Student life seems a lot more wholesome than I remember. I was struck by this thought the other day when I saw a social media post about an upcoming “houseplant sale” being held at the University of Glasgow as part of the Welcome/Freshers’ Week 2024.

The accompanying photograph drew my eye, showing a clutch of stalls packed with joyous greenery, alongside neat stacks of brightly coloured pots.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time meandering around garden centres on weekends, it looked like my idea of a fun day out.

Now, that is. But 30 years ago? Not so much. During my own university era, the sum total of interactions with anything verdure-themed was falling into a hedge after one-too-many pints at the student union.

A Barclays report published last year dubbed the current crop of students as “generation sensible”, highlighting how many are choosing to cut back on nights out and alcohol to save money.

That’s not to say they have given up booze altogether, but it certainly appears to no longer form the crux of activities in a way it once did. Many are also big fans of the gym and regularly partake in fitness pursuits, such as swimming, running and cycling.

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One of the few regrets I have from my own student days is that I didn’t do more of this kind of thing. The closest I got to anything resembling sporty was paying lip service to joining a Brazilian jiu-jitsu club at the Freshers’ Fair circa 1995, only to never darken its door.

The lion’s share of exercise I did get, other than shuffling around to Britpop tunes in sticky-floored clubs, was schlepping up the big hill to the library at Napier University’s erstwhile Craighouse campus, the equivalent of a Munro-bagging epic in leafy Morningside.

Even now, my legs spasm in fear just thinking about it. I vaguely recall drafting a haughty petition calling for a ski lift to be installed.

Then there is student cuisine. I imagine today’s budding scholars eat a lot better than I did. As I learned the hard way during my first term living away from home, slurping 20p instant noodles for almost every meal may seem financially prudent, yet rarely ends well.

Not only are you perpetually teetering on the edge of ravenous hunger and simultaneously bloated from all the sodium, but your skin takes on a waxy, grey sheen. Like a Madame Tussauds dummy left too close to a radiator.

Admittedly, the latter pallor could equally have been down to lack of sunlight from spending long periods holed up studying in a tiny tenement box room without a window (an absolute steal at £100 a month).

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The schlepping to and from the library was a drag but back then the world wide web was still in its infancy and Google yet to be invented.

In truth, this was actually a blessing in disguise. One thing I don’t rue about my time at university is the absence of social media. Sure, there were cringeworthy photographs, but a lot of the time we were too hungover and lazy to take the camera film to Boots or Safeway to get it developed.

These analogue time capsules are no doubt now rotting in landfill somewhere. Which is perhaps just as well given some of the daft and outlandish antics that went on.

Today such shenanigans would have been recorded on umpteen camera phones, uploaded to social media and have gone viral before you’d even collected your coat from the cloakroom.

Thankfully none of that came to pass in ye olden days. The worst that could happen was some shaky Camcorder footage turning up on You’ve Been Framed, showing you falling over on the dancefloor while trying to bust a move to Born Slippy by Underworld. Small mercies.

Susan Swarbrick is a columnist and freelance writer who specialises in celebrity interviews, TV content and musings on popular culture. She also loves the outdoors and regularly covers sport. Follow her on X @SusanSwarbrick