kids in south Germany - a beautiful area, and seeing the Alps from the kitchen beats Snowdonia from the bathroom hands down. Coming back, however, was a completely different story. Aside from a few problems with Customs at Cologne airport (I posted my passport back by accident) getting used back to life in Bangor was harder than being given four classes of 14-year olds to teach in my first week. I'd grown accustomed to being a 'Mr', to finishing at 12 every day and knocking back mojitos of an evening with the Spanish Dude, my Basque flatmate.

I came back to find my friends gone (apart from one - who was unfortunate enough to have missed the odd lecture due to various reasons and had to repeat her final year) and the dreaded final year looming.

You can rationalise anything that happens in the first two years - because they don't count. The ghosts of examinations past come back to haunt you in the final year, though - every missed deadline, failed assignment or grammatical oversight queues up to bite you on the proverbial. You work out you need an average of about 127% to get a decent 2:1, you spend weeks in a row without sleep trying to finish your dissertation and catch up on reading. If the first two years are about being a student, the final year is the punishment. Making you do it after a year off is just mean.

We students get a bad press - I can understand that, there's no fun in a tabloid news story about some bloke from Sheffield handing in his homework on time, or a group of girls from the hockey team making their way quietly home after a pleasant evening of imbibing something bright blue at extortionate prices. It's sexy journalism to write about the nice folks of Bangor being woken up by the odd young person vomiting copiously on their front lawn.

In all honesty I suspect it doesn't happen too often - I'll take the opportunity now on behalf of all 8,500 of us to apologise if it has happened to you, though. Most of us quite happily pay our fees, do our work, enjoy our time as students and hopefully give as much to life in Bangor as we get out of it.

Those nice people at the BBC have given me some space on this here interweb to give you an impression of what it's like to be a student in Bangor - the highs, the lows...mainly lows at the moment, but I'll ask around and see if anyone can remember their first year. So here's to a first step for blogkind in Bangor - long may it flourish."

Coping without cash.
Chaotic New Year.
Final year terrors.
Studying and campaigning.
Sam gets elected.
Five exams to go.
Living in limbo.
Four-hour meetings.
The calm before the storm.
Plans for new buildings.
Political correctness gone mad?